Yep that’s right this picture pretty much says it all. I know I imagined me looking  beautiful and refreshed and both of us holding our little baby boy at home on my bed with no tubes or anything. Well I have learned that you can’t plan everything out perfectly, the hospital isn’t as bad as I thought, and next time I need to be more pushy. 🙂 I’ll explain.

After watching a documentary and exploring my options of homebirth with a midwife or a hospital birth with and OB I decided I wanted a home birth. I loved the idea of just getting to be there with my baby and being able to trust that indeed my body was capable of giving birth without medical intervention. I mean god doesn’t make mistakes right. Women should be able to do this. I also was farely confident because of my high pain tolerance and my general bullheaded and stubborness that I would have no problem.

A kink was thrown in my plan when baby K decided to come 5 weeks early. At 35 weeks I was going into labor. I had to decide what to do. That is a little too early for comfort to have a baby at home. Although I wouldn’t need medical attention he would as soon as he came out.

At 34 1/2 weeks I started having random contractions that really didn’t hurt. I kept talking to people asking how I would know if I was in “real” labor or not. I talked to my midwife, my mom, my sisters, my bosses wife, and really any other woman that was around. 🙂  Although my  midwife planned to come check my I was generally assured that it is quite normal to be having some contractions this late in the game. This continued for a few days…off and on. Some days I would time the contractions to see how far apart they were. There were a few days that were a little scary as they would be like 5 minutes apart for an hour or so and then completely stop. I decided to take it easy. I was told to just lie down so I didn’t actually go into labor. I started having alot more contractions friday night. enough to keep me and my hubby up most the night tossing and turning. My Baby shower was Saturday the 11th. I headed to it after the contractrions subsided a little that morning. After I got there they came back but still 15ish minutes apart and not painful. Everyone thought I was having Braxten Hicks. I kind of did too.  I was so used to just having contractions all the time. That night I took a nice bath to ease the contractions and then headed home for the night. This seems to be where my brain got fuzzy and I was just in denial. At about 10:00 that night the contractions started getting a lot more painful and closer together. They were about 5 minutes apart. Because my midwife didn’t seem too worried about it the earlier contractions I thought I would just text her and see if she thought maybe this was something. (I should have known, but aparently wasn’t quite in the right state of mind…granted I was exhausted from no sleep the night before and completely new at this.) I didn’t get a response so I went to bed. Well at least tried to. 4 hours of hardly any sleep I started thinking this was something so I texted her again. They were still painful. I kept trying to breath through them to bare the pain.  Periodically i would go take a hot bath to ease the pain too. At 6:00 in the morning I was taking a bath and I could hardly bear it. I thought if this isn’t real labor I’m  getting an epidural. At that time I called my midwife, (who then explained she hadn’t gotten the texts) she said she would rush down to see me.  Unfortunately she lived 2 1/2 hours away.  Soon after I called her the contractions subsided a little and I actually was able to sleep a little. She got here at 9:00 and checked me. I was dilated 9 centimeters. (wow) She started doing some pressure things and the pain with every contraction was almost unnoticeable. (Why didn’t I call her earlier). At this point we had to make a decision. Should we go to the hospital? I labored for another hour or so.  The bag of waters was bulging out of my cervix so my midwife broke it.  After a little while baby’s heart rate started acting funny so we went to the hospital. (good thing) We were admitted at 11:20 and baby k was born at 11:56. My OB of choice was the one on call so lucky for me she is the one that delivered him. I had no epidural or pain medication of any kind and only had to have one stitch. I was doing pretty well besides my lack of sleep. Poor baby k though came to the world too early. He was given to me just long enough to pee on me and then taken to the Nicu. He was hooked up to a cpap machine, an IV, Oxygen. I was taken to my room. I really wanted to go see him but needed to be checked myself. After 4 hours I finally walked to the Nicu and saw my little guy.  Poor thing it was so sad seeing him hooked to all the machines and having to be poked all the time. Over the next few weeks we watched as he first got off the cpap, then off oxygen. He was given a feeding tube and started to learn how to eat. It took two weeks before he was able to nurse all of his food on his own and we were able to take him home.

So what did I learn…What would I have done differently.
I still love the idea of having my child at home. As far as labor goes I think it is a perfectly normal thing that I want to do on my own. However I am extremely grateful for modern technology.  They were able to take care of baby k as he struggled for his first little while here on this planet.  Of course no one wants to end up with a child in the nicu…I am glad that he was treated so well and for the nursing staff there.

I think next time… I’m going to be a little more careful with what I do in the last trimester. i gotta keep that baby in as long as I can. I’m going to attempt a home birth again…(unless I start contracting too soon again). I’m going to get a midwife that lives less than 20 minutes away. I also want to get an ultrasound to make sure everything is going well along the way.