Saturday was the longest day of my life. I continued to have ctx 5-7 minutes apart all day long, and it was exhausting; they were just painful enough to make me miserably uncomfortable. Jim wanted to stay home from work (he works 4-midnight), but I made him go. He only works 5 minutes from home (literally), and the only thing he was going to do if he stayed home was get on my nerves LOL. My mom was there, so I figured I'd be fine... plus, he'd have something to do to keep busy.
By around 7pm I was starting to get anxious, since I'd been contracting for so long with very little change in frequency or intensity. My midwife was the one on call, so I gave her a ring; she told me she thought that things were fine, and it was just taking my body a little longer to get to where it needed to be, but if it would make me feel better and ease my anxiety, I should come in and she'd check things out and put a monitor on me for a bit, just to "make sure." Talking to her was enough to help me chill, so I decided not to go in at that point; ctx were still only every 5-7 minutes, and while they'd gotten more painful, they still weren't anything I couldn't walk/talk/interact through.
We put Gabe to bed (my mom did all the hard parts---I just rocked him to sleep), and then I sat on the couch and crocheted while we watched It's Complicated (freaking hysterical, btw!!). By the end of the movie, my ctx had gotten to be about 5 minutes apart, and the way I was feeling them had changed---they'd gotten intense enough that I needed to consciously make an effort to relax through them, and instead of feeling them as "cramps" in my abdomen, the focus of the pain had moved into my hips, and was radiating down the outside of my thighs. (That was exactly how I felt my active labor ctx with Gabe.)
It was around 10:30 by then, and I wanted to wait for Jim to end his shift and come home on his own, rather than calling him. My mom, however, thought I needed to call him to come home then, since I needed to stop and relax and I couldn't really talk or continue what I was doing (I was still crocheting) through my contractions. When she threatened to call 911 if I didn't call Jim (I am pretty sure she was only joking....), I gave in and called him, and then my midwife. Jim was home and taking a quick shower by the time my midwife called me back, and she told me she'd see me when I got to the hospital (we only live about 10 minutes away if traffic is good). By 11:15 we were out the door.
The trip to the hospital was pretty uneventful (only 2 ctx on the way there). My midwife was waiting for me, along with what I think must be the best L&D nurse ever to draw breath---seriously, the two of them were amazing. I was 5cm and 90% when she did her exam, and my contractions had gotten a lot more intense and closer together in a pretty short time, so I was admitted at 11:50pm. They had me on the monitor for 20 minutes to get a baseline on the baby (he was doing fantastic), and then unhooked me so I could get up and move around. I didn't even get an IV---she said if I pushed fluids orally I shouldn't need one, so I made a point of taking a drink after every contraction, and I chewed ice the rest of the time. (OMG, hospital ice is the BEST EVER LOL!!)
I ended up back in bed fairly quickly, because I couldn't find a position I could really relax through my contractions in when I was up and moving, and that was making them hard to cope with; it was almost like I was struggling against the contractions instead of working with them. I found the best position for me to labor in was almost completely upright in bed, sitting tailor-style; it was really easy for me to relax through my contractions that way, and unlike with Gabe's labor, I didn't even once think that I wouldn't be able to do it without pain meds. My midwife and/or my nurse were with me the whole time, and the whole atmosphere was very calm and quiet and supportive. Jim was fantastic, and was everything I needed him to be.
The next time my mw checked me (at my request), I was 8cm; she gave me the option of having her make just a small tear in my bag of waters because she could feel a pretty good sized cushion of fluid between the baby's head and my cervix, and she thought that might be why it was taking me so long to dilate the last little bit I needed to. I agreed, and she made 2 attempts to do so; unfortunately, the membrane was too tough to make the small tear she was hoping for. We talked about it, and decided to break my water for real.
Because of how fast Gabe came when the stupid resident broke my water with him, everything was already set up and ready to go. She did it with a contraction, and asked me to push down very gently with the contraction, to help make the membrane tight; when the bag popped, fluid gushed EVERYWHERE (my poor mw was soaked from the shoulders down), and his head came down the rest of the way immediately. I dilated to 9 with only a lip of cervix on one side with my next contraction. Things went pretty fast after that---she eased back that last lip of cervix with my next contraction (holy hell, did that hurt), and told me I could push when I was ready. Jim held one of my legs and the nurse held the other, and I started pushing with my next contraction.
With the exception of the nurse waiting to take Luke when he was born, the only people in the room were Jim, my midwife, the nurse, and me. Everything was so calm and relaxed, and very peaceful; the light was dim, and I felt very in charge of what was happening. The baby crowned with that first push, and I had his head out almost without really trying. The hard part was blowing through a contraction with his head out, before the shoulders delivered; there was meconium in the amniotic fluid, and they needed to suction his nose and mouth pretty vigorously just in case. Once that was done, one more good push and he was out: Lucas Nathaniel Deeck was born at 2:55am on November 14th.
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