Our Birth Story - Day 2, Part 4

Thursday, March 31, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

...Dave thought of Fernhill Park where I could walk some hills, which would hopefully kick labor back into gear...

Throughout the labor I wound up taking three car rides, each of which were fairly manageable thanks to the Zada's back bucket seats, which allowed me to swivel my legs and move through contractions easily.

Armed with a bottle of Recharge and a handful of poop bags, the four of us walked up and down the park's hills, stopping for contractions. Toward the end I had more energy than Dave, who kept asking me if I was ready to go home.

Midwife Laurie napped on the couch back at our house, and left shortly after we returned. As soon as the door closed on her way out, my contractions started back up again, the performance anxiety having ended.

A couple of hours went by, during which time the contractions felt bigger and closer together. Then they began to slow again, which created a great deal of frustration.

I moved to labor in the bathroom for the first time, where I had a major, teary breakdown wondering what was going on. With such an irregular contraction pattern, I wondered how I was ever going to get through this. As the video linked above shows, I was managing my contractions pretty well, but feeling a little hopeless about the timeline (already in the 37th hour).

After about an hour in the bathroom I called Bob, our naturopath. He came over around two o'clock with a pineapple, pulsatilla, insight into acupressure points, and new hand maneuvers that Dave could use to help ease the back labor. Dave immediately cubed up a bunch of pineapple, which I savored for the rest of labor. The acupressure points were immediately helpful. As for the pulsatilla, it was meant to bring on stronger contractions. It was time to move things along. As much as we laughed at the idea of having an April Fools' baby, we both agreed -- as did the midwives -- that March 31st would make a great birthday.

The pool had cooled throughout the day, and Courtney was ready to get back in. I started the process of draining it by scooping out about two-gallons of water at a time and tossing it bucket-by-bucket out in the grass. Once the water level went down, I went about refilling it using two five-gallon boiling pots I used to use for brewing beer.

With Courtney in the water, we figured out a few good positions in which I could use both the acupressure points Bob showed me as well as the hand maneuvers on her sacrum and lower spine. At one point Courtney said, "I'm never getting out of this tub." I started thinking maybe the baby would be a water birth after all.

It was either the pulsatilla, the acupressure or the water, but something was suddenly making labor feel much more intense, with occasional back-to-back contractions. At this point in the labor I began feeling rectal pressure, a sign of baby descending. In my laboring mind I started freaking out, fearing that I wasn't going to be able to do this anymore, and that it was going to hurt too much. In my midwifery mind, I estimated my dilation to be around 6 or 7 centimeters, and that I was nearing transition.

In the middle of a contraction I told Dave to call the midwives. I was scared.

Midwife Kim arrived a little before five o'clock -- hour 43 of labor -- which seemed like only a few minutes after Dave called her but in actuality was over an hour. She carted in all of her stuff - midwifery bag, oxygen tank and knitting supplies, always a good sign that she'd be here for the long haul.