I started having a few contractions at my 11 AM appointment with our midwife on December 17th. On the way home we (my husband Tim and I) stopped at Hobby Lobby to buy a fake Christmas tree and some ornaments and stuff, and by the time we left I was pretty sure this was the real thing starting. The contractions *hurt* - much more than I expected them to initially. I had expected them to start out like the Braxton-Hicks contractions I'd been having for over a week and gradually get more painful, but they started out with a totally different quality. I was excited and happy in spite of the pain, which was totally tolerable, because I was READY to have this baby!

When we got home I went pee and saw that I had lost my mucous plug. It was around 2-3 pm. Around 5 or 6 I called my midwife to give her a heads up that we would probably be calling her in the middle of the night, because the contractions were continuing and gradually getting closer together (around 10 minutes by now). We also called our mothers to let them know they should head on over. My mom had a 2 1/2 hour drive and Tim's mom had a 3 1/2 hour drive to get here, and we figured they'd rather come in the evening than in the middle of the night. They both left right away. I saw them briefly when they arrived, but most of the time I was in labor I only wanted to be around Tim (I even sent the midwives out of the room a lot) so they mainly stayed in the living room while I labored in my bedroom.

As the evening wore on, we tried to relax. I could tell pretty early that sleep was going to be impossible due to the pain. The contractions did get stronger, and continued to get closer together. It became almost impossible for me to time them, so Tim had to take that over so we could figure out when to call the midwife. We tried to watch "Don't Say a Word", a really crappy movie, but I had to pause it every few minutes to have a contraction and I couldn't follow it at all. As the contractions increased I began to howl with them - that's really the best word to describe the sound I was making, which was totally spontaneous. Relaxation did very little to help me cope with the pain - in fact the more I tried to be still and relax the worse it hurt. What did help was sitting up and holding Tim as he stood next to the bed. The degree to which having close contact with him reduced the pain was surprising.

I think I asked Tim to call the midwife around 4:30 or 5 am. Our instructions were to call her when the contractions were 5 minutes apart, consistently long and strong, and I couldn't talk through them. She arrived around 5:30 am. I was about 3 1/2 cm dilated, which surprised but didn't disappoint me (I expected 5 by then). We had the morning news on the bedroom TV with the sound off so the midwife could watch it with captions because I couldn't tolerate the noise.

The next several hours passed relatively uneventfully. The exception was that I had a lip of cervix persistently pushed in front of baby's head, which wasn't good because it could start to swell or tear if we couldn't move it back. The midwife periodically (maybe every hour or so) would have me lie on my back for a couple of contractions while she reached in and held that part of my cervix back - this was probably the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced, and I felt I was being tortured and wanted to die. However, other than that the normal contractions were bearable (esp. when I sat or stood up), and the breaks between them were great. In fact, I was joking around and feeling pretty happy in between them for most of the labor until I started pushing. I drank water and raspberry tea, but wasn't able to eat at all.

Around noon I was completely dilated (10 cm). The midwife had called her assistant at some point that morning, and by now she had arrived. I had no urge to push, but after waiting for an hour or so they decided I should start pushing on the birth stool. The stool was on the floor by the bed, and it was a pretty comfortable pushing position. It provided some support while I squatted, basically. Unfortunately, the lip of my cervix was still problematic, so the midwife had to hold it back while I pushed. This increased the pain a great deal and made it hard for me to push. I also didn't feel ready, and the way they were "cheering" me was really distracting. I asked them to stop cheering and they did. Eventually they had me walking around between contractions and they gave me some herbs to try and increase the strength of my contractions. At some point while I was pushing on the stool my water broke, but it wasn't very noticeable.

I didn't make much progress on the stool. I tried pushing in the shower, standing up leaning against the wall, on the toilet, lying on the bed, on my hands and knees, and in the hot tub. I don't know how long I did each of these things, but in total I pushed from 1 PM until 7:30 PM. When I came in from pushing in the hot tub at 7:30, the midwife checked me and my cervix had started to swell and was down to 8 cm. She decided we should go to the hospital, because although the baby's heartbeat was still steady and strong it was obvious that I was becoming exhausted and she was concerned about the swelling. I was pretty upset about having to go, but I could tell that I was running out of steam and felt she was correct in her assessment since I had tried everything I could to get things moving. 1 to 2 hours of pushing is normal for first births, so we certainly weren't rushing things. I asked the midwife what she thought would happen at the hospital, and she said the first thing they would do is give me pitocin to try and get the contractions going stronger again since they had weakened (they didn't feel weak to me!). I told her that if I had to go to the hospital I wanted an epidural before they did anything else. I knew that this increased my risk of surgical birth and complications, but I couldn't stand the pain on top of the stress of the hospital. I have never been hospitalized before and I have a lot of distrust of hospitals. The midwife called ahead, and luckily her backup OB was on call that night, and they put the anesthesiologist on notice and called the doctor in.

