The Birth! Saturday morning, January 13 (eight days overdue), I did my grocery shopping. I really had been wanting to have that done before going into labor. So I was very happy that that part of my planning at least worked :-) Did lots of walking in the aisles, but to my surprise, nothing kept happening! This was supposed to start my contractions! I think I had a few measly, very weak contractions, but nothing strong or exciting. Bummer! This was not going as planned. But hey, maybe my body just waited for me to be home again before starting labor. I went home, cleaned and reorganized the refrigerator (can you say nesting? :-), put the groceries away and did some more nesting. All the while convinced that the contractions would start soon. They didn't! I had invited my friend Catherine for the birth, but since she is 4.5 hours away, it was hard to determine when to let her come over. I still felt things would happen that day though, so I had asked her to come. She arrived around 3pm, wondering what she would walk into. I greeted her by telling nothing was happening. So we did some cleaning up and some more nesting, it was nice to have company doing it. Once in while, I could announce that I had a contraction, but they were very spaced out and not that strong. Not very impressive! Time passed and house got cleaner and nicer. It was later and later and my new hope was that I would go into labor when the house was quiet and have the baby that night. Couldn't have Catherine here and not give birth :-) This time I finally seemed to be right. It was 11:30pm and I tried to nurse Kate to sleep. Very unsuccessfully, because that immediately kicked in labor. Went from basically nothing to STRONG contractions every 2 minutes! So strong, that I had to vocalize through them, and there was no way I could get Kate to sleep this way. So I went downstairs again, popped in a video and hoped that would entertain the girls, while I could time some contractions and see whether they went on or whether they stopped again now that I had stopped nursing. I still didn't really trust it. They had stopped again last night too, and I was afraid they would do so again. I was unsure about calling the midwife, didn't want to call her in the middle of the night just to have her be here for an hour while the contractions petered out. Around midnight I decided that maybe I should call her anyway, since they felt definitely real and not likely to stop. It would be nice to have her come over and check me to get an idea of where I was. I figured that if I turned out to be 2 cm, it might not be for real yet, but if I was like 8 cm, this was it! My guess was that I would be around 6 cm when she arrived. So I called her, told her I was having strong contractions 2 minutes apart and asked her to come over. She asked me whether she should call the other midwife yet, but I said to come over by herself first and check me and then we could decide on the other midwife. I figured I would wait till after that check before calling Dale too, my friend who was going to take care of the kids during labor. After about 10 minutes, I decided to call Dale anyway, since things were going so strongly, that I couldn't imagine those contractions stopping again. Asked her to come over, which she did, and she was here before the midwife. Still having contractions every 2 minutes, vocalizing through each one of them. The vocalizing worked great. No pain at all, as long as I vocalized. I also made sure to relax through the contractions and worked on 'untensing' every part of my body which felt tense, like my face and my hands sometimes. The combination of relaxing and vocalizing made the contractions totally painless. Very intense though! Around 12:30, the midwife arrived. I asked her to check me, which she did. I was at 8 cm already!!! Yes, I was going to have a baby soon! She also took my blood pressure and checked the baby's heart tones. Kate helped her :-) She called the other midwife and asked her to come over too. By this time, my older girls had finally fallen asleep in front of the video, but Kate was still running around. She had fun while the birthing pool was being set up, she loved all the action! I think she considered this much better than our usual very boring nights! It was really party time for her. Catherine, Sander and the midwife had been working on setting up the birthing pool and filling it. After a while, it was filled and I could get in. It was nice! The water helped with the contractions, and I hoped the birth would be soon now. Still took a while though, this part was slower than I had expected. Dale woke up Cees and Tim and tried to wake up Tara. Cees and Tim woke up fine after a while, but Tara didn't. They put her in the birthing room, sleeping on a pillow, and we kept trying to wake her up, but she was just sleeping so deeply. The midwife said that she would wake up if she was supposed to see the birth. Kate had finally fallen asleep on Sander's lap around 2am. Before that, she had