Our Birth Story- part3

She left me with a few herbal tinctures to take once an hour to relax my mind and body and slow down the surges. I took a nap on the couch waking for the surges then dozing back off for about 45 minutes. After my nap I broke down to James tears streaming down my cheeks. The surges weren’t dying down any and I became really frustrated. I wanted to finish what I started because I had worked so hard up until this point for over 35 hours. I made it through 2 rounds of tincture doses before the surges really started getting stronger. Instead of taking the third dose I text our midwife. She had me time contractions and to my surprise they were every 4 minutes lasting about 45 seconds. She told me she was going to grab her things, call the assisting midwife and be right over. Such a sigh of relief that things were getting back on track.

I immediately called my sister to come back to our house after getting off the phone with our midwife. Our midwife arrived around 8pm checked me again and this time I was 6cm dilated. Our assisting midwife arrived around 9pm. They began giving me herbal tinctures to help my body progress with dilation and surges.

I spend the next few hours walking around our home, in the shower and rocking on the birth ball while talking with everyone and cracking jokes between surges. My sister had taken babe up to bed around 9:30 and he did such a great job hanging out with us during the evening.

From this point forward I stopped looking at the clock and left my phone on the dining table to keep myself from getting discouraged or distracted.

Time seemed to fly by as I was able to move freely in my home. I kept myself hydrated and ate snacks such as honey and dry cereal. After a few hours the midwives suggested a move to help position baby better in my pelvis which consisted of lying on my left side on the couch while they rotated my top leg in a bicycle motion during a surge. They did this 3 times in a row and wow did I feel a difference after it was over. Throughout this entire evening my body was going through strong hormonal shakes. After the maneuver I was able to get into our birth pool and man was it amazing. The surges were strong but the warmth of the water took my shakes away instantly. While I was in the birth pool I would doze off between surges.

At this time I sent my sister up to our bed for a nap and James fell asleep on the floor beside me.

part 4 coming soon🤍