We went about our day, running last-minute errands to get ready for the birth just in case. The contractions kept coming, 7-8 minutes apart, all day. Later in the afternoon, while we were shopping in Target, I thought I felt my water break (it hadn't), and went to the ladies’ room to find I'd lost the uterine seal. So we excitedly finished our shopping and went straight home, calling Lynn on the way with the update. As soon as we got home, I called Dianne (our midwife) to let her know as well. While we were on the phone, she timed the contractions at three minutes apart. She told me to eat as much as I could, and see if I could get any rest. The contrx stayed 3 minutes apart the rest of the night as I ate dinner and went to bed at about 10:30. I stayed in bed - getting a couple of quick snoozes - until I couldn’t stand lying down through the contractions anymore, about 1:30 (at least Ed got a couple of hours of sleep!)

We got up and labored for two hours on our own, moving from squats to standing/rocking to kneeling in the birth pool, and at about 3:30 I went into transition, complete with "I can't do this anymore!" Ed called Lynn at 3:45, and she arrived at 4:30. Dianne arrived at 4:45, checked the baby’s heart tones, called in her assistant, and told me that I was complete and ready to push whenever I felt the urge. I stayed in the pool and, at about 5 am, started pushing. After a couple of exhausting hours and lots of bites of frozen juice, I had to get out for a bit to get things going… but soon the baby was down far enough, and we got back in the pool for the birth. The membranes still had not broken, and I could feel the bubble over his head – it wouldn’t be long now! After some more contractions in the pool (I was exhausted by that point, and completely lost track of time!), his little head started to stay down after each push. I felt the water break with a big pop, and we were on a roll! His head was out soon after that. I had stated in the birth plan that I wanted to catch the baby if possible, so Ed and Dianne moved me into a semi-reclined position, supported by Ed’s arms, and when the next contraction came, Dianne helped his shoulders along, and I caught him and pulled him up to my chest.

We held and snuggled him for a while, talking softly to him while our birth team quietly covered him with a blanket and observed him (we had asked that they give us a few moments of silence to let the baby hear our voices first). His eyes were very wide, and he spent his first several minutes just staring silently at his mommy and daddy. The sun had come up, but since our room faces west, and we had the window covered, it was still quite dim; the glow from the candles was as bright as the light from outside. Hayden looked right into our eyes, going back and forth between mine and Ed’s, sighing gently. We stroked his head full of blond hair, kissed his little face, and rubbed some of the vernix into his skin. After a few minutes (just in time to score '10' on his 5-minute APGAR!), he let out his first little cry – along with his first meconium.

At this point, we were still sure that we were having a girl, and while our birth team stood silently, letting us cuddle and talk to our baby, I was still in the dark about him being a boy. A few minutes later, Kim (our Bradley instructor and Dianne’s birth assistant) said something about getting “him” another blanket, and Dianne corrected her, saying “her, not him”. Then she lifted up his leg to see, and her jaw dropped and her eyes got really wide. For some silly reason, at the time (looking back I don’t know why I would have thought this), I thought she was just messing with me. I wasn’t in a position to see, but Ed was, and I asked him “Is she really a boy?” Of course, he said yes. [I think it took me a week to recover from the shock! His name was “Baby Boy” for three days.]

After a while, Ed got out of the pool and held the baby while Dianne and Lynn helped me out of the pool. I delivered the placenta right as I got out of the water. I got dried off and went straight into the bed, where Dianne and Kim checked me, while Lynn and Ed weighed and measured Hayden. They gave him back to me for the newborn exam, fed us a big healthy breakfast while I nursed him, and cleaned everything up while we settled into our bed for the rest of the day.

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