Birth Story

I went in for my 41 week appointment on Thursday, January 29. For the first time, there was actually progress at the appointment: I was 1 cm. dilated. Since I was a week overdue, when the doctor asked if I wanted my membranes stripped, I said yes. After the appointment, I went to the mall, hoping a walk would help get things started. But instead I got a manicure and a pedicure (gotta look good for the delivery).

While at the mall I lost my mucous plug and decided to drive back home. On the way home, I had a couple of very mild contractions. This continued off and on all day. Jim and I went to BJs around 7 p.m. to do some more walking and shopping. At 10 p.m. the contractions started coming more often, but were still very irregular: 5-10 min. apart. We decided to go to bed to see if we could get some sleep.

At 1:00 a.m., I woke up Jim and told him that the contractions had been every 5 minutes for the past half hour, were getting much stronger and that I needed his help. As soon as I got up and walked around, they went to 2-3 minutes apart. At this point, we decided to call the doctor and doula.

We arrived at the hospital at around 3:15 and I was still only 1 cm dilated! A long six hours later after walking around and laboring in different positions, I hadn't progressed at all, other than effacing to 100%. At that point the OB wanted to either start pitocin - which I didn't want - or to do an ultrasound on the baby to see if it was OK to continue to wait things out. As we waited for the ultrasound, I had a very hard contraction and felt a pop. I knew my water had broken. There was some slight meconium in the water, which meant that they would have to have take some precautions when she was delivered.

Only 3 hours later I went from 1 cm dilation to completely dilated. During the whole time Jim and the doula were amazing in keeping me focused and relaxed. I started experiencing the tell tale signs of going through transition - I couldn't decide which position I wanted to labor in, I decided that I wanted give up on my planned natural birth and get an epidural, nausea - but thought there was no way I was in transition already!

I remember thinking at that point that I just had to get to the next cervical check, to get an epidural - but nope, Alexandra had other plans. I suddenly felt a lot of pressure and instead of waiting, asked to be checked. With that I started a 2-hour pushing phase.

When she was finally born, they also noticed at this time that the cord was wrapped tightly around her neck and immediately cut it and whisked to the neonatal nurses on standby. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only seconds, we could hear her crying. About the same time, Jim and I realized, we didn't know if it was a girl or a boy. The finally told us that we had our little girl and Jim and I knew we were now a family!