The night I went into labour was just like any other night in the lead up to his birth. I’d made dinner and since my husband was running late from work, we had eaten (Mr Moo and I), and had finished cleaning up before he got home.
As he opened the door into our family room, my waters broke as I was sitting on the couch. I stood up and asked him if I had a wet patch on the back of my dress and he informed me that I had just wet myself. I told him that it felt like my waters had broken and he told me not to be silly.
We continued our evening – bathing Mr Moo and getting him ready for bed. But at 8pm I started having contractions and I thought that this could in fact be go time. These contractions were coming every 10 minutes, so I thought that I would have a shower myself and try and calm down and hopefully they would stop (as I was still two weeks off my due date).
I tried to hop into bed around 10pm, but every time I would lie down I was unable to cope with the pain of the contraction. So I told my husband that I was going to walk around in the living room as standing or kneeling was more bearable.
At 11pm, I called the hospital and informed them that my contractions were 4 minutes apart and they informed me that I should probably start sorting out Mr Moo and make my way into the hospital. Because I was thinking I still had two weeks (possibly 3 weeks considering I thought that I would again go over due) to go… my hospital bag wasn’t ready.
So I ran around grabbing things to finish off packing my hospital bag and then packing a bag for Mr Moo. I thought that I would have time to write out instructions for what he ate for breakfast and his ‘usual routine’ with nap time at 1pm to give to his carer – but all of that went out the window.
By the time I had go everything together and finally convinced my sleeping husband to pull the car out of the garage it was 12:30am and my contractions were coming every two and a half minutes. We dropped Mr Moo off at a friends place and called the hospital again to let them know that I was on my way in and that I would like to labour in the bath.
We arrived at the hospital at 1am, I was monitored for 20 minutes and then allowed to hop into the bath. The bath was so nice and I am so glad that I had been able to have the room with the bath. The midwife came in and softened the lighting and then informed us that we were able to play some music if we wanted. My husband pulled out his phone and hit ‘shuffle’ – Mavin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’ came on and the midwife had a little chuckle.
I laboured in the bath, rocking on my knees through the contractions with my husband rubbing my back. He’d calm me down when they became tougher by telling me to slow down my breathing. I’d push the pain away in my mind on every out breathe.
I asked if I could have some gas and air, but I only got in two puffs before my body did in involentary push – and the midwife asked me if I was pushing. It was time to get out off the bath and have my baby. I couldn’t believe that I had made it through transition!
I got up onto the bed and had another puff on the gas and air before I started pushing. I was mentally prepared for lots of pushing because I had pushed for 2 hours and 30 minutes with Mr Moo and then had a vaccum extraction. But I pushed for 20 minutes this time around before I was able to hold our little Dude in my arms.
It was funny because I must have said I was tired or that it was hurting and then my husband said ‘come on one more push’ and both the midwife and my OB were like ‘oh no, more then that’ – but two pushes later he was out!
He’d arrived so early that we hadn’t picked out a name yet – so we sat in our adrenaline haze discussing names for an hour or so until we finalised a name and said that we would give it the day to sink in and then let everyone know at the end of the day.
So out he popped at 4:20am on the 25th of September, weighing 3.65kgs and 51cms long. Two weeks early but definietly not looking early at all. He’d arrived on my sister’s birthday and so I decided to call her at 5am. She answered the phone sounding a little frantic and when I said ‘Happy Birthday’, she was like ‘I can’t believe that you called me to say Happy Birthday at 5am in the morning.’ And then I told her that I had had the baby and we both cried happy tears.
Everyone in the hospital asked if we would be back for a girl, now that we have two little boys and my husband informed them that we would be back for two more boys and then two girls. I said that even though I said that giving birth to our little Dude was easier – it wasn’t easy!
It was such a calm birthing experience and we have brought just the calmest little baby into the world and we are truly blessed!
Let’s see how we go when we have two little boys running around! Any tips on raising two under two would be greatly appreciated… or if you have advice on raising boys in general?
