Emmett's Birth Story

I was having contractions on and off since Wednesday. Friday morning started out with them about an hour apart, so I went in to school. Once I got there, they picked up in frequency (15 min apart), but were still mild. Since they became more regular, I decided to go home at about 10:00. Once I got home, they became very irregular again and at one point I went nearly an hour and a half without any contractions. Since they seemed to be irregular, we picked Anna up her babysitter and brought her home. We had dinner and did some housework.

The contractions started to pick up again at about 10:00pm and by 1:00am they were about 7-8 mins apart and were getting quite a bit more intense. Then we called Anna’s babysitter so we could drop her off and shortly after Jon got off the phone I had a very intense contraction, following which my water broke. This is when things really started to pick up! The contractions soon became very frequent, at about 2-3 minute intervals. It was at this point that we went to the birthing center.

We arrived at the birthing center at 2:00 am (we were the only ones there except for the midwife and our doula). The midwife checked and found that I was 3-4 cm dilated and 70% effaced. So we walked around and sat on the ball and contractions started getting much stronger. Within an hour I had dilated to 4 cm. At this point I decided to go into the shower for some relief, which helped a bit. From that point on it was mostly a blur. The contractions were coming pretty much continuously. I got out of the shower and leaned against the ball on the bed, and spent much of the rest of the labor in this position. I found that vocalizing really helped me here.

On a side note, after things had got very intense Jon’s cell phone rang and it was one of his friends. He didn’t answer, but couldn’t figure out why he was calling at 5:30 in the morning. After looking at the phone, he found out that he accidentally “pocket dialed” the friend that they had been connected for about 2 minutes during very intense contractions and vocalizations! He talked to his friend later and found out that the guy had now idea what was going, but thought they were either at a hospital or watching a strange movie.

Going back to the labor, after sometime the midwife had me move onto my side so that she could check and found out that I was fully dilated and effaced. She told me whenever I felt the urge to push to go ahead and do so. I ended up actively pushing for about ½ hour and then Emmett entered the world (at 6:25 am). He took to nursing right away and was very healthy (had APGAR score of 10).

He weighed in at 7 lbs 4oz; measuring 20.5 in. If you recall, Anna was 7 lbs 4oz; measuring 20 in. :)

I did tear a bit and needed about 10 stitches. We were able to leave 6 hours after Emmett was born and have been at home resting since then.