My Birth Story: Part I

The birth experience is so intense, so beautiful, so emotional, so rich that it's difficult to describe...

In a nut shell: I had a natural birth, no epidural, no drugs, no injections and no stitches! So yeah, we were natural, and all the way...The labor was 12 hours, which is pretty good for a first time mother...

The night of the 16th of April,  my belly was humangous. It was so big that we took a picture to document the giantness. Have you seen anything like this?? Unbelievable how your body can stretch this much but what's more unbelievable is how it recovers so fastly after!

I cropped my head...Just in case...

And that dot you notice on top of my belly was his lovely feet

That night (I mean the morning of the 17th) at about 4AM, I lost my water. Now, I have been told that when you lose your water it's nothing, you barely feel it...Well, that was certainly not the case for me. I lost, liters, and liters of water..the floor, the bed, everywhere was completely wet, so wet that fearing it will stain the hardwood floors of our apartment, claude even before calling the taxi, started cleaning the floors. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or yell.

On our last appointment with Sarah (my midwife), Claude had taken some notes on when to call her: Contractions every 5 minutes-->call, water breaks but water is clean--> do not call, water breaks water is yellow or brown-->call. .

And yes, my water was yellow (so bébé had peed-we even brougth a sample in a jar, to show the yellowness to nurses who were pretty impressed by our scientific approach). So we called our midwife who told us to go to the hospital.

After waiting for half an hour for a taxi (yep, it got lost) and losing many more liters of water on the way, we finally reached the hospital. They put me in a room where my contractions and blueberry's heartbeat were being constantly monitored. And, we started waiting calmly for the contractions to be more regular. We were really trying to relax and sleep to get ready for the labor. We went to a café, listened to radio, and hynobirth relaxation files that I had brought with me (yes, I went to the hospital with my laptop). 

So on the 17th, at about 4 PMish, my contractions became more regular and close to every 5 minutes.  I was doing really fine so I didn't call my midwife  thinking I don't want to disturb her daily schedule (you're welcome Sarah).  Thanks to hynobirthing breathing techniques, I was breezing through my contractions and feeling like a champion.  But at about 6 PM, I called Sarah and asked her to come because I was confused and very tired already (I mean we had been at the hospital since 4 AM).

Then Sarah came when I was having fun on the birth ball and told us we should go to the nature room since I was technically in labor. Well, da nature room at the hospital looked like this, with every possible equipment you can imagine, pool, jacuzzi, birth ball, the chair with a little hole in it, ropes, cushions, everything.

Sorry it's such a bad picture, but you get the idea.

So we went to the nature room...