Members

As a member you'll be able to receive and send messages, keep your own photobook, agenda, ask questions, participate in the chat, and make new friends. All is free and you don't need email.
Sign up (free & anonymous)

Name: Password:

---

Activity
• Now online | Member search | New members | Comment Spy
• New blogs & Questions | Recently updated profiles
• New photos: Pregnancy | Babies | Bellies | Ultrasound | Member pages
• Latest comments: Forums | Week by week | Baby development

Isaac Bradley Sex: boy Born: 12 June, 2009 Age: 2 years & 248 days Birthday in: 117 days Starsign: Gemini Development: See the 32 months page. Biggest achievement so far: -

I was due June 16 and gave birth on June 12. This is my birth story. I woke up on Thursday, June 11 with mild menstrual like cramping. This is my first so I have know idea what labor feels like. I was still working, so I got up and got ready to go. I was working 4 days for 9 hours and 1 day for 4 hours. I have a very flexible employer and needed to work 9.5 hours to only have to work 8 hours on Friday, so that's what I did. I noticed that the cramping was coming and going, but I wasn't in severe pain and it seemed to coincide with standing up. I got home and my husband asked if I had been timing them. This honestly hadn't even crossed my mind. We started trying to time them while I cooked dinner. I guess must have been sending out the labor vibe because we would start timing and someone would call aqnd ask how I was doing. We even had a neighbor stop by with a question at one point. We finally got a few timed around dinner time and holy cow they were 5-7 minutes apart and about 45 seconds long. I was in labor! I called my midwife to tell her. She quickly dashed my hopes though. She said it sounded like I was in false labor and to take a bath, try to get some rest, and drink some water, and the contractions would probably slow and go away. I did as I was told. I laid down in our chair and a half with my husband and started watching the 10 o'clock news. At about 10:15, I felt a really weird movement during a cramp and didn't know what it was at first. Then, holy cow, I realized it was my water breaking! Somehow, I'm still not sure how, I managed to get up and off the chair in time to make a mess on our hardwood instead of the furniture. False labor! I think not! I called the midwife again. She assured me I still had a while to go even though my water had broken and to try to labor at home as long as I could because I would be more comfortable there. So once again I at least tried to do as she said. Then I started getting what I would actually call contractions. Oh my, did those ever hurt! I started feeling nauseous and told my husband to call her back. He did, and she asked to talk to me. I told him I wasn't going to. I was under no circumstances giving her the opportunity to tell me to wait before coming to the birth center. She told my husband to meet her at the center at midnight. I only had to tough it out about 30 more minutes before I was somewhere I considered safe to give birth. We loaded up and left. We pulled in at the same time as the midwife and after the contraction passed I got out and went in. She checked me once I got to the room and discovered that I was between 7 and 8 centimeters. I'm so glad I pushed to get to the birth center. Then a funny thing happened, I relaxed. She put my in the shower on a birth ball so I could run water over my belly to help with the pain. When I got tired of doing that, I got into bed to labor for a while. Once I laid down, I started drifting off in between contractions. My labor started to slow. She encouraged me to get up and walk. I did a little...about two to three laps between the bed post at the foot of the bed before I got tired and wanted to lay down again. Finally she threatened me with stalled labor and a trip to the hospital if I didn't do something. She recommended if I didn't like walking to try to stand in the shower and let the water hit me on the chest. I did that. During contractions I turned around and let it hit me in the back to help with pain. After about 30 minutes I decided I wanted to push and sent my husband to go get her to check me. She told me to wait another 15 minutes and she would check me. I did, and it was the longest 15 minutes of my life. When she checked me I was fully dilated except for a little bit of a swollen lip on the top of my cervix. She said next contraction push a little and we'd see what happened. If I could get the babies head past the lip then we would go ahead and keep pushing. I never was told how wonderful pushing feels. I love pushing! Anyhow, as it turned out I was able to get the head past the cervix and we were in business. This was a little past 4 o'clock in the morning. I was in the bed again and I fell into my routine. I started sleeping again between contractions. I would feel a contraction coming on, wake up, and push and promptly fall back to sleep. Toward the end both of our phones started ringing where we had notified a few people I was in labor. It was the only time I threatened my husband. Needless to say the phones were turned off. I did this for about 1 hour and 45 minutes before he started to crown and there was no relief from the pain. I didn't matter though because about 15 minutes later, the baby was born. While i was pregnant we decided to wait to find out, so when he was born the midwife told my husband to tell me what we had. It took him forever to tell me. I think he was so overwhelmed and tired that he couldn't process what was going on. Finally I found out though that we had a boy! He is perfect and I am in love!

