No better place to start a “mommy blog” (I’m not a fan of that term, actually), than with the birth of Little L. Just to clarify a few things…my birth experience was NOT a typical Brazilian one; I am not in a third-world country, so many (read:most) people have different experiences than mine!
My mom has 4 kids, and all of her labors were pretty fast. I think the longest one was 4 and a half hours. I guess I was trying not to count on following in her footsteps, but at the same time…I really was kind of expecting to. But then again, a lot of things I expected or didn’t expect were the complete opposite of what really happened. I had a totally natural birth experience…by accident!!!!
My water broke around 11:30pm. At the time, my husband and I didn’t have a car, but we lived about 2 blocks from my in-laws, who did have a car…and my father-in-law is a retired cop, so when he needs to drive fast, he sure does! My mother-in-law is an obstetrics nurse. Anyway, we had just been at their house, and walked home late. When we walked in the door, I went straight to the bathroom, and when I felt a TON of liquid, I knew my water had broken. I called my husband over, and he called his mother. Meanwhile I thought I should take a shower. I felt gross. When you’re in that kind of situation, you don’t really know how to think!
My in-laws came over, and my mother-in-law was appalled that my husband had not passed on the message for me to lie down….I guess he didn’t hear that part in the craziness of thinking about his first child being born soon!
They drove us to the hospital, which was empty, fortunately! I did not have to wait to be examined. The doctor told me I was only 2cm dilated, and I’d only have the baby around noon or so.
Meanwhile, I didn’t feel anything. No cramps, no contractions, nothing. I felt great! Around 12:30, I started to feel small cramps. They got me set up in a bed in the labor room, which was a room with several other women in labor, before moving to the delivery room. I was fortunate; my mother-in-law could stay with me (my husband could not, though). They gave me a hospital gown (if you can call it that) and just kind of forgot about me. I still had 12 hours to go, after all. I saw my name up on the board with “2cm” written next to it. This was around 1am.
By this point, I was having contractions. I remember looking at the clock around 1:30, and counting that my contractions were STRONG, and only 2 minutes apart. My MIL couldn’t believe it. And I was sitting there thinking…there is NO WAY this is going on for another 10 hours! It got to the point after about an hour and a half where I was sure the baby was going to be born basically immediately. My contractions had maybe 20 seconds between them, and my MIL was saying she’d never seen a labor progress this quickly. She looked around for a nurse…nowhere to be found. The doctor was in the delivery room delivering another baby. I told her “The baby is coming!” And she assured me that it was normal to feel that. When I insisted the baby was actually coming, she checked and sure enough, Little L. was crowning, around 3:15am.
My MIL was just about to put some gloves on and deliver her granddaughter herself when the nurse appeared, saw the situation, and ran for the doctor. He got there just in time to catch Little L., at 3:27am.
And what a beautiful moment it was! Meeting my precious baby for the first time…there are no words to describe it.
I could go on and on with more details, but in the end, having a natural, non-medicated birth was amazing. I would definitely do it again….especially if all my future births are only 4 hours long!
Stay tuned for more posts about life as a relatively new mommy (Little L. is a year and a half old now), life in Brazil, and other random thoughts from my never-resting brain!
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