Emma Arrives, part 1
08 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Children are a Blessing, Family Life, Mothering
(As with any birth story, any men reading this are forewarned that descriptions may be more than what you wanted to hear.) 
My labor with Emma was different than with any of my other children.
This unnerved me quite a bit.
Because my other labors had followed almost exactly the same pattern, I was counting on this one to be predictably the same so I wouldn’t any cause for extra worry. Instead, things started out very differently. First of all, on Friday (Dec. 23rd) I started having contractions in a regular pattern (which was normal for me) along with other early labor symptoms. However, instead of progressing they stopped overnight.
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The next day (Saturday), they started back up again in the early evening and by this point, I was bleeding and had the early labor anxiousness that I usually get. Since bleeding in early labor had never happened to me before, I was sure that the time would be very soon. I called my parents to come and prepared the children to sleep in the carriage house for the night. By the time we got everyone settled in, it was near 10:00pm and the regular contractions were still going strong. I went to bed to get my rest.
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Sunday morning dawned with my still being pregnant. My contractions had petered out again, although I was still bleeding some. My midwife said that it could be due to my low-lying placenta, so she wanted to come out to my home and check me anyway. She found nothing “wrong”, so she just left me to wait for the labor to pick back up on its own.
Sunday night, the regular strong contractions started back up again in the late evening. However, by this point, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pack the children up again so we just went to bed.
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The same thing happened on Monday morning as it had on Sunday. Nothing. And so Monday passed by with periods of early labor symptoms, although the bleeding had stopped by then.
By Monday night, I was having even stronger regular contractions, but went to bed anyway. Are you getting tired of reading this yet? I was sure tired of the contractions!
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On Tuesday morning, I woke up around 4:30am when my water partially broke with strong contractions coming every 6 minutes. I waited until 6:00am to call Eileen, my midwife. Because I had always tested positive with Group B strep before, I knew that the chance of infection was higher if I didn’t deliver within 24 hours. She assured me that I would most likely deliver before then, so I shouldn’t worry.
I called my mom right after I spoke to Eileen and she got out of her bed and came right away.
I spent the entire day Tuesday in regular contractions that ranged from 6 to 10 minutes apart at various times during the day. I was getting very exhausted by this point from the regular contractions that did not seem to be progressing. All the time, I was losing amniotic fluid and had started bleeding again. I began to seriously worry about not actually being able to deliver “in time”.
I began to doubt our decision to have a home birth. I feared the unknown.
My train of thought went like this: If my labor didn’t progress within 24 hours, I would have to go to the hospital to get antibiotics. I was pretty sure that a hospital would not induce me, as I have had a previous c-section. I began remembering the horrible recovery process that I went through with the surgery, and I started to mildly freak out as I thought about going through that again. As the day went on, my worry took over my exhaustion, as I wanted to make the best choice for my baby and the best choice for me.
I didn’t like the feeling that I was in control of the decision to go into the hospital or not. It was my decision. What if I made a wrong choice? Dan encouraged me by reminding me that ultimately, God is sovereign over what happens. Times like these are the ones that we have the opportunity to really exercise faith.
My midwife and her student Heather came out around 8:30pm because they were pretty sure that it was time. We had sent the children to bed out in the carriage house (again) with Mom. By the time they arrived, I didn’t feel any more in labor than I had at 6:00am that morning. Eileen checked me and found that I was only 2 cm dilated. I convinced them that it wasn’t time yet and they turned around and went back home (which was an hour’s drive away).
As soon as they left the house, my contractions picked up in intensity and frequency, but I went to bed anyway.
This time I couldn’t sleep through the contractions.
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At 1:38am, I told Dan that I was going to call Eileen back because it couldn’t be much longer. The roads were icy and she didn’t arrive until 3:00am….
