Rachel Cunliffe

A week ago yesterday I gave birth to Austin Ernest Cunliffe – a gorgeous baby boy weighing 9 pounds 2 ounces and 52cm long.  After having quite a long labour with my other son Eli, I expected it to go quicker, but not quite as quickly as it did!

While everything is still fresh in my mind, I wanted to write about it – much like Karen did with her birth story blog post.  If reading about labour’s not your thing, move right along ;)

I woke up last Wednesday at 5am and had a couple of very minor contractions – I’d had others over the past three and a half weeks and this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.  I was four days past my due date (not overdue in my mind since Eli was born five days after his due date).  I rolled over and went back to sleep.

At 7:30am I started to get more contractions, but again they were so minor I got up and went about the day as normal – had breakfast, got Eli ready for Montessori and got on with things.  Naturally, I told Regan but didn’t know if they were going to stop and didn’t want anyone to make a fuss (or start asking me regularly how things were) so I didn’t tell anyone else.  I sat down at my desk just after 9am and replied to emails and worked away as usual while jotting down in TextEdit the times of the still minor, but regular contractions:

9:22am, 9:29am, 9:38am, 9:47am, 9:57am, 10:06am, 10:15am, 10:22am, 10:29am, 10:38am, 10:46am, 10:57am, 11:05am, 11:13am, 11:21am, 11:28am, 11:34am, 12:11pm, 12:17pm, 12:25pm, 12:34pm, 12:42pm, 12:48pm, 12:57pm, 1:06pm…

I figured I’d probably go into proper labour that night, and have the baby early the next morning.  During the contractions, I’d shut my eyes and rock my desk chair and think about being back in Hawaii because it was raining and hailing outside and generally hideous weather all day.  I read that thinking about waves/water can help distract you during contractions.

Wasn’t super hungry for lunch, but ate a couple of pieces of toast with honey and kept drinking water.  I then realised I hadn’t taken a photo of my baby bump at 40+ weeks so this is the one I snapped at 1:27pm:

I was slowly getting a bit uncomfortable with the contractions but I still figured I had ages to go so decided to take a break from work and go watch the first episode of the new season of House – but I was annoyed I was missing watching chunks of it due to contractions so turned it off and found it more uncomfortable than sitting on my office chair so went back to work.

At 2pm, I sent a message on MSN to my brother saying “might be having this baby today after all – either today/tomorrow”

2:08pm, 2:15pm, 2:23pm, 2:31pm, 2:40pm, 2:46pm, 2:50pm…

At about this point, I decided to call my midwife and tell her I was having regular contractions but was still feeling fine and would let her know if things progressed to closer together ones.

At 2:52pm I sent a txt to my dad saying “Hello one baby on way prob tonight”.  They left work to come pick up Eli.

At 3:13pm I sent an email to a client, Jeff, saying I was going to stop working as the baby was on its way.

My parents came by and picked up Eli sometime after 4pm and by this point I thought it was a good idea to go up and get checked by my midwife’s partner who was up at the birthing unit (my midwife was about 30 minutes away at a clinic).  Contractions still weren’t 4-6 minutes apart or regular but a couple after 4pm were close together and quite strong.  I figured I should get checked and at least know how far along I was, even if I had to go back home again.

We got to the birthing unit and waited around a bit while the midwife finished the appointment before me.  At 4:35pm, she saw me and told me I was 5cm dilated already!  I was pretty surprised, wasn’t expecting that at all.  She called my midwife and I remember being surprised she was telling her to hurry and later on hearing updates on the phone as to where she was.

At 5:15pm I got into the birthing pool – I had an “almost” water birth with Eli and hoped to be able to stay in the pool for the birth this time.  I remember thinking that I’d be in there for a while because it wasn’t that painful yet.  My main midwife arrived at 5:30pm and I remember her saying that the baby was going to be born really soon and was really encouraging — I was still surprised that she thought he’d come so quickly.

She was right though — at 5:58pm Austin was born in the water after only three minutes of pushing.

Unlike last time, I wasn’t totally exhausted from a long pre-labour period; I was so aware of everything going on.  One of the most amazing things during the labour was being able to feel him moving down and realising I was making huge progress.

I was overwhelmed with the most amazing feeling to have given birth like that without complications or drugs or stitches and not being in intense agony. I felt on top of the world and couldn’t stop laughing and smiling and looking down at my new baby boy.  Here’s photos of that moment just after he was born:

Austin Ernest Cunliffe, born at Helensville Birthing Centre at 5:58pm on September 22nd weighing 9 pounds 2 ounces (4.15kg), 52cm long and a pretty decent head size of 37.5cm!

You hear so many stories of horrid labours and all these interventions and not enough of the good stories – so here’s to hearing more of the encouraging labour stories in our Western society.