The drive to the hospital sucked; sitting in the seat during contractions was excruciating. When we got there they were spraying a muriatic acid solution on the sidewalk right by the door and everyone was coughing as they breathed it. It really pissed me off! I was wheeled up to labor and delivery, howling during contractions, just like on TV! I must have looked pretty wild all sweaty and with my hair all messed up. The nurse who gave me the IV of fluid in preparation for the epidural (they do that to keep your blood pressure from dropping too much) was very pretty and sweet. The anesthesiologist was also really cool, and the epidural itself was much less of a big deal than I expected - it only took a couple of minutes and sitting still for it wasn't that bad. Oh my God, it was like manna from heaven to have the pain stop after all that time. I was crying and crying with relief, big fat tears. Then I felt really high from all the endorphins and I couldn't stop talking! I had the moms (my mom and Tim's mom) come in the room. The epidural made me shudder quite a lot, which was annoying, but compared to the pain it wasn't too big of an issue.

The nurse started the pitocin drip, and they put an external fetal heart monitor (yuck) and an internal contraction pressure monitor on me. The monitor did show my contractions were pretty weak. They darkened the room and we rested for a little while to give the pitocin time to work and me time to get some energy. Once my contractions were going good again I started pushing, only now I had to lie flat on my back and Tim and the midwife each held one leg to help since I was pretty numb. I could barely feel the contractions; just enough to know when to push. By now the pitocin was cranked up as high as they could do it (in the words of my midwife "They pitted the poo out of you, girl!").

For awhile it seemed we were making good progress. The nurse said the baby moved from 0 to +2 station (a measure of how far the head is descended through the pelvis). I was very excited because I thought I was going to get to push him out after all! At some point I went into ketosis and they gave me a glucose drip. What I didn't know was that Tim and my mom had been watching the contraction monitor, which was attached to the baby, and it hadn't moved at all.

Then something awful happened. Sometime after 3 AM the epidural wore off very suddenly! I felt it starting to wear off and asked for the anesthesiologist, but he was in OR doing a C-section and couldn't come. It wore off completely in about 5 or 10 minutes, and because I had been numb now I had no natural endorphins to dull the pain of the strong contractions. I sat up suddenly and screamed with the first fully felt contraction, and tore the epidural wire out of my back.

When the doctor came in to check me around 3:30 AM, he said the "progress" was really just the baby's head swelling and the actual bones hadn't moved at all in all that time. Amazingly, Gabriel's heart only wavered once in all this time, and then it quickly recovered. However, the midwife and doctor assured me that eventually he would start to have problems. The doctor said he wanted to do a C-section. So now I was totally feeling the pain again and being told my worst nightmare was coming true. I felt like I was in hell. I was yelling "No, no, no," and crying again. The doctor went out to give us a few minutes to talk it over. The nurse turned off the pitocin. I asked if everyone in the room agreed that this was something I had to do, and they all did (my mom, Tim's mom, Tim, and the midwife). So I said "I can accept this," although I really wasn't sure. The nurse, who had stayed on past her 11 pm end of shift to be with me (what a sweetheart) explained exactly what was going to happen, and they started the prep work.

I got another epidural, they put me in OR with a curtain below my chest, and Tim and the midwife stood by me. My arms were not strapped down. The surgery took only 20 minutes and I didn't feel any pain, nor did I throw up.

Gabriel started to cry before they had lifted him completely free of my abdomen. He was born at 4:20 AM Central Standard Time. They weighed him and looked him over and put him on my chest within 2 minutes. I had asked them not to put drops in his eyes for an hour so he could see me. It was totally amazing to hear him and then see him for the first time. When I had to have the surgery, people kept telling me to focus on the baby so I wouldn't be scared, but until he came out it just didn't seem real. When the doctor finished suturing me Tim carried the baby in his arms to the nursery, and he met his two grandmothers on the way. They brought him back to me in the recovery room, and I nursed him there for the first time, within the first half hour of his birth. After that he roomed in with us (in bed with me the whole time) and was only away from us for brief checkups in the nursery. You could see where his head was grinding against my pelvis - there was a ring of bruising and some abrasion, and he would cry if you touched him anywhere on the top of his head for the first couple of days. We went home, hungry and exhausted, on Sunday afternoon. My recovery from the surgery was typical with no complications.

For a long time after the birth I had flashbacks to the hospital when I tried to sleep at night. Gabriel was exceptionally large (10 pounds 15 ounces), his head did not mold, and he was also posterior. I have gone over the circumstances with the midwife since then and she is convinced that the C-section was absolutely necessary. Sometimes I have doubts, and I come up with "what if" scenarios. I still struggle with what happened almost daily. People say "All that matters is you have a healthy baby," but that really trivializes the trauma associated with an important rite of passage being disrupted. But having a healthy baby is certainly a huge blessing, and I am truly grateful for that!