Here's our story...
For a week we were teased with off and on painful contractions but finally Friday night, September 15th at 11:30PM they turned pretty serious and active labor had finally begun!! I was in bed sitting up with my back propped by a wall of pillows able to talk and carry on as normal in between contractions but having to breathe and concentrate during contractions. They started off about 7 minutes apart and 60 seconds long. They were getting really painful and intense at this point.
We had called our doula to come to the house to help us labor at home. Before she arrived, however, I changed from my sitting position to a hands and knees position for a really intense contraction and my water broke at 1:30AM. It didn't take very long for the contractions to intensify and get closer together. I took a quick shower while Austin threw everything into the car including our sleeping 13 month old, Aidan! He was awake now and watching Baby Einstein on the DVD and perfectly content.
Tina arrived when we were about ready to walk out of the door. We permitted an assistant doula to come with her to shadow her and attend our birth since the assistant doula had never seen a birth center birth experience before. They drove together which turned out to be great because Jo Anne, the assisting doula drove Tina's car while Tina rode in the back of the van on the floor with me.
Austin had folded down the 3rd row into the floor so I had a huge space of pillows and blankets in the back to support me while I continued laboring in the van for the near hour long trip. We left the house at 2:23AM and called the birth center on the way to let them know we were on our way! As it turns out, Melissa, the same birthing midwife that delivered Aidan was on-call and had just finished a birth at the hospital. This time he had gas in the car but the bumpy ride was hard to deal with at times. I sat propped by pillows in the same position as in the bed and Tina sat in front of me as I breathed through each one. Most of the time the contractions were very close together and I felt like I had no break.
Melissa met us at the birth center at 3:30AM. In the van, the contractions were nearly on top of each other and I had only one 10-minute break where I actually fell asleep! I was so exhausted already. When we arrived, they helped me walk in and I sat up in the bed in the same position I had been laboring in at home and in the van. Melissa wanted me to scoot down though so she could check my progress. This was my very first cervical exam this pregnancy since I had declined the routine exams offered since 36 weeks (I didn't want to get discouraged or excited over any amount of progress.) She said I was 100% effaced and 5-6cms dilated. (In my head, I did some quick math and figured if this was to be the same labor as it was with Aidan, that I'd be in labor 9 more hours before the baby was born.) I mentally started to freak out!
This is when my "wimp stage" set in! I started to have self-doubt that I could make it through this pain and started to sincerely tell everyone on my birth team that I didn't know how I'd make it through this again. I was really fearful of another long, hard, painful labor and most of all feared another back labor. Everyone assured me that everything would be fine and they even thought this would go faster this time. They stuck to my birth plan and ignored my new fears and kept on encouraging me and assisting me however they could.
I didn't stay in the bed too long because I was in such pain in that position. Melissa recommended moving me to the jacuzzi tub to labor in warm water instead. After I moved to the tub, I labored alone in the tub this time, either Tina or Austin sat beside the tub and held their hand behind my back for pressure in the lower center of my back while I continued to apply pressure with my two hands in the front during each contraction. I was pretty proud of myself for physically dealing with each contraction better than I did the last time with Aidan. This time I controlled my screaming and there was hardly a moment I did that, I breathed very well and efficiently through each contraction, I did my best to relax all of my muscles so that I wasn't fighting my uterus and the work it needed to do. Emotionally I was a self-doubting nightmare, in my opinion, but physically I was performing like a champ!
It didn't seem like I was in the tub for very long before Melissa wanted to check me again. It had been over two hours since I'd arrived at the birth center at that point. She did the exam in the water and said I was 9 centimeters dilated! She just encouraged me to keep up the hard work. The contractions were very intense, very long lasting, overwhelming at times and very close together. It was still very painful but I didn't have the "back labor" I had with Aidan, thank goodness! The pain was mostly in the front and in transition I could feel the pain in my back some too but it wasn't the horrible back labor!
