Early in the morning on March 6th, I woke up feeling some cramping. I tried not to get excited as I had been having these cramps happen here and there for the last week or so. The cramps continued for a couple of hours, but when I got up and out of bed around 7 am to make breakfast, they stopped. I told my husband to go to work as normal, and if anything started back up again, I would call.
Around 11:20 am, as I was about to start getting ready for my weekly check-up with our midwives, I felt one huge surge that felt like it came out of nowhere. I called our midwives to let them know and asked if I should make the drive to the appointment. Ultimately, we decided to go to the appointment. We had a nice check-up; the baby’s heart rate sounded great, and then I headed home.
At about 4 pm, the cramps came back, but initially, I didn’t think much of them because, again, these light surges kept happening on and off. My husband called me around 5 pm to tell me he was on his way home from work, so I started to cook dinner for us. My surges continued all through dinner, and while my husband cleaned up, I decided to get on my knees while hugging a birthing ball.
Eventually, we decided to head downstairs to our bedroom. I laid down and listened to the rainbow meditation while Steven started to time a few surges. The surges at that time were about 5 1/2-6 minutes apart. At that point, we decided to call our midwives at Thrive and our Doula Candice to let them know what was going on.
After talking with Candice, I decided to hop in the shower to try to relax. Steven put on the hypnobirthing affirmations track, and I listened to that while in the shower for about 45 minutes.
My surges started to feel as though they were intensifying after the shower, so I took Candice’s advice and put on the rainbow relaxation meditation and straddled the toilet with a pillow on the back of it so I could rest between surges. This ended up being one of the most comfortable positions during this time. I started to feel a lot of pressure towards my tailbone, so we decided to call our midwives again. While on the phone with them, my water broke! She listened through a few surges and told us to consider taking a bath and trying to relax because it could still be a while.
Steven drew me a bath and helped me from our room into our guest room bathroom where the tub was. As soon as I got in, I felt so uncomfortable. I tried to stay in the bath for a few surges, but after about 15 minutes, I told Steven I had to get up because something didn’t feel right; I was so uncomfortable. He helped me out of the tub between surges, and while I tried to dry off, he ran to the kitchen to refill my water.
As he was running upstairs to the kitchen, I felt the baby starting to descend and crown. I yelled as loud as I could for Steven to come back. When he arrived, I looked at him and said, “The baby is coming!” He didn’t believe me, and I said, “No, really, the baby is coming.” The baby didn’t crown for very long, and the “ring of fire” everyone talks about I never felt. What I did experience was truly amazing: the expulsive reflex, because in no more than two surges, Steven was catching Wyatt. Steven put him in my arms, and Wyatt immediately started making noises and moving around; he was perfect. 💙 Steven called the midwives and Candice right away to let them know the baby had arrived! Wyatt was born on March 7th at 12:15 am.
We made our way back into our bedroom and into bed, where we waited for everyone to arrive.
