The coming of Rowan - the birthing story

After two weeks of pre-labor contractions I was pretty sure by Sunday evening that Rowan would make his appearance soon. We had an early dinner and early bed times. I got a bit of sleep before contractions began to come more regularly. We stayed in bed till one am - at which point I felt like it was time to call for Jonah help and a ride to the hospital.

It took about an hour to get all of this lined up and we left for the hospital just before two. My contractions were five to seven minutes apart at this point. When we arrived at the hospital I realized that we had forgotten to phone the hospital. They didn't seem to mind and took us to an assessment room. When the midwife found out that my contractions were still infrequent and pretty short she decided to leave us alone for a bit and see if pacing the room could get things going. I tried to explain that my contractions had been five minutes apart till pushing in my first labor, but she didn't want to check, because if she did and I was under 4 cm she would have to send me home (or in our case to wonder the halls of the hospital as we didn't have a car). She came back a half hour later and did check as she wanted to give me first dibs on the birthing pool and someone else wanted it who was coming in. I was already 5 cm, so she admitted me... which was a relief to say the least - roaming hospital halls in labor does not sound fun to me.

The birthing rooms were redone in the past year, so our room was spacious and in the middle was an enormous tub. I liked the idea of laboring in warm water.

Labor continued at a pretty similar intensity through the early hours of the morning and by the shift change at 7:30 we were hopeful that he would be along soon... perhaps before my second internal exam at 9:30 am? We had a new midwife and a student at this point and while we were sad to see the first midwife go we were equally pleased with our new helpers. I was out of the tub at this point trying to speed things up a bit as contractions had really slowed down. I also was feeling pretty sleepy so I tried to lay down and rest as well.

Soon things picked up and the midwife recommended that if I wanted to deliver in the water I should get back in the tub.

I loved being in the pool as I felt I had a lot more control over the pushing stage. I could somehow feel where he was better and just let it go instead of trying to push, which was much more effective.

Just over an hour after getting back into the tub Rowan arrived at 9:33am. The best part of the water birth was catching him myself and pulling him up out of the water. Such a rush of relief and love.

The next hour wasn't so great... but that is another story and within a couple hours I was feeling good and was so grateful to be holding a beautiful baby boy. It wasn't till this point that we finalized on Rowan's name (Liam Blaine was also discussed).

We were all pretty tired though the day.

And here he is all ready to go home after seeing the Doctor and getting the 6 hour discharge. We were ready to go home. The last few hours were a lot of sitting and waiting to leave.