Baby Kate is finally born!!!

Vital stats

• Catharina, we will call her Kate
• born March 25, 1999 at 3:06pm EST
• 8 lbs 4 oz
• home water birth, this time attended by our midwives (last 2 births were unplanned unattended :-)
• siblings attended the birth!

When I went to bed, they were about every 3 to 5 minutes. After lying down for a while, they tapered off again to every 5 to 7 minutes or so, sometimes even longer. They still were quite strong, but I did manage to fall asleep. Got woken up by Tara around 3am, needed to lay down in her bed for a while, squished between the girls. I still had contractions and it was harder to deal with them this way. So when they were both asleep again, I went back to my own bed with Sander and did fall asleep, although it wasn't easy.

I woke up around 6:45am and the contractions were rather strong and every 3 to 5 minutes. But not too strong yet and they lasted only 45 seconds. But based on my other labors, I decided to take a shower, while Sander called one of the midwives. One of them arrived very soon, before 8am! The other one arrived shortly thereafter. I guess they were afraid that I would have another quick labor, just like the other times. Well, the moment they arrived, my contractions stopped for a while, but they did pick up again. Still, it was different with more people there. I think this part of labor would have gone much faster if it had been just Sander and me again.

Ellen, who was going to take care of our kids during labor, arrived. Also the kids woke up one by one, so we had quite some people there. On the one hand, it was nice to have the companionship, on the other hand, it was hard to let go and let the labor do its work. Still, the contractions were strong, but I could easily breathe and talk through them.

I had an internal and turned out to be at 6cm already. And very stretchy, she could easily stretch it to 8cm. Not bad, since I hadn't have any bad contractions yet. I hoped this was a sign that this was going to be an easy labor.

More and more contractions, more and more distractions :-) and around noon I decided to go upstairs and see whether things would pick up more without all the people around. The midwives and Sander accompanied me, Ellen stayed downstairs with the kids and our new 101 Dalmatians video to keep them occupied. I asked for another internal (could as well use the midwives now we had an attended birth for a change :-) I now was at a good 8cm and just a little stretchy cervix left. So we figured it wouldn't be too long. Sander started filling the birthing tub (we used the see-through inflatable kids tub with the fish on it)

Labor seemed to be picking up more, and around 1pm, I went into the tub. That really got the contractions going and soon I started to need vocalizing to get through them. Still I felt that I could handle them very well and it couldn't take too long any more. I felt that the contractions got a more bearing down component, not really pushing yet. But nothing exciting happened.

I got really relaxed in between contractions and I actually almost fell asleep in between. But labor felt slow and not going any where. I think things changed about 2.45pm. Now contractions were definitely pushy, but the pushing did not seem to do anything. The midwife checked and there was a little lip of cervix, that she did move out of the way during a contraction. But pushing did not seem to go anywhere. The baby was not moving down. Things started to get very painful and frustrating and I started to lose it. The midwife checked the heartbeat very often, I later found out that they thought she might have a short cord, since she just wasn't budging.

Now things really got out of hand! Instead of the nice vocalizing, I started screaming and thrashing. And I felt that it just didn't happen and that it was not going to work this time! I lost it BIG TIME! Still, the baby was not moving, I tried different positions, but most of the time I just was too overwhelmed and felt things were not going right and I wanted to get away of the pain, but there was nowhere to go! I was extremely LOUD, I still have a sore throat!...

Finally, the baby started to come out when I was on my hands and my knees. I have a hard time remembering all the details, things were just so intense. The midwife felt for a cord around the neck and then I could push out the body. Instant relief! There was some grabbing from midwife and from Sander to get the baby out of the water and then I could lean back and admire our new baby! And find out that we had a girl again this time!

After a while, I got out of the tub to birth the placenta. It didn't want to come out though, so we decided to head off to the bed and see whether I could get Kate to nurse to get things moving. The placenta finally did come out, about 45 minutes after the birth. I lost quite some blood, but not excessively. Most of all, I was very glad it was over!

The midwives and Ellen stayed for a few hours and helped to clean everything up. I was just sitting in my bed, feeling kind of dazed by the whole experience. I still can't believe how hard the last part of labor was. I feel like I was in control the whole time and labor was moving along slowly, but steadily and then suddenly, it just didn't work any more! Very strange! We are still not sure what caused it to be so slow. My guess is that Kate wasn't positioned completely right, because she stayed up relatively high for a very long time. Then something must have happened and she was able to get out. I guess we will never know. But with the other babies, the pushing part was always the fastest and rather easy. I would push a few times and the baby would move down and be born. Not this time though!

Still, it was a good experience, with a happy ending and Kate is very cute. She isn't too interested in nursing yet, but has latched on a few times. I was glad we had the midwives there when things got so hard. And it was great to have Ellen to take care of the kids, so we could concentrate on the birth. At some point Jane had come up and was watching me in the tub. This started with just watching, but soon changed into splashing one finger, then one hand and then two hands. Then things detoriated from there and she almost fell in a few times :-) Very cute, but not really what we needed at that point. So Sander just carried her downstairs to Ellen and she was able to calm her down again. And I could concentrate on the labor again. She also kept the kids fed the whole day, so we didn't have to worry about that.  They did come in during the last part and I think it was kind of scary for the young ones, although they don't seem to be harmed by it. I hadn't expected to be screaming this much! But Tara was mostly talking about how the baby came out of mama's butt! 'Mama has a big butt, I have a little butt!' :-) The boys told me later they didn't like the screaming, but really liked it when Kate had come out and they could admire her. They thought it was kind of strange when only her head was out and not the rest of her body yet.

This birth was very different from the last two, but not less of a miracle!
 
 

Just born!	One day old

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