She was born on her due date, August 27th, at 2:06am. So, she definitely doesn't take after her mother in that respect as I am never that spot on with time.
The labour was everything I'd hoped it would be. No pain relief whatsoever and just a quiet private labour spent with family. Started burning my Clary Sage in the oil burner to bring on labour before bed on Saturday night...Lower backache on the left side woke me back up around 11pm and, telling myself to preserve my energy as I was in this for the long haul, I went back to sleep. The next day was spent chillin out, reading the Sunday papers and hanging out with family....oh and breathing through contractions. They kept asking me if I wanted to go into hospital and I kept on prolonging it, choosing to go for a walk with my mum and mother in law along the beach at sunset. Went to walk the long pier that is there, which was thriving with people as it had been a warm day, but I only got halfway before I told mum and Rhonda I was done with it and "let's go back". Finally went to the hospital around 8pm and at 9pm, the midwife did an internal to find that I was only 1cm dilated.
1 cm! This is nuts, it had been 22 hours worth of contractions at this point! Josh and I got disheartened a little as the midwife said we will need to go home and could return when things started progressing. She did a 'sweep' of my uterus and said that, because I was a bit dehydrated, that she was going to hook me up to a saline drip to hydrate me before I went home...that she thought that might move things along.
Well, I was hooked up to the saline and Josh and mum got the oil burner going with clary sage and...let's just say that 5 hours later my body gave an almighty involuntary push all of a sudden and my water broke with a loud pop and it was push time! I was shocked because I thought I was nowhere near that stage yet! That clary sage is powerful stuff!
I remember, right before that happened, being on all fours and leaning against the beanbag and actually falling asleep! Looking back now, that was the 20 minutes of 'calm rest' the birth educators had told me happens right before a woman starts pushing the baby out. Thing is that, because I was so nervous that the midwife was going to send me home still (I know, silly...)when the midwife came in while I was resting, I tried to snap out of the sleep so that she wouldn't think I was nowhere near birthing the baby....sounds ludicrous now but I was kinda not with it totally at the time lol.
I got on all fours again and, hugging the bean bag, proceeded to let my body push our baby out the way it was designed to do. It was absolutely amazing to feel my body instinctively take over like that...I was just along for the ride and my body did it's thing! I remember feeling this weird series of pushes it would do, almost like a pant in motion...my lower belly region just heaved in short quick bursts and beared down. Josh was behind me being instructed by the midwife, as he was the one who was going to deliver our baby. My mum, Josh's mum and dad were in front of me helping me at THAT end (thankfully lol).
Then I heard Josh exclaim "Was that the head"? If I could talk right then, I would've said "Um hell yeah, that didn't feel like a foot" lol. Then, I felt the head emerge again, feeling a burning, splitting open sensation and I pushed with everything I had, thinking "Ok, I aint doing this halfway again, this time I'm pushing the head out totally and getting this over with". I heard Josh say "Oh wow, that's a full head of hair" and the head was out. It was such a weird sensation as I could feel the body still inside of me. Finally, bubs body came out too and Josh put bubs on the bed under my legs, telling me we had a girl and I looked down and picked her up and cried when I saw her little face.
Amazing....most amazing thing that has ever happened to me and ever will.....
