A Thanksgiving Blessing

I woke up Monday, 11/22 and thought I was in labor, but ended up just having sporadic contractions all day Monday, all day Tuesday and Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, Eric and I were driving to work and he suggested I call our midwife to talk about the situation. The contractions were still irregular, varied in intensity and never very strong. However, she told me to go home and rest, that things might start to progress and if not, it was one more day off for Thanksgiving. After taking two naps during the afternoon the contractions kind of stalled out. But when I got up around 7 pm to have dinner things started to progress. By 10 pm the contractions were getting stronger, but still erratically spaced. By 12:45 am the back pain with each contraction was severe enough that I couldn't talk on the phone and Eric had to call the midwife.

We arrived at the birth center a little before 2 am. Jan confirmed what Eric and I already suspected, my back pain was so severe because little girl was posterior. She had been correctly positioned up until the last few days before she was born. On a positive note I was already 4, almost 5 cm dilated and almost completely effaced.

I'll be honest I wasn't dealing with the pain very well, especially with the awful back labor. Eric was amazing; there to comfort me, press on my back to help alleviate the pain, and constantly reminding me to relax when I found myself tensing during a contraction. The only other thing that seemed to help was when I got in the tub. Eric told me afterward my entire body relaxed when I got in the water. That was the first time I was able to get any rest and actually slept a bit between contractions, even when they were only a minute or so apart.

When it came time to push, we found out she had rotated and was now anterior, but her head was asynclitic, or tilted slightly, making it more difficult on both of us. However, at this point I was so happy I got to push. I knew I would get to meet our baby soon, the contractions weren't as bad, the back labor was gone and I could finally put my desire to tense up to good use by pushing. I was out of the tub during this stage and spent an hour and a half pushing from six different positions. Finally, at 7:27 am our beautiful Lyra was born.

I was honest from the beginning that the pain scared me tremendously. But thanks to Coral and Jan and everything we learned, Eric and I got to have the labor and delivery we had hoped for. I got to move around, use the tub, and push from the positions I wanted. Jan and the birth center provided the perfect, warm and welcoming atmosphere for Lyra's arrival. And it's amazing how quickly you forget the pain when you see your baby for the first time.

Tiffany & Eric Wait, Cedarburg