Birth Story: Carter Presley

40w 1d - the last day I'll ever be pregnant? Let's hope so!

Posted Dec 1st @ 12pm

All throughout this pregnancy for some reason I'd been expecting to give birth a little bit earlier than my expected due date. I guess since Cash was born the day after his due date something made me feel like our second baby should come a little faster and a little earlier. So, when my due date was fast approaching I started to get a bit weary. Wasn't he supposed to be out by now?  Every time someone asked me what was taking so long or if I was in labor/had given birth, I winced. When my due date actually came and I hadn't gone into labour I was feeling pretty agitated.

The whole pregnancy had been full of trials and tribulations. First of all, it was totally unexpected. Then my morning sickness period lasted a whopping six months. When I finally stopped being ill the acid reflux kicked in in a major way, and that was so bad in the last few weeks I'd actually started to develop Gastroparesis as the reflux had caused nerve damage in my tummy and I was having a lot of trouble digesting food. I was fed up with being pregnant to say the least and chasing a toddler around in that state made me want to tear my hair out. Every day it dragged on I was getting just a little bitcrazier.

Finally, on the morning after my due date (which was November 30th), I woke up with some pretty strong abdominal pain. Due to the gastropareses I wasn't sure if it was a digestive issue and I wasn't to keen on pulling the trigger and calling our midwives because we'd already made two trips to the hospital under similar circumstances only to be assured I wasn't in labour and my pain was from severe digestive issues and was causing me to have Braxton Hicks contractions. 

Last time I was in labour, I back laboured all day before realizing I was even in labour. I had almost no uterine/abdominal contractions until I was in the hospital about to deliver and so this time I wasn't totally sure what I was feeling was in fact early labor. The pain was coming every 15 or so minutes, lasting about a minute at a time, so that was different from the other abdominal pain I'd been having in the previous weeks. I got up and had a shower to see if that would help and they only got more frequent. By 9am the pains were coming every 5-6 minutes and lasting about 1 minute each. We paged the midwives and told them we figured this was it and waited for further instruction. 

The contractions were pretty consistent for the majority of the day, sometimes they'd fluctuate in length or distance between, but for most of the morning they didn't change too much. I could talk through them and was in a pretty good mood so I did a fair bit of cleaning to prepare for bringing baby home and called my parents to come pick up Cash. Once Cash was in good hands and the house was clean, I had a major craving for a whopper (I crave burgers before I give birth! Haha) and Colin and I drove to Burger King to get me my "final meal". 

We paged the midwife when we returned home and around 3pm we decided we'd be heading into the hospital for 4pm just to see how things were progressing "down there". 

We left a bit later than we'd hoped and traffic was bad, so we got to the hospital closer to 4:30 (our midwife called at quarter-after to make sure we hadn't delivered on the highway!) and the midwives (student midwife, Nicole and our on-call midwife, Andrea) took me into triage and assessed me. I wasn't expecting to be much more than 4cm, but when they checked I was already 6cm dialated and fully effaced. We decided to keep progress going we'd get into the birthing suite and then break my membranes. By 5:30 we were moved into the beautiful luxurious brand new birthing suite (it was huge!) and my contractions were pretty much still consistently 1-2 mins and 4-5 mins apart. 

Nicole broke my water around 6PM and right away things took a turn. This time I wanted to try the nitrous oxide (gas) as a pain management tool since I figured it'd be my last delivery and we were already progressing well. To be honest as the contractions got harder (they were really painful once my water was broken) the gas didn't help with the pain so much as it just allowed me to concentrate on doing something through each contraction to get through it without ripping Colin's face off. I practiced a lot of choral breathing and focal points as well and things progressed very quickly. 

I took the first few contractions standing beside the bed or looking out the window, then I moved to a chair to sit and use the nitrous. Nicole brought in the birthing ball (it's like a large exercise ball) and as soon as I sat down I wanted to get back up because it hurt so bad. Nicole assured me that was good because it was opening things up and would help baby move down faster, so I stayed on against my own will and BOY was she right!!! Three contractions later and I couldn't take it any more and scrambled into bed onto my back. I was starting to feel a lot of pushing pressure and Nicole checked me and I was 9cm but had a lip. She asked me not to push because she didn't want me to strain and wanted to stretch the baby over the lip but my body had another plan... I couldn't hold it back. When she checked me only a minute prior the baby was at 0 station, and as soon as the next contraction came on I felt my body pushing and she looked down and out baby's head was coming as she was paging our on-call midwife to get back in the room to do baby care. I remember her saying "don't push! don't push!" and I focused as hard as I could to hold my body back. 

I tried to keep my vocal focus through the pushing and made really low level singing sounds. If my screams got high pitched that's when things were really out of my control. As his head emerged the cord was wrapped around his neck and even though my body was pushing him whether I liked it or not, I did everything I could to hold the pushes back so they could loosen the cord and then I gave about five or six small controlled pushes to get the rest of his body out. As quick as a flash he was on my tummy. 

Only an hour before we were guessing as to when we thought baby would make his arrival and I couldn't have imagined that only a few minutes later I'd be experiencing such relief to finally be done labouring! 

Carter Presley Williams was born at 7:15pm after only 2 Hours and 56 Mins of active labour and no pushing whatsoever!!! He weighed 8lbs 7.5oz (which for us is small-seeming since our first was 9lbs 1oz) and was 21.5 inches long. His oxygen was a bit low because he came through so extraordinarily fast, so he was a bit greyish purple at first and was administered a little bit of O2 and pinked up really fast. 8 on the Apgar at 1 Min and 9 at 5 mins, so he did fantastically as well!

Overall the experience was probably about as good as I could've wished for. Anybody who's done it knows that labour hurts pretty damn bad and all you can hope for is that it goes by fast, but I never could've expected it'd move at such a fast pace. As far as labouring goes, I think my experience was pretty top notch and as with my first birth, our midwives helped guide me through the process as quickly and supportively as they could. 

That being said, I hope I never have to do it again!!! :)

Total labour- 2 hrs 56 mins, NO pushing!!!!

Me and Carter about 10 minutes after delivery.

All better! Dressed and (hopefully) ready to turn in for the night!

Carter - Day One.