BabyOhm

We found out that we were going to have a baby in mid October after trying to conceive for 4 months.  We were as prepared as we could be with all our research done and having decided that an out of hospital birth was the safest option for our baby.   We wanted a natural birth and we knew that this would be a sensitive time in our lives and we did not want to be pressured by a hospital with their own standard of procedure.  I also felt that if I was gonna do this without drugs, I needed drugs to not even be available.   When the time came though, I never wanted them.  Maybe I had prepared myself well enough and I had heard the horror stories about how most women ask for them at some point, but that was simply not the case for me.  I never even thought about it once in 18 hours of labor.  I say this only because as women we have all heard how awful this experience is, how some people even commented that they thought they were gonna die.  Awful is just a word I would never use for this empowering experience, but let me go back further….

It was 12:30 on March 8th, the one day I knew Apollo wouldn’t be coming since it was his due date and no babies are actually born on their due date! Steve and I were trying to decide what we were going to do with our lazy Sunday; Steve just got off the phone with his Uncle Steve, who told him that he saw something on National Geographic about a tribe of women who just start pushing down on a pregnant woman’s belly to get things going. I told him we would not be trying that, instead he gave me a great big hug. During the hug I felt like I wet myself… after standing there for a second I told Steve what I felt and went to the bathroom. When I first sat down I heard something drain into the toilet, but when I waited for more and gently pushed, nothing more came out. So, I got on my hands and knees on the bathroom floor and did some pelvic rocking, hoping it would encourage a little more drainage, but nothing happened. I told Steve I was going to lay down for 10 minutes and then when I get up, there would be more water, so we would know it was for sure my bag of water that broke. After 10 minutes of anxiously lying down, I got up and felt nothing, so Steve and I got ready to take a walk. On the way out the door, I had a gush of fluid come out and I had no doubt anymore that my bag of water had broken.