Aria's Birth Story part 1

Let me just start by saying that Aria’s birth was long and hard fought for.  Levi’s birth came upon us as somewhat of a surprise, he was two weeks early and we were expecting him to be late as most firstborns are. He was breech so we had to do a C-Section, he was out of my body and into the world in what felt like the blink of an eye. 
With Aria we were ready. We were bracing ourselves for the VBAC, hoping, praying… three and four weeks before her due date we were focusing in on what the birth would be like, me practicing relaxation techniques, using oils, doing lots of yoga, making sure and getting a good amount of sleep at night… I had all of her clothes washed and ready, her bassinet in its place. All of this gets you psychologically geared up to… wait. And wait.

So my due date came, January the 5th and I had barely dilated, had not effaced, nothing seemed to even be getting ready. I thought, "my body's not going to go into labor, they are just going to have to go in and take her out." So many women had told me about how they would experience contractions early or how they would go into their Dr's appointments and be a 2 or a 3 ... I just wasn't really believing that I was going to have a baby.


The next morning, it was sort of still morning, around 1 am I was woken up by contractions. I tried to go back to sleep but they kept waking me up, so I decided to go hang out in the living room, listen to some relaxation music, post on facebook and time my contractions. When Ben finally woke up I asked him if he wanted to have a baby today. We were both excited, my body was actually kicking into labor... this was unbelievable. Ben called in to work (thinking we would have a baby that day) and took the day off. We decided to bring Levi to my parents that afternoon in case things really took off.


I thought they did... we laid down for a nap and I started to have harder contractions closer together... it was exciting. I thought, "we are going to the hospital soon and we are going to have a baby today!" Was I ever wrong.

We got up and started cleaning. Ben said he was doing it because he was just restless and wanted me to have plenty of room to labor. He is a sweet, wonderful man.

I called Cora, my doula, (you can read about Birth Works and doulas here) and she came over around 5 or so. We also called our friend Debbie, who is a professional photographer, she came over to take pictures of early labor. She photographed Aria's whole birth, but I'll talk more about that later. It will be kind of cool to show her documentation of her birth someday...

So they came over, we felt for positioning to make sure Aria was head down (we weren't going to make that mistake again!) but Cora couldn't tell if she was posterior (which is not good) or anterior (which is preferable, it means the baby is facing the mother's spine). We thought she might be posterior which would be why my body wasn't kicking into heavy labor yet, when babies are posterior many times they won't apply the correct pressure on the mother's cervix. I was also having pain in my lower back, which is a sign of a posterior baby. Side note: if you are getting ready to have a baby you need to learn about this stuff, I am also going to highly recommend a doula because I think I would have ended up with another c-section had it not been for the wisdom of my doulas to stay home and just try to naturally turn the baby. We would have ended up in the hospital for days had we gone in when I thought I needed to go in. I would not have been able to eat and probably would have labored in the bed the whole time with monitors on and only ice chips to chew on. We were very thankful for Cora (and Amy who comes later in the story)'s wisdom.

With the back labor I called the chiropractor. John Vincent with Chenal Chiropractic if you are an expectant mother he does techniques to help align your uterus and pelvis especially for delivery. He told me not to hesitate to call him, he would come to my house and adjust me if I felt like I needed it. With lower back pain, I thought, "he told me not to hesitate." Even with the Razorback game coming on he still came :). It helped, but I think she was still posterior. I needed to do something more proactive to really turn her.

Ben also had asked out neighbor, you can read about him here and he said his spiritual parents were coming over to watch the game and they would come beforehand and pray for me. So then these people I didn't even know came in and just prayed over me. They anointed me with oil and just asked that the Lord would make it an easy delivery. This is where I will say that we can ask and pray for something, but in the end we have to surrender to God's will. This delivery would be far from easy. The beauty of that moment when they were praying over me was just the fact, and I started crying, when he was just proclaiming the glory and the holiness of God. I remember being so filled with awe at how perfect and good and true God is.

I was also just tired. I had been in "early labor" since 1 in the morning and it was now around 7 at night. I just wanted to get through this.

I'm going to pause here, I'll talk about the next day later. :)