Such Riches: The Birth Continued

By the time midnight hit, the contractions had picked up a notch. We were watching "What Dreams May Come," and pausing it for the contractions. Sort of an odd, and not very good, movie to be giving birth to... around one we went upstairs and laura slept between her contractions while peter played zombie duck hunt on the ipod touch. He was really using an app, "labor mate," to time all the contractions. they were increasing in duration, averaging three minutes long by four in the morning (!!!!!! Hello, that's really long. No wonder she was exhausted), and six minutes apart. That was our first lesson in parenting: nothing goes by the book. We kept waiting for them to be five minutes apart so we could call the midwife because that's what all the books say to do. Regardless, we called at seven, assuming that we were still in pre-labor. Rebecca said "no, you're in labor. Get some food and fill up the tub because we may be in for a long one." Once in the tub, Laura's pain went down a bit and she could relax a little. Rebecca called back in an hour to check in, and over that hour Laura's uterus started to say "Puuuuuuush." Laura knew that it wasn't time yet, and was aware that her cervix would swell and delay labor/cause other complications if she pushed too early, so she entered a new phase of trying to relax and not let her uterus push (apparently, boys, that's really hard. Like trying to hold down a vomit...try it. you can't). So the midwife rushed over and called her assistant to come over. Likewise, I called laura's mom to get down here. When Rebecca showed up she told us that laura was at 8 cm, and the baby was gunna come soon. Yikes-we had assumed that we still weren't in active labor! But we were relieved because, frankly, we were exhausted and if she had told us that we were at only 2 cm, well, we probably would have folded. So, laura got back in the tub, the water broke, had some more contractions as the birth team arrived, and then we got the go ahead to push for real. Laura gave it four good pushes to get Sienna crowning, but on the fourth the fetal monitor picked up some decelerations in Sienna's heart rate. Rebecca told us to get into a more active position in order to get this baby out stat, and laura got out and into a squat and in one push, squirted sienna across the room! Gramma Dee said that Rebecca's face was priceless because she wasn't expecting such a huge push. Sienna's cord was on the short side, which explains why she was in such a weird and confusing position all of pregnancy, but she immediately got plopped up on laura's belly and within a few minutes was sucking at the teet. A little on the purple side, but cried immediately and pinked right up. Rebecca gave Laura some Pitocin as she massaged her belly because Laura bled a little more than we'd have liked. But, she stopped within a few minutes. Laura and Peter didn't really know what was going on because we were too busy falling in love again. After twenty minutes, Laura finally heeded Rebecca's advice and sat down (she was in a squat that whole time! Burly! I dare her to do that again). Peter cut the cord, the placenta came out, and Gramma Dee cooked up some delicious eggs, spinach salad, and made smoothies. How fun!