really enjoyed running around the pool and saying 'Hi mama!' and pointing out all my body parts which were in the water :-) After a while the contractions got more pushy, not really an urge to push, but more like a pushing feeling to the contractions and I started to experimentally push with them. Some of them were not pushy at all, though, so I skipped those and only pushed when the contraction seemed to ask for it. With my others I had an overwhelming urge to push, which did not really happen here yet, but I was impatient to have it over with. Tara was still asleep, but now finally woke up, so the midwife had been right about her waking up in time if she was to see the birth. Had still been coping fine with all the contractions, but I was getting tired now. Then this MONSTER contraction hit! This was definitely a pushing urge, and pushing I did! I lost my vocalizing voice, and started screaming instead. I lost my control too and things got painful. But I knew I was almost there, I felt the baby moving down and I did my utter best to help him descend as fast as possible. The contraction seemed to end, but didn't really and started up again. I think the whole contraction must have lasted about 5 minutes, just going on and on. It was painful and intense, but I knew this was the end and was concentrating on getting him OUT! NOW! It worked. His head and a hand appeared (yes, next to each other), both still in the bag of waters. I kept pushing and pushing and his whole body came out, while the midwife broke the sac around him and caught him. Somebody was saying 'Blow, blow, blow!' during the contraction, but I was past that, the only thing I could do was push, push, push! :-) It was over! I opened my eyes and saw that we had a boy. He was born at 2:51am. I knew that Cees and Tim would be very happy, they had been hoping for another brother for a while, but kept having sisters instead :-) The baby was not impressed with this whole 'getting born' thing and was screaming. I was just happy it was over. And I was hoarse. I stayed in the tub for a little, then moved to the bed to lay down and wait for the placenta. I was cold and got the shakes pretty badly, so they covered me up with towels and blankets. I tried to nurse the baby, which took a long time, he had a hard time figuring it out, but I did get him latched on in the end. After nursing him, I birthed the placenta, which was easy compared to the baby. Midwife did the newborn exam, and we found out that he weighed 8 lbs 4 oz and was 21 1/2 inches long. By now most stuff was cleaned up and both baby and I were fine, so people started leaving. I think the house was quiet again around 4:45am, and everybody went off to bed. We were in luck, the kids allowed us to sleep in till 10:30am, so that was pretty good. Not that I slept much, I was still too much in my birthing high and spent most of the night just reliving things and looking at the new baby in my arms. He looked very much like the standard new born, but he seemed less blonde than my other ones were, he is more dark blonde than the very light blonde of the others. Of course that can still change when he gets older. Looking back, I am surprised how the labor went from zero to full speed at once, with no building up phase in between. I also was surprised about him being born in the caul, very special. We even talked about it before birth, Dale asked the midwife what she would do when that happened. I got the whole birth on video (Catherine taped it for us), and I am looking forward to seeing that part. I missed most of that part due to me being busy pushing him out :-) I liked that Cees, Tim and Tara could be present at the birth, we had decided not to wake up the two little ones. They all enjoyed being there and saw their little brother being born. It was a great labor, the only painful part was the last contraction, when he was coming out. For the rest, I didn't have pain at all, as long as I vocalized. One painful contraction is not too bad, even although it lasted at least 5 minutes! :-) He is two days old now and slowly adjusting to the world outside the womb. He is not too happy about it all, rather fussy and wants to be on me all the time, never is happy for very long on somebody else or on his own. He is nursing well and my milk has come in already. He still doesn't have a name though, we are having a real hard time with the naming this time. We finally agreed on a girls name two days before the birth, but of course, that made us have a boy instead. The kids have helped us with suggestions. Tara's current favorite is baby Colin, just like Catherine's baby. Cees and Tim vote for either Turtle or Waldo.... We just call him 'He, Who Cannot Be Named', or 'Baby You Know Who', or Voldemort for short. More reading: My friend Catherine has written her version of this birth story too, it is neat to read her perspective and you can see some other pictures of baby and birth. . Page design by mabear | Send email to Karen | Page last updated: Dec 29, 2001