Seriously though, I have had four medical doctors in my classes trying to have natural births. Sometimes even the people who are part of obstetric America realize that "that" kind of birth isn't what they want.
Congrats to this mom on her lovely home water birth. May we all have beautiful births like this.
Enjoy-
Caden's Home Waterbirth
This was my first pregnancy. My “guess date” was Monday, Sept 19. I had a wedding of a close friend to attend Sept 17 and joked at the party to everyone that 'Peanut' & I had had a discussion and that he/she was going to arrive the next day. I had seen my MW, Lisa, on Friday, Sept 16 and had had my membranes stripped.
I was currently the chief resident in charge of the gynecology service at a busy inner-city hospital and we had a busy week planned – a week full of long surgeries and although I had prided myself on plowing through 60-80hr work weeks with nary a complaint, the thought of doing another week was almost more than I could handle. We made an appointment for her to come back on Sunday to restrip them again.
At the wedding I did dance a lot, which caused some non-laborish contractions but otherwise nothing to get excited about.
We had a late night and I didn't sleep all that well. I woke up at 6am with contractions that were uncomfortable but not really painful. I had watery bloody discharge in a fairly large amount and was concerned my water was broken. I was timing contractions at this time and when I had woken up they were about 5-6min apart. I gave up laying in bed about 7am and got up, sitting on an exercise ball, moving my hips during contractions. The contractions persisted and about 8am I decided to call Lisa and let her know that I had somehow managed to make an appointment for my labor! LOL
She thought I was just having bloody show and was not ruptured. About 9a I went to pee and there was just more of the discharge than I wanted to clean up, so I decided to get in the shower. The shower was really relaxing and made the contractions seem less intense but still frequent. However, once I got out they became more intense and required more attention. I could no longer sit on the exercise ball during a contraction so I went to kneeling on the floor and leaning over the exercise ball which worked great. Although they hurt more, I still felt in control. I was able to snack on some fruit here and there – luckily I thought to eat a substantial breakfast right when I got up before things got intense – my mom kept me supplied in cut up fruit and water.
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