VICTORIOUS Birth
After Multiple Cesareans
Page 2
The FULL Birth Story
Written just for me (and all you birth junkies out there)
WARNING: graphic (barely) pictures included
The Beginning

After being dilated to 5cm (for 10 days) and enduring several days of prodrominal labor and thinking "this is it" only to be disappointed--it finally started. On Wednesday, March 26th (my estimated due date) a little after 11pm I was slowly getting ready for bed. I was heading to the bathroom when I began dribbling all the way up the stairs. I knew instantly what had happened. I woke up Lee about 11:25 and called my midwife telling her I knew my membranes had broken but that I hadn't had even one contraction all night. Since we had a 4 hour drive across two state lines on icy roads to get to her "home"birth house, we decided to head that way. Lee filled the gas tank and we woke up the kids and just loaded them in their carseats in their PJs. We were on the road by midnight.
Above: Right before we loaded the car
During the drive I listened to my hypnobirthing CDs and then later I broke out my own inspirational music. Sometime after leaving Nebraska (around 1:30am) I began to feel real contractions and by 3am I was in labor. Contractions were harder and faster than I remembered from my first med-free labor and it occurred to me that for the last 10-12 days I had been dilated to about 5cm which probably made a difference compared to labors that start at only 2 or 3 cm. As we hit Rapid City, South Dakota Lee was concerned I might be further along than we anticipated. He asked if we needed to go straight to the hospital and just call our midwife to meet us there (we had already discussed this back-up plan with her). "NO!" I cried, "Just keep going--please don't stop."
While leaving Rapid City I kept telling myself that we were almost there--just another hour maybe--that's all. In hindsight, I think the stress of being on the road was playing with my mind and my labor a little bit. I just knew it would all be better once we made it to Wyoming. Somewhere between Rapid City and Wyoming we took a wrong turn and ended up adding some extra time to our drive. We then got stuck behind a very slow-moving trailer in a road construction zone which added probably an additional 15 minutes. As we crossed the border and took the first exit in Wyoming, we slid right through the first stop sign and nearly landed in the ditch on the opposite side of the road (VERY icy roads). Thankfully, we pulled into the driveway a little before 4am and quickly unloaded our bags and got settled in to the quaint living room. WE MADE IT! Now I could hopefully labor in peace.
Hard Labor

My midwife, J, did all of the usual--the blood pressure check, putting in my heplock and she started my penicillin drip for Group B Strep. As soon as the drip stopped I climbed into the warm aquadoula tub and Lee took our very excited 4 year old daughter and 2 year old son to the back bedroom in hopes of getting them to sleep. Sadly, I didn't have anything from our carefully packed labor bag out (movies, notebook, etc.) and I couldn't get the MP3 player to do what I wanted it to (it had been locked up, Grrr!). For some reason I wanted to labor with my eyes closed which was totally different from my first med-free labor where I wanted a focal point. So I sat in the quiet room, eyes closed, listening to the sounds around me. It wasn't long before I remember hearing my son come into the living room completely disoriented and immediately Lee was with him consoling him and talking about the baby coming as he got him back into bed..
During that alone time, J noticed me looking around for Lee between a few contractions and she asked me if she could get some candles out of my bags. She lit one soft vanilla candle, placed it next to the tub, and turned out all other lights. That would be the only item we removed from my very full labor bag.

We were in almost total darkness for another half hour or hour as I began really working through some difficult contractions. She reminded me to let my body do the work, to get good oxygen in my lungs for baby, and she left the rest to me from labor positions to breathing. She told me three days later that I would grab my headset and hold the earphones tightly to my ears and sing through each contraction. She's sure she knows every song on my labor play list. LOL And at one point she said I ripped the headphones off my ears and threw them down in frustration.
I guess around 5:30-6am there seemed to be no rest between contractions and I had only been there 2 hours. They were coming in unusual sets of two, the first being less intense and lasting maybe 45 seconds and then I'd have maybe an 8 second break before the second one would hit with much more vigor and lasted maybe another 60-75 seconds. Then I would have a 15-20 second break before the next set started. I kept thinking how this labor was so much more intense with faster contractions than my pitocin-augmented labor had been. Wasn't it supposed to be easier without pitocin?! HA! By this time Lee was with me gently touching me, using positive cues and imagery about me working with our baby, and reminding me to "breathe baby down" (an important phrase from hypnobirthing class). That's when I had my first check. And wouldn't you know it, I hadn't dilated any more than the original 5cm I had been at for the last 10 days! I was totally bummed and wondered for a moment if I could make it another few hours at this rate of intensity.
II Tim. 1:7 "For God has not given us a spirit of fear,
but of power and of love and of a sound mind."


My body began shaking uncontrollably. I had been laboring in a sitting position with legs outstretched and spread with about two feet between my feet. I was gently rocking my legs and torso through each set of contractions, chin to chest, breathing as deeply as I could and sliding my chin from side to side in an effort to stay loose. I remember that I suddenly wanted to be up in a squatting position hanging on to the side of the tub facing DH. Between sets of contractions I would literally doze off for a few seconds. One of my arms would fall into the tub waking me up. If anyone spoke between contractions I startled as if I had been asleep. I thought I was participating in conversations that I was not. Small talk frustrated me in a way that's difficult to describe now that I'm back in my normal head, but I felt totally primal, totally inside my head. Asking for a cup of coffee or talking about events of tomorrow seemed terribly inappropriate in that moment. There was nothing except baby and me. Everything else became intrusive--irritating white noise.
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