Kate Noelle's Birth Story

I'll start out by saying, I never expected a labour like I had with Kate. When Dr. Eckwalanga heard about my labour/delivery with Natasha, she said it was fairly fast for a 'first timer' and I may have a low threshold. Dr. Spence who delivered Tash told me I had a fast delivery and for the next pregnancy I should camp out in the parking lot. Even Owen suggested I may have a fast delivery. Me? I laughed them all off and said I doubted I'd have a fast labour. So now I get to eat those words.

On Dec. 16th (my due date) I stayed up until 1am chatting with a friend. My famous last words to her at 1am when I said I better go to bed were "Watch me go into labour tonight on like 2hrs sleep" hah

3am I woke up to a contraction. I poked Owen and said "Mmm I think I had a contraction" to which he said "Was it?" and while I thought about it for a bit longer, he went back to sleep and I tried to do the same. I figured this would be like my labour with Tash, I'd have one contraction every hour for the next several hours before anything 'serious' started to happen. How wrong I was.

I had 3 contractions between 3 and 3.30am before I had to get out of bed because I could not lay there. I was still in denial though and while tracking my contractions on my Touch (contraction ap) I rocked in the glider in our room breathing in and out. My contractions 'quickly' went from 12m apart to 10 to 5-6m apart, all the while letting Owen continue to sleep, blissfully unaware. I just felt I had more 'time' and later thought the app was wrong, and my contractions could not be that close together.

At one point I got up and made some toast, had something to drink and organized my labour bag and overnight bag. It was at around 7.30am I decided perhaps I should wake up Owen. He got up, saw how close my contractions were together and decided he better call our friend B to come watch Tash.

While we waited for her, my contractions continued to get closer together. I was having a bit more trouble breathing through them and getting annoyed that Owen kept leaving me alone between them. He later told me he was checking the clock on the stove and getting a bit nervous as they were one to two minutes apart.

I'm not sure on the exact time, but before B arrived I started feeling the urg to push. After about the 3rd contraction of having this 'feeling' I told Owen "Would it scare you if I said I want to push?" and then said "I think you need to call 911, I don't think we will make it to the hospital". At that point I knew there was no way I could sit down in the truck for 15-20m with how close my contractions were.

Owen called 911, explained the situation, and while he was on the phone with them B showed up. At this point my hands/arms were starting to feel numb and tingly. I think this was a result of trying to control my breathing through the contractions and being unsuccessful.

After B brought Em in and went back to her car I went to the bathroom to pee. The 911 operator asked O if my water had broken and within seconds of her asking, it did when I went to get off the flush. At that point I got off the flush and knew I could no longer not push. I raced upstairs to our bedroom and as I was laying there, EMS showed up and the Paramedics walked into our bedroom just as K was crowning. Also at this point, the Fire Department showed up as well. hah Both of who told Owen they were super happy that EMS beat them here.

Within 30 secs of the paramedics showing up, Kate Noelle was born at 8.42am. :0) I believe it was 2 or 3 pushes. A huge difference from N's birth, which was 46m of pushing!

After they checked K out and made sure she was ok, I was put on the stretcher and we went to the hospital. Now, I may have laboured and delivered K without meds, however I'm the biggest baby otherwise. I was in a huge amount of pain on the way to PLC because I had not delivered my placenta, so my uterus was contracting like crazy and I would almost say it was more painful then labour. Seriously.

We made it to the hospital in about 20m where I was taken to a Labour & Delivery suite. I delivered the placenta, asked to look at it and then had 2 doctors and 3 nurses check it out. The doctor pushed on my uterus, which hurt like a mo fo and then unfortunately, I had to get stitched up. :0( I tore exactly how I did with Tash. I don't think there was anyway to avoid it given K's delivery. Maybe if I'd had a midwife who was massaging as she crowned/came out, but that was not an option.

Finally the stitching, poking, prodding, uterus pressing was over and I was taken to my room where I was only harassed about peeing. :p I do not remember them being so obsessed with it last time. Last time after I delivered Tash, they were asking me every 5m it seemed if I had pooped yet. hah

It's been almost 10 days and looking back on her birth I'm having trouble believing how my labour went. It's seems surreal. I know it definitely happened, it just seems unbelievable that she came as fast as she did and I was in such denial as to how close my contractions were. Everyone keeps saying "for the next one.." hah