He's Finally Here! (My Birth Story)

Colton Shemuel

This pregnancy was long. I was really at the end of my rope and being that I was 41.6 weeks along I knew that a medical induction was looming around the corner. My midwives were awesome and wanted to do everything they could to help me avoid it, there was even talk of acupuncture! But after getting my ultrasound on Monday afternoon we decided to move forward with a castor oil induction, because my fluids were low and hadn’t risen since my ultrasound on Friday. 

I took the castor oil around 5:30pm and just waited for something to happen. At first I felt fine but maybe a little crampy. So I decided to make dinner and get the family taken care of before I was in a place where I couldn’t. We ate dinner around 7:30pm and then I decided to try to get some rest just in case. I fell asleep around 8:30pm just feeling a little crampy. I finally woke up at around 11:45pm but only because my husband woke me up to talk. Then the castor oil side effects hit! I’ll save you the gory details but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I wasn’t running to the bathroom or anything like that, it was surprisingly very manageable. 

Around 12am I started having some contractions that were nice and deep (and painful!) but not very close together. So we just kind of kept hanging out then at around 1:30/2am I started having contractions that I couldn’t bear. Once they got to 5 minutes apart I called my midwife, that was around 3am and she listened to me through a contraction and decided to come over. Once she got here around 3:45am things started to move quickly. I labored in bed and just kept working through the contractions. Then all of a sudden my body just started pushing! I had never experienced this before because both of my previous births were medicated. After a few pushes my water broke, it wasn’t a gush but more of a trickle. With each contraction my body just naturally pushed and I went with it. Although at first I was a little confused lol. My midwife suggested that I get on all fours and see if that was more comfortable than my side. It was for awhile so I pushed like that until my arms got too tired. At some point the back up midwife and a student midwife arrived but I was in my birth zone so I have no idea when that happened. 

When I was too tired to hold myself up anymore I rolled onto my side and my husband was helping to hold one of my legs up. That was when the real fun began! With each push I could feel the baby coming down. When I got to the point of the “ring of fire” I was relieved that it was no where near as bad as I thought it would be! Not that it didn’t hurt, it just wasn’t what I expected. The hardest part was that while he was crowning I didn’t have a contraction. So he was just hanging out and stretching me for awhile. Which looking back was a good thing even though I was like “someone please help me!” My midwife suggested nipple stimulation to try to bring on a contraction which helped and then I was able to push some more. I delivered each part of him with a push! He didn’t just slide out like my other two, but I’m sure that’s because he was so much bigger than they were! 

Our baby boy was born at 5:44am January 28th weighing 9lbs! I 100% believe that this birth went as smoothly as it did because I was in constant prayer. With each contraction I prayed for my Abba to be with me and to help me through it. With each push I quietly called on His Name. It was exactly what I needed to do in order to stay focused. Everyone commented after the birth about how peaceful it was. It was my first time having a baby unmedicated and it was perfect!