Elizabeth's Story--Liam's Birth
Arlington, VA
Liam was born at 3:46 a.m. on Thursday, October 28, at home. He weighed 9 lbs, 1 oz, and was 21 inches long - with a 14.5 inch head. We had a lightning-fast labor of 2.5 hours, and the midwives arrived just in time to help with the crowning! 
I went to bed at 9 pm on Wednesday, and as I lay down, I felt lots of funny squirming and rotating that I had never felt before - I commented to my husband that I thought maybe the baby was finally turning from posterior to anterior, and I sure hoped s/he would stay that way until labor started. Little did I know, we wouldn't have long to wait. That night I woke up around 1:15 a.m. and felt a pretty strong contraction. I got up to go to the bathroom and thought I would go back to bed and see if any more came. Sure enough, there were a couple of others, also relatively strong, and I couldn't get comfortable in bed, so I decided to walk around a bit and if they didn't go away while walking, I would wake my husband. With every contraction, I felt like I had to poop, so I went downstairs to a different bathroom so I wouldn't wake anyone else, and within 15 minutes I was groaning a bit and finding it harder to relax during the contractions. At 2 am, I finally made it back upstairs to DH to wake him and tell him to start the water in the birth pool, as I thought that would help me handle the contractions better. At this point, the contractions were very, very strong in my back and becoming quite painful, so I was convinced that the baby hadn't turned and that this would be another long back labor just like I’d had with my daughter - I really wanted to be in the water as I felt I was losing control of the contractions and not dealing well with them. After starting the pool, my husband came back to help me and timed a few contractions - we realized they were only a minute apart! So at 2:30ish, he quickly called the midwife, and when she heard me moaning in the background, she said it sounded like there wasn't much time and they would come right over. Meanwhile, he put our three year old daughter out of our bed into my mom's bed, and by 3:00, they were both up because I was making so much noise. The contractions were excruciating, centered in my back and my lower belly, and I was moaning quite loudly throughout them. I must have hit transition sometime around 2:45, when I said to myself, I can't do this, I can't bear this pain, I need something to get through it all! By just after 3:00, I had forgotten all that and slowly lost myself in each contraction, just trying to ride them out and get through it the best I could.
Gradually I realized that my body was starting to push all on its own. I never felt any urge to push, really, I just noticed that I already was pushing - in hindsight, it's so amazing to me that my body knew exactly what and how to do it all, I was just following along! I mentioned to my husband that I could feel myself pushing, and we went into our bathroom as I was bleeding and also pooping with a lot of the contractions - also, I was only comfortable resting on the toilet. I had tried leaning over the sink counter to ease the pressure on my back, and my husband had tried to apply counter pressure, but nothing seemed to help the pain. At about 3:30, I felt something bulging through my vagina and I said to him, "Here comes the head!" But when he got down to check it, he assured me it was just the bag of waters. The bag was bulging through on its own and was really large and full - after another contraction or two, it must have broken at the top because it fell down intact, with all the water inside, right into the toilet - it looked like a small balloon. Within another minute or two, the midwives were arriving and my husband was trying to help my mom let them in and rush them upstairs - I was alone for a contraction or two and it was terrible trying to work through it on my own, feeling that I was pushing through this horrible pain with no help. But in a minute, one midwife was with me, my husband was at my side again, and the other was setting up in the bedroom. After another contraction, the head became visible and both midwives came in to help with crowning and delivery. At this point, I was standing in a semi-squat in front of the toilet, supporting myself on my husband - within a push or two, Liam was crowning, and then another 2 pushes later, his head was out, anterior, just like it should have been, and from there another contraction brought out his slippery beautiful body. There was never such a fitting description as Ring of Fire! I felt like his head was there crowning for minutes, but my husband and the midwives told me later it couldn't have been more than 20 seconds or so. 
My daughter and my mom were in and out throughout the labor and delivery and my daughter handled it very well - the only thing that seemed to bother her were the smells of all the bodily fluids and blood, but my moaning and screaming didn't faze her one bit, luckily. The midwives said that he was a big baby, and I thought that he must be over 8 lbs, like my daughter was, but I never dreamed he would be over 9 lbs! We think it was his size and the speed of labor that caused all the back pain I felt - and that he probably had turned the night before, signaling my body that it was time to start labor. I had a small tear, no stitches, and aside from general tiredness and soreness, I felt great. Liam was a little slow to nurse and I had to coax him to open wide the first few times, but he quickly became a pro and was permanently attached to the breast for a while. For those first few days, we did nothing but soak up every second enjoying his warm, sweet smell and the lovely soft folds of his wrinkly new skin.