When our firstborn turned two, we decided to grow our family and became pregnant with our second. I used all that I learned with my first delivery to make decisions for our second and see what I could do to make this experience better. I was not happy with how our first baby’s birth turned out, but that was his story and he was healthy. We didn’t attend a birthing class this time, but I did watch The Business of Being Born, read a lot of books, and watched many episodes of the UK show, The Midwives. I was told not to watch TV shows about birth but this one showed a lot of natural births, which were very informative. I was determined to have a natural, unmedicated birth with a doula and midwife. I wanted to be fully aware of what was going on this time around and I wanted to have as few interventions as possible.
Our little girl was due to be born on January 13th. I was very nervous because I didn’t know how all of this was supposed to work. After all, we “set the date” for our first birth and practically slept through the rest of it. I am a planner, so I was a little worried about how everything would come together.
On January 13th, I was really restless. I just wanted to get out of the house. We had breakfast with our almost 3 year old and went shopping at several stores and came home to eat lunch. I wasn’t hungry for lunch, which I thought was odd because if you know me I’m always eating. I laid down because I started having contractions and I figured it was from all the walking we had done that morning. I text my doula and kept her informed on my progress. About 4:00pm we informed her that we were headed to the hospital. Contractions were 4 minutes apart for an hour at this point.
At the hospital, I was hooked up to IV antibiotics for strep B and a Hep lock IV (yay!). I drank bottled water and had a cookie but had to wait in triage until a room was ready. Once the antibiotics were finished, they were able to take the IV out. It amazing to not be hooked up to the IV or stuck in the bed. I did have fetal monitoring, but I was free to move around. The midwife on the floor said I was at 5cm and 80% effaced, which was nice to hear because my regular midwife hadn’t checked me at all. The midwife said she was going to check in on me every so often and let me labor on my own. My doula suggested I walk around, but that was painful and so I sat in the bed and breathed through the waves of contractions like I had been practicing. I told this midwife that my last labor went really quickly, so they should probably hurry up and get me a room!
oklahomabirthexperiences.com 