Steve decided to give the midwives a tour of our new kitchen--which had not even been started yet when they were at our house for Jason's birth. While in the kitchen we heated up some leftover lasagna from the previous night for the midwives to eat for dinner. Well Robin ate an ice cream sandwich first...LOL!

They strongly urged us to go for a walk to get labor going, and I resisted because it was COLD outside, I couldn't button the bottom 4 buttons on my coat, kids had broken my ear muffs... Finally Lynn told me to wear her coat and get going! Told me to keep walking through contractions if I could--which I had also done to get things going with Jason. So by 7 p.m. we were out the door walking. Contractions kicked in immediately. We didn't time them, but we walked for about 30 minutes and I think I had 10 or more contractions. I was still happy between them though.

When we got home we found Robin & Lynn watching "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Robin had popped some popcorn and was munching on it. Robin had never watched "Queer Eye" before because for some reason she thought the idea was a bunch of gay guys trying to "convert" a straight guy! LOL! (I've never watched it before either just because I had other things to do--I found the small snippets I saw to be amusing.) Contractions were coming fairly close together, but between contractions I happily munched on popcorn and chatted.

Steve was sitting on a couch, and I was standing up. For contractions I would put my hands on his shoulders and lean against him to relax. Shortly before 8 I had a contraction that came on quickly, so I had my eyes closed before putting my hands on his shoulders. I accidentally jabbed him in the eye--and hard!--with my right thumb. OUCH! Either I pushed his contact lens out, or he did while rubbing his eye. It really hurt him and I knew it, but for some reason Lynn and Robin and I all cracked up laughing. I felt bad about laughing at Steve (AND laughing through a contraction!), but I couldn't stop, and I lost total bladder control! It was like Niagara Falls, we weren't totally sure at first that it wasn't my water breaking, but we later decided that it wasn't.

After getting upstairs and finishing emptying my bladder and changing out of the wet pants (into a bathrobe...the only clean pants I had that fit me were jeans, which I did NOT want to put on), Lynn & Robin took up residence in our bedroom, but I went back downstairs with Steve to finish cleaning up my mess. LOL! Still munching popcorn, which I mentioned to Steve worried me--when was I going to stop wanting to eat?

About this time the phone rang, and looking on the caller ID I noted that it was our pastor. He doesn't normally call our house, especially on a Saturday night, so I answered it. As he talked, I had a contraction, and silently prayed that he would keep talking until it finished. He did. :-) He wanted me to host a showing of thefilm "Silent Scream" the following day at church since I was the church representative to the Crisis Pregnancy Center, but I declined telling him I thought I was going to have my baby that evening. "Why do you think that?" he asked. I replied that I had just had a contraction while he talked. He prayed for me very quickly, then got off the phone.

Then I went back upstairs. Chatted with the midwives about footprints in baby books, which prompted me to go downstairs and get our Creative Memories albums--our wedding album and the 3 kid's baby books.

Meantime I'm telling Steve he should get Jessica from the neighbor so she doesn't miss the birth (she had seemed to assume from fairly early in the pregnancy that she would attend the birth, and we judged that she would do well with it. We bought a disposable black & white camera for her, and she took some great pictures), but he thinks it is too soon--he wants to wait until I'm ready to push! Ummm...my pushing history is 20 minutes, 10, 5.... Finally I convinced him to call the neighbor to have her get Jessica ready to go so that he can walk over very quickly.

I was getting into the Aqua doula at this point--a bit concerned that it would be too warm because it was 110 degrees. Earlier in the day when I saw that it was 110 I wanted to take the lid off to let it cool, but Steve convinced me not to, that it would cool too much. Well that thing holds heat! We never even plugged the heater on for it! Robin convinced me that it would not be too warm...but you have to understand that she was wearing 2 warm shirts, while prior to getting my bathrobe on I just had a tankini top on...

