Kavi's Home Birth Pt. I
After a night of hazily opening my eyes several times thinking, "Hmmmm, could this be it? Is this a real contraction? Is there another one coming?," I found myself waking up just after 7:30 AM. I thought to myself, "I guess those were just practice contractions since they weren't even strong enough to stay up to time from one to the next. " Laying in bed thinking about having to go to Brooklyn later that day for a 41 week biophysical profile sonogram, I started to feel small waves of pain that reminded me of period cramps. At 7:58 I decided to time them.
"Wow, these are coming in every 5-6 minutes.....hmmmm," I speculated. Trying to distract myself from what was happening, I got up to use the bathroom. When I wiped, there was a clump of bloody mucus on the toilet paper.
"HMMMMMM...." I thought again, excited and anxious at the same time. It was 6 days after my son's due date and I had gotten used to the feeling of him NOT coming. I didn't want to hype myself or Lenny up to think that he was finally ready to come out to the world until I was 100% sure that labor had started.
"What time is your brother coming with the car? Shouldn't we be getting ready?," Lenny asked from outside of the bathroom. At this point I had to tell Lenny something about what was happening in my body as I was in slight pain and my gut knew that I was in labor although my mind tried to deny it.
"I don't think we're going to need the car babe," I replied.
"Why?," he asked.
"My mucus plug is coming out and I have cramps. I just started timing them and they're every 5-6 minutes." Lenny acted calm as ever, but I knew he felt the same that I did about not getting too excited unless we knew for sure for sure we were in labor.
At 8:35 I decided to text my midwives and let them know my mucus plug came out and that I was timing my contractions. At this point they were all lasting about 50 seconds to 1 minute and 10 seconds, coming in every 5-6 minutes. Right away one of my midwives, Shar, called me. She wanted to hear what I sounded like over the phone. Their experience with birth allowed them to understand what stage of labor a mother was in just by listening to her breathing pattern and other cues over the phone.
"Do you want me to come over now?," Shar asked. With that question, my mind finally gave in to the labor.
"Yea, I think so," I replied, relieved that someone else could read and understand what was happening with my body enough to offer a next step. I had clearly skipped the first stage of labor, diving right into the second stage. I assumed my labor would be fast, but in the moment I didn't feel ready for it to be THIS fast. My son was finally ready to make his grand entrance and he was coming quick.
Shar assured me that she would be over as soon as possible, within the next hour. I asked Lenny to start blowing up and filling up our birthing pool. We planned to set up the birthing pool in the middle of our living room so to blow up the pool, connect the hose to the kitchen sink, and fill it up was going to take at least 30 minutes. At that point I sensed Lenny's slight panic at how fast everything was happening. He thought it'd be a few more hours before having to set up the pool. The way things were going I knew I was going to want to get in the water as soon as possible.
An hour later, I felt ready to push. "Uhhh babe, I think you might have to catch this baby, I feel like I have to push," I told Lenny. To Lenny's relief, at that exact moment Shar called him to see how things were going. He told her I felt ready to push and she was ecstatic to hear that. She ran from her car parked down the block to our apartment. When she got to our door I had just stepped into the freshly filled 100 degree birthing pool. It felt.. AMAZING.
"Wow, I'm ready to do this," I thought as I felt the warmth envelop my entire body. As soon as Shar took off her coat and settled into our apartment, she checked how dilated I was. Less than two hours after I started timing my contractions I was already 7 inches dilated. As fast as my labor was progressing, I wanted it to progress FASTER. Soon enough, it did.