Ian's Birth Story

I went into labor Friday, July 31, 2009, sometime in the morning. I had contractions the night before, but they were very far apart and stopped by the time I got up Friday morning. I went for a walk after eating breakfast, and sometime after that was when my contractions started again. They were ten minutes apart and lasted around thirty seconds all morning and almost all afternoon. David came home from work early and my contractions were starting to last longer, though they were still only ten minutes apart. As the late afternoon progressed my contractions became more intense and slowly came closer together. My sisters decided to make their way over from Atlanta, and we decided to go ahead and take Emmaline up to her Nona's apartment. By the time we got back home my contractions were about five minutes apart, lasting closer to a minute and much stronger.

I guess Ian had been waiting for my sisters to arrive, since right after they arrived my contractions suddenly went from five minutes apart to three then to two. The exact time of everything is pretty much a blur to me, but I do remember that dusk had settled in by the time we decided to head to the birthing center. It took me a few minutes just to walk to the van because every step I took seemed to bring on a contraction. Ian would squirm and wiggle which only made the pain worse. I was so afraid I was going to give birth to him right then and there. We made it to the birthing center, none the less, and I was 6 centimeters dilated. My contractions were now one right after the other and they were soooo painful. My midwife encouraged me to sit on a birthing ball, but the labor process had taken so much out of me that I could not hold myself up. David and Erin ended up having to support me at my sides and Elin kept me from rolling backwards. Eventually, I just decided to lie in bed. My midwife decided it was time to push, and I was starting to feel the impulse to push, so we set to work. David and Elin helped hold me up while I worked on pushing. It was hard work, and there were two moments when I thought I couldn't go on. Thankfully, I had my sisters and David there to encourage me, and Amy my midwife told me very firmly that I could, so push on I did.

It took about half an hour to push Ian, which was fifteen minutes less than it took Emmaline. However, Ian's pushing out process seemed a lot more painful in my mind. Once his head crowned it was a little easier to push out the rest of his body. After that Ian was placed on my chest and he then proceeded to pee on me. David cut his umbilical cord and we spent some time bonding together. Then Ian got cleaned up, weighed and measured, and like I mentioned before, he was 7 pounds and 20 inches long. Erin and Elin went out and got us some food to eat (thank you very much, guys!), then headed back to our house. David, Ian and I finally went to sleep around 2 am. I woke up around 3:30 needing to use the restroom and panicked because I couldn't tell if Ian was breathing. I made David wake him up to make sure. David assured me everything was fine, and I went back to sleep. I woke up again around 5:30 completely anxious to see Emmaline again. I felt like I had betrayed her somehow by having another baby, and I wanted to make sure she would be okay with the adjustment. Lucia brought Emmaline to the birthing center around 10 and Emmaline took to Ian pretty well. She didn't really want to have anything to do with him, which was better than her being jealous that David or I were holding him. After that Amy checked on me and Ian and approved us to go home, so go home we did! It was so good to be home!