Friday, September 6th
I was 38 weeks and 5 days. I had a midwife appointment that morning and prenatal yoga. The last week of August I was FULL of energy. I exercised everyday. I cleaned my house from floor to ceiling. I went all over Yokohama. I was on fire! The week of September 6th, I was dead. I was so tired every waking moment. I fell asleep 3 times during my last prenatal yoga class. I forced myself to walk, but I was exhausted doing it. Around 10pm on the 6th, I sent out an e-mail to my doula just letting her know that I was losing my mucus plug. We both knew that, that didn't mean much. I clicked send. Stood up. Looked at Kev and said, "Oh my gosh, I am peeing my pants!" He then asked if I thought my water had broken. I reassured him that I didn't think so and ran to the toilet. Sure enough... the second I sat down water gushed out. I immediately started shaking (I hate that my body does that... shaking, for some reason, is a typical response).
We called our doula. We called the midwife. We called our friends, Jill and Sam. Sam made his way over to our house to give us a ride to the maternity clinic. We were so thankful for this because it's a 45 minute train ride to get there from our apartment. We got to the clinic around 11:30. I was not having any contractions. The midwife told us to get some rest.
Kev laid his futon on the floor and fell asleep around midnight. About 12:30, I had my first contraction. The contractions confused me though because they never felt like they were at the top of my uterus. The only place I felt my contractions was in my lower abdomen and pelvis. I started to time them, and they were all over the place. 2 minutes long. 5 minutes apart. 1 minute long. 1 minute apart. 1 minute 45 seconds long. 8 minutes apart. It continued that way for the next 2 hours. The only thing that changed was the intensity. Each contraction got more and more difficult. I started talking to myself and just repeating "Relax. Relax Stephanie. Relax." It may sound stupid, but if I didn't say it, I would have either panicked or cried because it hurt.
Around 2 am, my contractions were hurting so much that I woke Kev up. From here on out everything gets a little blurry for me. We didn't really know what to do. Should we wake the midwife? Should we call Sara (our doula)? We were under the impression that we had hours and hours of this left, so we were really hesitant to make people wake up too early. Within a half hour I was convinced that we needed to wake people up. I needed Sara in that room because I needed to hear her tell me that this was normal and that I was not dying.
I didn't think labor was going to be easy, but I honestly didn't know it was going to hurt like that.
When Sara got to the clinic, I got on the exercise ball. Kev stood in front of me and I held onto his elbows. With each contraction, he counted for me. His counting was my focal point. During one contraction, he changed his counting to singing. We had talked about how I might like to hear that during labor. I didn't. I started rapidly patting his chest as if telling him to stop. I have no idea what time it was at that point, but I remember that I no longer had a rest between contractions. They just kept coming. A couple times, I couldn't get my body to relax, and I panicked. A little piece of advice: If you are going to do a natural labor, DON'T PANIC! It made the contractions a thousand times worse. I learned quickly that the only way I was going to get through this was to stay as relaxed as possible and to let my body do what it was trying to do.
At some point, I got off the exercise ball. I was on my knees hanging over my bed, and my body was shaking profusely. No one seemed to notice but me though. Kev would push down on my lower back and that helped me so much to keep my focus and stop shaking. Out of no where I had this uncontrollable urge to push, and I couldn't stop. That part really scared me. I didn't know what time it was, but I did know that it was still dark out. It was WAY too early for me to be pushing. In my mind, I still had at least another 10 hours of labor to go through. I was terrified that I was going to tear and tear badly. This was also about the time when I first noticed the midwife in the room. She checked me and told me to push when I felt the urge. I was under the impression that she would tell me how dilated I was, but she never did. In fact, I went the entire labor without knowing anything about dilation or effacing, I only knew what my body was telling me to do.
The pushing phase had it's ups and downs. My body was now giving me a long break between the urges to push, but the actually pushing hurt like no other. I remember crying, but no tears coming out. I remember saying over and over, "I can't do this!" I remember praying and praying and praying for God to be my strength. I don't know how long I pushed on my knees, but eventually the midwife asked if I wanted to go and try to push on the toilet. She said the gravity would help the baby drop down.
So off I went to the toilet. The midwife (in true Japanese fashion) squatted beside me with her hand underneath me the entire time I was on the toilet (at least an hour). Kevin stood beside me and with each urge I grabbed ahold of his hips and pushed for dear life. I looked up during a resting phase and noticed there was a clock above me. It was around 6am. After a while, I needed to change positions so I went back to the bed. Kevin propped up some pillows and got behind me. I started pushing from a semi-reclined position. I remember Sara telling me she could see his head. I remember saying, "No. No. No. I can't do this." Luke was crowning and this was by far the most painful part of the entire process. I pushed a few times. Sara held a mirror for Kevin to watch as he was born. The midwife told me to stop pushing. I am not sure if I did stop or not, but within moments Luke's head was out. He came out screaming before the rest of his body was delivered. They plopped him on my chest. A few minutes later he was already latched on and nursing. The midwife held up my placenta like a I had just won a trophy. I about gagged! Extra organs are not my thing.
The cord stopped pulsing and they clamped it. Kevin got to cut it and within moments Luke had peed and pooped on me! I could not stop laughing.
I do not want to discourage anyone from having a baby or having a natural birth; however, that was the most intense and excruciating pain I have ever been through. The pain won't keep me from having another baby, but it will definitely help me to wait. Overall, Luke's birth was everything I had hoped for. The whole environment was calm, peaceful, and quiet. No interventions were necessary. I did tear a little. It was not enough for stitches, so they put clip on me (yes, it hurt just as bad as it sounds). My pelvis is rightly proportioned, and our baby was no where near 10 pounds. Luke was born on September 7th at 6:58 am. He weighed 3704 grams (8 pounds 2 ounces) and was just shy of 20 inches long. From my water breaking to birth, labor lasted almost 9 hours. Only 6.5 if you start counting from the first contraction.
I cannot stop singing God's praises for the way he worked everything out. I was blessed with a sweet, bilingual, supportive doula. My husband was able to be with me the entire time. He was my constant during labor, and I truly do not think I could have gone through it all without him. My midwife was calm and easy-going the entire process. She let me labor "freestyle" as she likes to say it. Everything was simply peaceful in one of the most painful experiences of my life.
It's now two weeks after Luke's birthday. He is doing awesome! I cannot believe God entrusted us with this little man. In all honesty, I now hardly remember how painful the whole ordeal was. The recovery process is a bit of a drag. In all my studying, I never read anything about how long recovery takes or what you should or shouldn't do. I still have a baby pooch and I am darn proud of it! It's a reminder to me that pregnancy, labor and delivery are no small feat (natural or otherwise). I don't feel like superwoman, and I don't feel like doing this labor thing naturally one-ups anyone. I do, however, feel like I trusted God to guide and direct me in the ways that were best and wise for me and my family.
Here are a couple PG rated photos...
