our third birth…

The night before 03 July 2007, I got everyone to sleep by about 11:00 PM. It had been a very long day. I wasn’t consciously expecting to have a baby the next day, but I did a lot of things that evening by compulsion to be prepared. I didn’t feel like sleeping. My body had been trying to shift cycles to be up at night and be tired during the day – not the easiest with two active children to take care of.

I went in the living room with my lap top and worked on my home business for a couple of hours. By 1 AM I was finished, but something told me I was going to be having a baby by 5 AM and that it wasn’t really worth going to bed. Who knows why I was thinking 5 AM. I also had a three hour labor in mind. The baby started shifting position a bit and I started playing word games on the computer, checking messages, and generally entertaining myself rather than going to bed. Contractions started around 1:55 AM, coming every 5 0r 6 minutes. Each one made me smile.

I heard my husband get up around 2:30 AM. He came in and asked why I wasn’t in bed yet. I told him we were going to have a baby. He asked if he should start filling the birth pool, which was set up in the playroom. When he said it might take a couple of hours to fill, I told him to go ahead and get started. He stepped out in the garage to grab our Python (what we use to fill the aquariums with water). When he stepped back in, he commented that the contractions seemed to have picked up. I agreed.

He started filling the tub. The contractions felt good and productive. I found that counter-clockwise circular movements really let me get into them. Standing up and gyrating my hips in a counter-clockwise motion felt so right. I spent the next couple of hours standing and moving through contractions, going to the bathroom, or slipping into the nice warm pool. Whenever I had a contraction in the pool, I would get on my hands and knees before it started. Outside of the pool, I would rock my hips in a circle.

Around 4:45 AM, the contractions were strong enough that I felt I needed to push. I got on my hands and knees in the water and pushed. I thought I heard a pop then when my water broke. My husband hadn’t reacted so I told him my water had just broken. He hadn’t heard a thing, so I must have just felt the pop. Immediately, I needed to push again, while my husband had come over to the pool. He looked at me and asked if I was pushing. I briefly said yes before I needed to push again. He rushed to the bedroom to wake up our two children. The baby’s head came out while he was gone. It felt as though time had stopped. My children ran in and began asking me questions, but my husband told them they needed to just watch and wait to talk to me. I felt the need for three quick pushes and my new baby’s body flipped out into my hands.

I sat back in the pool, laughing. I brought my newest baby up to my chest and cuddled him, with our family gathered around beside us. The kids were ecstatic. My husband asked if it was a boy or girl. I knew it was a boy. I had felt it all along, but I turned him over to check and confirmed that we had another son. He woke up at that point and was not happy about suddenly being somewhere else. He had his eyes shut tightly against the light which had been turned on, so my husband went to turn it off.

I think I was laughing and smiling throughout this. Our older children (ages 4 1/2 and 2 1/2) had big smiles on their faces the whole time. In the last few months, they had decided they really wanted a baby brother. 

We hung out in the pool for a while. Iwaited to cut the cord until it hadn’t been pulsing for a while. Once my daughter knew she had her baby brother, she asked for a baby sister next. My son asked when we would have the next baby. I told them we should probably get used to having three kids for a while before we even considered another baby. The baby nursed a little. After the placenta came out, we went to the bedroom. I laid him on the bed in a towel so that we could get a diaper on him while I took a quick shower, and he proceeded to poo all over the towel. I cleaned him up and my husband held him while I showered. Then we hung out in the bed while my husband made phone calls and the kids stared at him and asked questions.

He weighed 9 pounds 4 ounces and was 21 inches long. He was born at 4:55 AM – exactly three hours after labor started.