My 44 Hour Long Labor (birth story)
We’ve had lots of friends have babies lately & have seen a lot of magical stories floating around about home births, so I was inspired to share my birth story. My goal in sharing is always to provide others hope and encouragement that birth does not have to be and is not meant to be the way it is depicted in the media. My birth was long and hard and literally magic and I can’t wait to hopefully do it again one day.
It was a Monday night, 2 days before my due date, and I fell asleep around 10 and then woke up shortly after to a contraction-it was my first one. I never had any braxton hicks throughout my pregnancy. For three hours, I would wake up and have a contraction and fall back asleep- this occured every ten or so minutes. At 1:30 am, I couldn't sleep any more so I came out into the living room and messaged my cousin about how I didn't know if I was in labor or not. I ate some food and pretty much just hung out until 6:30 in the morning when my husband came out into the living room & I told him I thought I was in labor. In hindsight, I should have tried harder to sleep!
I went back to bed from about 7-10, waking up again every 10ish minutes. At this point I didn't want to eat anything and still wasn't POSITIVE about what was happening. My husband went out to get me a smoothie around 1 pm, which was really the last thing I consumed before I gave birth.. Around 2 pm, things kind of became a blur. The contractions picked up and I don't really remember much from about 2-8pm. I pretty much laid in bed the entire time, intermittently having contractions.
At 8pm one of my doula’s came over. I remember her just sitting on the floor of the bedroom while I laid in bed. At this point, contractions were pretty painful and I was exhausted and dehydrated. I had taken hypnobirthing classes so I was attempting to use the techniques learned in that class to breathe the baby down. I was silent throughout my contractions (and even after).
Around midnight some changes started happening. At this point, our other doula came over to swap out with the first one (they work as a team). The second doula had me come into the living room and do some "work" to try to get things moving. At 2am, she asked me if it was time to go to the birth center. I thought maybe it was (I mean it had been over 24 hours of contractions at this point), so we called the midwife on call. I told her that I thought it was time to go in, but that I didn't want to drive all the way there and be sent away due to not being far enough along.. She said it sounded like I was ready so I woke up my husband (he had been trying to get some rest) and we grabbed our bags and took off for the birth center.
When we got to the birth center, the midwife checked me to see how effaced and dilated I was. They typically don't tell Moms how far along they are as they don't want the numbers to get in their heads. They left the room and when they came back, they told me they were going to be sending me home. I felt so defeated. At this point I had been in labor for over 28 hours and was just so tired. Turns out, I was 100% effaced but only dilated to a ONE! They said that they were going to give me some hydration through an IV and some sleeping meds- and that this should either slow down or stop the contractions as it may just be that I was so dehydrated that it was causing contractions. We got a hotel around the corner because there was no way I was driving all the way home.
I felt so tired at this point and when we got into the hotel, I passed out instantly. Only to wake up ten minutes later to a contraction. Needless to say... I didn't sleep at all. I was so, so, tired at this point and emotionally drained. After about an hour, my husband woke up and I told him to just take me to the hospital and get me an epidural. He called our Doula, she came back- and they convinced me to drive 5 min back to the birth center to be checked one more time first.
When we got there, a different midwife was there. She checked me and determined that they were going to admit me at this point. I continued to have contractions that really didn’t speed up/get closer together from 9am- almost 5 pm (This was Wednesday now- I had been in labor for 36ish hours at this point).. We had a birthing room and I moved from the tub, shower, bed, chair and back all day long.
At 4:45pm, my husband and I were the only ones in the room. I was in the tub. I had a contraction and then the STRONGEST urge to push. I had no idea what to do and kind of held the first one in. I told Steve, he asked if he should go get everyone- I said no, haha. He convinced me that we should. Little did I know, they had been out in the kitchen discussing how they were going to get me to progress- because it seemed like nothing was happening! They came back into the room and allowed me to do my thing. My contractions were still pretty far apart at this point, I had lots of time to rest in between pushes. I ended up pushing for an hour and a half and at 6:22, in one swift push (literally her whole little body came out at once, none of that in and out stuff) she was born in the bathtub. Her cord was wrapped twice around her neck. The midwives unwrapped it, I sobbed and we didn’t even look at what gender she was for probably 3 minutes. It was literally the most magical experience of my life.
In hindsight, the cord being wrapped explained my super slow moving labor and why my contractions never really sped up or made much sense as far as showing how far along I was. Her little body needed time to re-oxygenate after each contraction, and my body allowed time for that with the space between each contraction. How amazing is that? We were able to go home just four hours after she was born and it was so perfect to spend our first night in our home. Despite having not had any real sleep since 3 nights prior, I was on an extreme high and didn’t even go to bed when we got home.
What was your favorite part of your birth story?