August 10, 2010 marked the beginning of the end of our journey, I was 37+1 weeks. Contractions started just as they did with my sons birth, middle of the morning, 15 minutes apart and out of nowhere that was the only similarity between my sons labour and Harpers. They were definitely there, but not intense enough for me to not go about my day. My In laws were in town, which was great timing on Harpers behalf.
My son was born within 4 hours of feeling the first contraction and the contractions never became regular, Harper's stayed at 15 minutes apart the entire day, So I just went about my day, hanging out with my son and being a family. I lost a large chunk of my mucous plug, that had never happened before and I was quite amazed at the size of it, I told my husband and he thought we should go to the hospital, I assured him that we still had time. I went to bed still contracting through the night. The next day the contractions were stronger, I had to concentrate on them at times to make it through they slowly become erratic, coming anywhere from 5 minutes to 10 minutes apart before settling back in at 15 minutes. 2 days in and I was exhausted.
Day 3 I decided to go to the hospital to have a chat with them, I was physically exhausted and the contractions were coming to a point where I was no longer able to talk through them. I consented to an internal, they confirmed I was in active labour at 5 and a bit cm dilated, the gave me the option of staying in hospital or going home. I chose to leave, knowing that these contractions were getting me somewhere gave me another boost of energy. We went out to dinner that night with my parents and my in-laws, both live quite a distance from us. It was wonderful to spend that time with everybody, we spent a lot of the 'down time' focusing on our son, we always remained open and honest about details of the pregnancy and what happens during birth with him. We went to bed refreshed and still pregnant.
Day 4 I ended up going back to the hospital, contractions were hitting hard and fast, to the point of having to squat on the ground in the car park to be able to get through them, we were close, they were now all over the place with no regularity but they were intense. I spent the next few hours in a birthing suit, bouncing on a pregnancy ball, which I was reluctant to do because they made the contractions a thousand times worse, the midwife assured me it would get the labour going, in the end I had to stop. I couldn't bounce and make it through the contractions. I ended up sitting on the ball, leaning my head onto the bed and just staring at the sheets to get though them. I consented to another internal, by this point the midwives were starting to worry about the intensity of the contractions and progression. I was only 6 cm dilated, I felt an extreme wave of let down, my body was working so hard, but I'm not doing it properly, this couldn't be further from the truth, my body was doing just fine, my body was doing great preparation.
They decided they wanted to break my water and it may sound silly after the high intervention level so far, but I was not consenting to yet another. I was well aware of the trickle down effect that breaking my water would do, it was then I decided I had enough of all this intervention, I had new found energy. I hauled my heavily labouring pregnant self out of there, they gave me sleeping pills to try to get some rest and told me they would preferred if I stayed. I still cried on the way home, I made the right decision, but I was exhausted and ready.
I didn't take the pills, the intensity died down and I slept, I slept a sleep of exhaustion and peace. I woke up without a sign of labour, was all that a dream last night. We ended up going for a long drive to my husbands grandparents farm (over an hour away) tempting fate perhaps, we had a lovely family lunch and I sat rocking in the rocking chair most of the time to help my contractions, we hired some movies and went home to relax. It was now 6:10pm on August 15th 2010, 5 days after my first contraction. Halfway through the movie came a sudden onset of highly intense, very close contractions. As I rocked on all fours on the floor in intense pain I told my husband I needed to go to the toilet, this happened through two more contractions until it clicked and he replied "No you don't, your having a baby!!". I was contracting hard & fast and was in a world of my own, it was a very comical scene as my husband tried to wrestle me to the car with me screaming "no, I don't want to move, don't move me, just leave me be!"
My MIL met us at the hospital and I was now simply staring as contractions hit, I would stare at the ceiling, or a spot on the floor, no yelling, no screaming, just pure concentration...and boy did it feel good! I guess that is why midwife on call did not believe I was very close to birthing, she put me in a monitoring room and took her sweet time to come have a chat to us, she finally had look and announce "oh, your having a baby right now". I walked the 10 metres to a birthing room, my waters still intact and I had begun pushing as soon as I made it to the room, at this point I was actually comfortable laying on my back. The midwife offered me gas, I took it, I had 2 breathes of it and they took it back off me (apparently gas has a massive affect on me, and just those two hits made me exclaim that we were all in the matrix), so I started this naturally and I was finishing it naturally. I never felt the urge to push with my son, I simply did it because I was instructed to, with Harper I did. Two pushes and my child, my precious daughter who was not meant to even be here was laying on my chest, the time was 6:50pm, 40 minutes after my contractions picked back up again, 20 minutes after we arrived at the hospital.
Harper Maree was earthside, the waiting game was over, or so we thought...
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