It's been 7 weeks since Lena was born and I am just now updating my xanga, but I wanted to post about our homebirth experience since many of you were curious how it went. I loved it! I loved everything about it and would highly recommend it to anyone interested! Here's how it all went down: 8/26/08 12:45 am - I awake to a weird sensation. I tell Andy that I think my water broke! Sure enough it had, but I wasn't experiencing any contractions. This throws us both for a loop because we were expecting my labor to progress similarly to Elaine's, during which my water didn't break until just before pushing. I call the doctor and he asks a few questions and then tells me to try and get some rest. If contractions haven't started up by the morning I can come by the office to be checked out. 8/26/08 1:45 am - I have done all the straightening around the house that I feel is absolutely necessary for me to feel comfortable to have guests and have laid down in bed to try and sleep. However, wouldn't you know it, contractions have started up and I am not able to sleep through them. 8/26/08 7:00 am - The contractions have been frequent and intense enough to warrant calling the doctor. He says he'll send the nurse over to check me out and will prepare to head over himself. He expects labor to progress quickly since this is my second birth and my water broke to start things off. However, wouldn't you know it, as soon as I get off the phone with him, my contractions dissipate into nothing. 8/26/08 8:00 am - The nurse, Ginger, arrives and gives me a check. She confirms my water truly did break and that I am progressing in dilation (1.5cm) and effacement (85%). She hangs around for about an hour completing some paperwork and monitoring my vitals, however, with no regular or intense contractions, we decide she should go home until the action really picks up. She only lives 5 minutes away, so I am supposed to call her when the contractions are about 8 minutes apart again. She tells me to feel free to go about my normal daily activities. 8/26/08 4:00 pm - Contractions were off and on all morning. I did tons of laundry, continued to eat regular meals and just hung out with Andy, Elaine and my mom who had arrived to take care of Elaine during the delivery. Finally they began to progress in frequency and intensity. I called Ginger. After she arrived and checked everything out again, we sat down to a big dinner of lasagna that Andy had prepared that afternoon. 8/27/08 12:00 am - I spent the first part of the evening going over baby names with Andy and watching some of the Cubs game. But as the evening wore on, the contractions were too intense for me to be content with any of that. I spent nearly all my time on my feet, leaning against a desk and rocking back and forth through contractions. Andy would press against my lower back to help me through each contraction. I found I was most comfortable laboring on my feet and I felt like it was helping things progress since I was also working with gravity. By midnight I had progressed to 5.5 cm, so we called Dr. Zumhagen to have him head over. However, wouldn't you know it, the contractions slowed down in frequency, but not in intensity after we called! At this point I had been awake for nearly 24 hours and was ready to be done with the whole thing. I just wanted to sleep so badly. I knew that if I didn't get some rest, I wouldn't have any energy for delivery, so I laid down on the bed and was able to manage some rest and maybe even a little sleep between contractions. Andy was out cold next to me, Ginger fell asleep on the love seat, Dr. Zumhagen on the couch and my mom slept on the floor. Elaine had already been put to bed. 8/27/08 4:00 am - I had spent the last 4 hours in hard labor and was ready to been done. I was feeling ready to push with each contraction, so I woke everyone up and we set up for delivery! I had always envisioned delivering the baby in squatting position, just since I would be able to do something different since I was at home, and that position seemed the most efficient in terms of working with gravity. However, I was already in bed and still pretty tuckered out, so that is where we stayed. The bed had already been waterproofed, so Ginger just put down a couple chux pads and that was all that was necessary. It really wasn't half as messy as I thought it would be and everything cleaned up just fine. 8/27/08 5:00 am - After an hour of pushing, a baby girl was born!!! Hooray!! It truly is one of the best feelings in the world, when your baby has been delivered. You just feel SO relieved to be done with it all, the pain is gone, and there is your precious little one. As they let her cord stop pulsing and clamped it, they laid her directly on my chest. And that is where she stayed for about the next hour while they wrapped things up with her an me. She wasn't cleaned up at all, so she was completely covered in the gooey vernix. After I delivered the placenta, about 15 min later, Andy cut her cord. Dr. Zumhagen proclaimed "Ah hah!" when he got a look at my placenta. Apparently, it was an odd shape. He said in 22 years of practice, he had never seen a placenta that looked like mine. He said when labors don't progress normally, like mine hadn't, often times it is due to the placenta. Mine was perfectly healthy, however, due to its shape, my body must have known that it couldn't support a normal labor. After they were satisfied everything was fine with me, they took the baby to weigh her. They do it by wrapping her in a blanket and holding her up with this counter weight thing (see the picture). She was 7 lb 6 oz and 21 inches long. Elaine woke up around 5:20 am and Andy brought her in to meet her new baby sister; she was excited!!        
8/27/08 6:30 am - They help me out of bed and move me to a rocking chair to sit and nurse. My mom fixed breakfast and we all sat down to eat. Dr. Z prayed for the meal. After breakfast I went back to bed to get some sleep with Lena. Dr. Z stayed for another hour or two and Ginger stayed for about an hour after Dr. Z left, just to make sure everything was ok. Then Ginger came back once a day for about an hour or two for the next 3 days just to check on Lena and me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So I loved the home birth because it was SO peaceful and comfortable. It was so nice to be able to be up and on my feet the whole time and to have the comforts of home to help me through the pain. It was also SO nice to be allowed to eat and drink. Allowed is probably the incorrect word. Strongly encouraged is more like it. They wanted me to continue to eat to keep up my energy. Dr. Z even had me drink apple juice while I was pushing to give me an extra burst of energy. I also loved that I didn't feel like I was on some kind of time clock. If I had been with a typical practice and at the hospital, they probably would have wanted the baby delivered within 24 hours of my water breaking. Dr. Z said that of my two deliveries, this definitely was the one to have at home, because of the interventions I would have faced at the hospital. Since my labor didn't progress normally, I probably would have been on pitocin and who knows what could have happened after that. But just allowing everything to progress naturally, on God's timing, was so amazing. God truly is good and watched over us all during the whole thing.     
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