Our little guy arrived just a couple hours before his due date at 9:44 pm on Saturday, April 9. We named him Samuel (Sam) Steven. My contractions started on Friday night and were manageable enough to allow me to stay in bed all night, though I didn't really feel rested in the morning from waking up so much. They got stronger on Saturday morning, but then basically stopped by lunch time. Marie, a friend of ours who acted as our doula came over about that time and we took a nice long walk. The contractions started up again and got stronger and stronger and closer together, but weren't getting much longer than 50 seconds or so.
We called the hospital because some of them were only about three minutes apart and they said if they were consistent, we should come in. I was so afraid when we got there (at about 7:30 pm), they were going to tell me that I was only dilated a couple of cm, but thanks to all we learned about laboring at home, I was fully effaced and dilated to 7 cm! I was so grateful!!!
We got into the room and they got the whirlpool tub ready (I was so excited to use it!), but about that time my water broke and I wanted to push. The nurse checked and I was fully dilated. No more tub :(
Cheri, our midwife made a special trip in for us and it was so good to see her. I pushed on my hands and knees for quite a while and then on my side. Brian had the challenging job of holding up my leg every time I had a contraction and pushed :) He watched it all and was super calm. I have to say, that I think pushing was the best part--finally I could control something! Same was born about an hour after I started pushing. The staff said Marie and Brian were the best coaching team they'd seen in a long time!
Mindy and Brian, Glendale
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