Patience or Pain?

This is the story of a birth.

Baby was born last week. It started at about 6pm on Monday night. To be honest, terms like "pre-labour" and "established labour" annoy me. Contractions are contractions, and regardless of how long or how far apart they are, as far as I'm concerned, contractions mean labour, plain and simple. *Technically* what I experienced for pretty much 24 hours was not "established" labour. However, it was enough to keep me awake the entire night, and since my previous two babies were born less than twelve hours after the first contraction, that felt like a LOOOONG time!

By Tuesday afternoon I was feeling physically and emotionally drained - I just wanted it all to be over. I figured intense, unrelenting pain had to be better than the waiting. At perhaps 6.30pm I labour finally became "established" and I had a bath for a bit of relief... at this point I was getting pretty... uncomfortable. About 7pm my sister, P, arrived for her visit, which we had planned the week before. Soon after that, the Raamonster and I headed out to the room in our garage, already set up with a mattress covered with a tarp and old sheets, ready to receive Baby in style. Meanwhile P kept our girlies occupied jumping on the trampoline. Soon after that my waters broke and contractions were really coming thick and fast. It was about at that point that I started to feel like I just couldn't cope and the screaming began! It felt like forever, but only a short time later, Baby's head was out, shortly followed by her body. What had taken so long in coming was finally over at 7.50pm on Tuesday night.

Raamonster went and got the girls who came to greet their new baby sister who was still wet and sticky. A little later I carried her over to the bed for a cuddle and to wait for the placenta to emerge. It wasn't really a comfortable position and the placenta wasn't as quick in coming out as with my others, so I decided to come inside and take a bath (and clean off baby who was now covered in poo!). It was just before I got into the bath that the placenta pretty much fell out (expertly caught by Raamonster - baby was still attached to the cord!), so we recruited P to cut the cord. P and I were both feeling light-headed at this point, but thankfully she managed to cut the cord *before* she fainted! ... and thankfully I didn't faint at all, since I was holding Baby! Then once Baby and I were cleaned up and dressed we all went to bed. To be continued...