---

Caroline Rose Sex: girl Born: 11 July, 2011 Age: 0 years & 219 days Birthday in: 146 days Starsign: Cancer Development: See the 7 months page. Biggest achievement so far: -

I was due July 2 and gave birth on July 11. This is Caroline's birth story. On Sunday, July 10 after dinner I started to feel something that could be contractions. I honestly think by 8 days past due that it wasn't going to happen on its own, so I mentioned them to Seth and then basically dismissed them and told him to do the same. I went to bed because I was tired and we had an early appointment at the birth center to make sure everything was looking okay. Well, I woke up at 4:00am and the contractions were gone. I thought, "Yep, what I figured." Then about 30 minutes later the contractions came back and I knew we were going to have a Monday baby. I just sort of laid there and waited for Isaac to wake up so I could soothe him back to sleep before getting up myself to help the contractions along. Sleeping was out the window at this point. I was too excited. Isaac woke around 5:00 and I sent Seth to go get him. When he got back in the room I told him we were having a baby and to try to get some more rest because it could be a long day. He did and thankfully Isaac fell back to sleep fairly quickly. By about 5:15 I was able to get up and take care of myself. Once I stood up the contractions really picked up in both frequency and intensity. I drew myself a bath. I started timing and as best I could tell they were about 5 minutes apart. I thought I'll let everyone sleep till 600 and then I'll wake them. That's what I did. Seth went downstairs to wake his mother and I called the midwife to explain what I was feeling. I fully expected her to put me off like they did with Isaac. She didn't and I could sense an urgency in her voice that startled me. THe plan was to meet at 700 at the center. I told Seth what the plan was and we both got ourselves ready to go. My mother in law was instructed to stay with Isaac and we would call when we knew more. By the time we walked out the door I was moving kind of slow because the contractions were about 2 minutes apart. We got to the center around 715 and went in. Peggy was my midwife for the day. She checked me and I was already between 8-9 cm and very soft. I think she was shocked and started busying herself getting ready, calling the nurse and such. She asked if I wanted the tub and I said no, if we are this close I'll just do it on dry land. By this time the intensity was really up there. About an hour went by and she checked me again and told me I could push whenever I felt like it. At the next contraction I tried out pushing. To my dismay this increased my back pain ten fold, so I started only half heartedly pushing while Seth applied counterpressure on my back and hips. For the next hour to hour and a half we tried various techniques to relieve the pain and help Caroline come on down. She made me go pee and lean over a birth ball and lay on my side and she broke my water. Then she suggested the birth stool. I had made so much fun of this stool that I really didn't want to use it. Finally after about three more contractions and failed attempts to get her to push further down the birth canal I agreed to try it. She got it all sit up and her, the nurse and Seth helped me get on it. No sooner then I got lowered into position, Caroline dropped out of the birth canal and started to crown. I started screaming, "She's crowning, she's crowning!" Peggy had took gloves off to help me onto the stool started scrampbling to get gloves on. She told me "You're going to make me catch this baby without gloves." She finally got them on and reached out to help and then I screamed at her again, "Don't touch me!" So unlike me but so absolutely instincual. I apologized immediately and she told me not to worry about it. I have no idea if I even had to push anymore or if she came out on her own, but Peggy caught her at 1014am. It was so different than my first labor and delivery but just as beautiful. I will honestly say though I'm glad I labored with Isaac first and Caroline second because I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to go natural after this delivery.

---