In the darkness of Sept 4th at 3am I lay on my bed relaxing through & surrendering to each contraction. My midwife arrived & observed an intense contraction and then verified that I was in labor… relief washed over me!
I was done! Pregnancy was done!
I was not afraid of birth.
I’d had a beautiful almost pain free home birth with my last baby & had two beautiful words from the Lord about this one: Joy & Rest.
As a fourth time mom I went into labor mode taking my time to rest in the early labor stage.
The sun came up.
My mother arrived.
The big kids got picked up by my in laws.
My husband notified work he wouldn’t be in. And the stress of the waiting game disappeared taking the dozens of inquiries from friends and family from the days before away.
I was finally FINALLY done with the hardest pregnancy yet. I fully anticipated this to be a quick process but the day wore on. And after getting in the tub to help relax my worn out back muscles and laughing through some very intense contractions despite the water relief everything came to a crashing halt.
Upon checking we found very little progress had been made for the duration and intensity of the day. We tried resting and I could tell my body was getting tired. My back was not as strong as it had been in previous pregnancies.
Since I couldn’t sleep through contractions we decided to try and speed things up. Walking worked great but my back was so tired I needed chairs every 3ft to hold myself up with like a walker. Every time I sat down to rest being out of breath contractions stopped.
Midwives decided to go get dinner & see if I could sleep some. When I went back to bed and everything really did completely stop I knew that crib next to my bed was going to remain empty and all this whole days worth of work felt for nothing.
Flash backs of my 55hr labor with Joelle started creeping in.
Fear came crashing into my exhausted brain and I knew if labor restarted later that night I wouldn’t be strong enough.
I cried a lot.
But I also found this gratitude that there was this time of physical rest even though my mind and emotions were in turmoil.
To be continued…
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