And the story goes...

This will be long, but I like to write details right away so I don't forget anything (and because I don't know how to write a condensed version of anything). :) And it gets a little gory near the end so either don't read it and skip to the picture at the end, or know I warned you.

I woke up around 2:30 a.m. and was starving. I went downstairs to eat and ended up playing around on facebook for a bit. By 3:30 I went back to bed and it was then that I started noticing that I was having contractions. They weren't at all consistent, but I knew they were more than the pre-labor contractions I had been having for a while. I tried to sleep, but to no avail.

4:30: Still having completely irregular contractions. Adrian stirred and I woke him up to tell I thought we were having a baby today, but that I wanted him to get a little more sleep since I'd really be needing him later. He said "okay" and promptly rolled over and went back to sleep.

5:15: I got up to go to the bathroom and my water broke (the first time its ever done it on its own). So I woke up Adrian for real and he gave me a blessing. We had planned another home birth so at this point we called our midwives and started getting the house prepped (plastic sheets down, the birth kit and supplies ready, etc).

6:00: Midwives arrived and started their prep work. We called our friend who was going to watch our boys, but couldn't get a hold of anybody. Eventually we got a hold of another friend who came and took the boys at 6:30 (we basically woke up the boys and loaded them into their van).

6:30: Boys gone, contractions picked up. I walked around a lot but eventually found that the best position for me was kneeling on my living room floor hunched over the couch. I labored there the rest of the time.

8:00: needed to push.

8:06 Claire was born!

Here's where things got a little interesting, and my sense of time went completely out the window.

Immediately after she was born, one midwife took her and laid her underneath me (I was still hunched over my couch). I could tell there was something not quite right by the was the midwife was working with her to get her to start breathing. Apparently Claire's cord was wrapped around her neck so tightly that it cut off her oxygen for a bit. So I started talking to her "Claire, you've got to breathe. You HAVE to start breathing." etc. Then as that was happening I heard another midwife say, "Jodie you have to stop bleeding. You're bleeding too much. Tell yourself to stop bleeding!" I looked down and basically saw gushing blood...not very comforting, let me tell you. So now I am just talking up a storm "Claire, breathe! Jodie, stop bleeding!" etc. I'd say it was an intense couple of minutes.

When Claire finally started breathing she was handed off to Adrian. The midwives took me, laid me on the floor, propped up my feet, and proceeded to try to stop the bleeding. It wasn't stopping. Then I blacked out for a minute. After a few more minutes of trying, the midwife said to Adrian and I that if she could get the bleeding to stop in the next ten minutes, like she anticipated she would, that everything would be fine but that she'd feel better about calling EMS as a safety precaution in case she couldn't. We agreed and EMS was called. Fortunately for us, the midwife stopped the bleeding before EMS arrived. The men came and had to do a bunch of tests and whatnot for protocol's sake, but they were nice and respectful of our choice to have a home birth. I did black out again while they were there, but my blood pressure was fine so after signing papers saying we did not want to go to the hospital they left.

And that's kind of where the excitement ended (fortunately). We got cleaned up, Claire nursed like she had been doing it for forever, and she and I spent the rest of the day exhausted and sleeping on the couch (and ordering Adrian around). Our friends kept the boys overnight and even took them to chuch the next morning so we got a nice babymoon period to rest and get to know each other. My only real complaint is the exhaustion I feel (from lack of blood mostly) but the other unpleasant things that accompany labor are fairly minimal this time around.

We are now loving on this baby girl and admiring how wonderful she is. We haven't taken very many pictures, but I guess that's just the way life goes sometimes. We're excited for my mom to come out next week and take some darling ones of her that we can show off. :) Here is one to satiate some curiosity. More later!