The birth

My water broke at 4pm on January 27th while I was watching YouTube in the living room. Aro just left like 3 minutes ago to teach at Children's Museum, but he was still very close to come home right away. I took a bath and we started timing my contraction. By 8pm it was already 3 minutes apart. One of my midwife, Stephanie came and stayed with us until 10pm. Then we all went to the Alma birthing center.

I was so ready to give birth and anticipating my baby to be born at least by the morning. But then the morning came and I was still dealing with my contractions. The sun disappeared and the evening came. My baby has not arrived yet... My head midwife, Kori checked me a couple of times by then and figured my baby's head is tilted and stuck. They came up with many ways to open up my pelvis and straighten the baby's head. I also couldn't urinate because the baby's head was blocking my bladder, so they emptied me by a catheter.

It was around 9 pm on January 28th, I was told to surrender to the pain and focus. I was alone and really concentrated on the contraction. I spoke with my baby and worked really hard together. We welcomed every contraction. Even asked for bigger contraction for the next. It was quiet and spiritual. Aro came into the tub around midnight and worked with us for the very last time... but no luck. It was a time for me to decide to go to a hospital. It was so hard to tell Aro that I'm giving up a natural birth, but the baby just didn't even drop.



As soon as I arrived at the hospital, they gave me Epidural. I was finally pain-free after 32 hours! We decided to go ahead and do the C-section as doctor suggested because the baby has been in meconium for too long and in stress. It was really hard to decide to let go of our dream of natural birth, but we just didn't want to let our baby go through any more stress. Here I am right before the C-section surgery. I've never been treated this much at the hospital in my life.



The surgery went very quickly. I felt all the pulling and pushing but no pain. How strange! All of the sudden, my baby was born. It was 9:37 am on January 29th, Saturday. I heard the doctor was saying as he pulling my baby, "Look at this big head!" "Oh my God, he's huge" He was 9lb 12oz, 20 inches long.

Here is papa to welcome our baby! He was healthy enough so that they didn't have to suction his lung for meconium. He cried beautifully and turned pink right away, I heard.



Greeting with my baby :)



After the surgery, I had a terrible shivers and vomit... but of course nurses took care of it with drugs. No problem! Now I can really enjoy bonding with my baby. Well, my memory here is very patchy with exhaustion to be honest.

We stayed at the hospital for 4 days. Baby was poked every possible vein for many many dosages of antibiotics. I was on antibiotics, painkillers, gas pills, stool softeners and practiced breathing deeply, standing up, walking, going to the bathroom, taking a shower, eating, drinking. It was a very hard recovery but I did recover quickly and couldn't wait to go home and introduce our baby to our dogs.