I did find the heat to be relaxing, but by the time Steve got back with Jessica I was overheating, so I asked him to get ice. Rather than just bringing up the whole bin from the freezer, he filled a 1 qt container, and brought that up, and was slowly dropping a few cubes at a time in. I snapped at him that a few cubes weren't going to do anything, dump the whole thing in and go get the rest! So snappy during contractions...but still friendly and patiently reminding Jessica between contractions that the contractions were okay, it was just my belly"hugging" the baby to help the baby be born...but Jessica, LOL! Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.... So then I'm having another contraction and she keeps talking asking me questions, and finally I just say "Jessica, be QUIET!" Then Steve comes in and starts to pour the ice into the tub and I yell "BE QUIET!" Lynn & Robin gave each other knowing looks.

After that contraction I tell them that I'm feeling like I need to have a BM, and not wanting a repeat of last time, I'm thinking of going to the bathroom, but the contractions are coming so close together and I don't want to do a contraction out of the water...and I'm not really sure that I need to have a BM vs. it just being the baby because I really had been cleansing a lot during the day...so then I'm finally convinced by Lynn to just go try, and I stand up just as a contraction starts to come on, so down I go again... After it was over I tried to hurry to the bathroom. Had a contraction sitting on the toilet, which I did NOT like. Knew pushing stage was VERY imminent, no BM.

Rushed back to the bedroom before the next contraction could come, midwife notes say I was back in the tub at 8:53. I couldn't have had more than 3 contractions before I felt that it was time to push...by which I mean that I was yelling through the contractions--I'm fairly quiet through first stage contractions---perhaps some low oohs & aaahhs are it. Robin thinks my water broke at 9 p.m.--she saw some cloudiness in the tub then--probably the first contraction I was pushing for. Lynn checked to make sure I was complete, which I was. Next contraction the head slowly eased out.

And then it was there for what seemed like forever! Moving around, which was weird feeling, and sometimes painful. I was touching the head and rubbing the hair, which was neat. I could feel a pulse down there and commented on it, not sure if it was the baby's or mine. Finally had a contraction to push out the baby--9:07. Reminded Jessica that she was to announce the gender, and just as she said "there's the penis, it's a boy!" my hand brushed over his boy parts as I was turning him over.

He was turning blue and not breathing, so Lynn wanted to cut the cord to have Robin take him to the O2--but I wouldn't let her--told her to bring the O2 to the baby! So they did. I really wanted to leave the cord intact, I'd wanted delayed cord clamping in previous births, but each time for one reason or another it hadn't happened. But this time I was adament because I'd heard that leaving it intact until the placenta delivered could significantly reduce maternal blood loss--I'd always lost a lot of blood, and with Jason's birth the "uterine massage" to minimize bleeding was the one negative part of an otherwise great birth.

Then I got out of the tub so we could wrap him up. There sitting on the bed naked except for the receiving blanket over Sean and I, I found it odd that I wasn't cold, I was actually hot enough that I asked for the ceiling fan to be turned on. Robin checked the space heater and found that she had accidentally heated the room to 80 degrees Uuuuugggghhhh! (our room is an addition over the garage--under insulated and an insufficient heat run, so we have the space heater)!

Sean was only vaguely interested in nursing, he would stay latched on, but didn't suck much. Finally at 9:35 the placenta delivered. Lynn and Robin kept commenting on how there was just no blood loss...hmmm...and they wondered why I didn't want the cord cut? They ultimately put down 100 mls blood loss on the birth certificate, although they both seemed to think that was an over estimate. I've lost 500-1000 mls on previous births.

Jessica was SO happy to have seen the birth. She excitedly told MIL on the phone a couple of days later about how she knew he was a boy because he had a penis...conversation abruptly ended, and when DH called back to see how shocked MIL was she was laughing, so I guess she's come to accept this stuff from us. LOL.

The girls were both excited about Sean, we had to set a timer for sharing the privilege of holding him! Jason though..he studiously ignored Sean for a few weeks. We couldn't get him to hold Sean or interact at all. He slowly came around, I'm sure once Sean is big enough to actively play "boy games" with him he will appreciate having a brother.

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