Lila's birth story

Lila is 3 months old! I thought I would take the opportunity to tell her birth story now, before the details get fuzzy. I don't think I've forgotten anything yet, so here we go! (By the way, this is pretty lengthy!)

I was blessed with a near perfect pregnancy. I only had one morning my entire pregnancy of true morning sickness. During the last part of my first trimester and the beginning of my second trimester I felt slightly nauseated in the mornings, but it never lasted long. I don't know why some women get so sick and others don't. I would like to think that my exercise habits had something to do with it. During the winter semester of last year, when I became pregnant, I was taking a dance aerobics class, advanced tennis, and yoga. During the spring and summer months, while we were working in Connecticut, I went on power walks several times a week as well as working out to workout DVD's or yoga on BYU TV (http://www.byub.org/totalbodyworkout/). When we returned home to Utah in September, I took a geology hiking class. Hiking up to Mt. Timpangogos caves at 7 1/2 months pregnant was a bit of a challenge, but I managed and was so proud of myself! I also continued taking my yoga class at BYU twice a week and throughout October and November we went golfing every weekend. I even walked the golf courses everytime, with the exception of the Saturday before Lila was born when I finally rented a golf cart!

While we were in Connecticut I began preparing myself for Lila's birth. The more I thought about it, the more I did not want to deliver my baby in a hospital. Hospitals have always been somewhat scary to me. It just seems like hospitals are for sick people, and pregnant women are not sick people! I also was determined to have a good experience. I have heard far too many unpleasant stories from women, and I really just wanted childbirth to be the beautiful, not scary experience that I believed it should be. I did a lot of researching and became interested in waterbirth. The more I read about it, the more I liked the idea. I searched for places in Utah Valley that would let you have a waterbirth and I found Bella Natal Birthing Suites in Orem. The pictures of the facility were beautiful! (The pics below are of Bella Natal where Lila was born--isn't it so nice?!) The place looks like a really nice hotel, not anything like a hospital! I was convinced this was where I wanted to have our baby, so I then found out what midwives had privileges to the facility. When we got home to Utah I immediately made an appointment with Brigitte, who became my midwife and consented to help me out with my waterbirth at Bella Natal. Also during my third trimester I decided to try a hypnosis for childbirth program called Hypnobabies (http://www.hypnobabies.com/). It is an awesome program that I would recommend to anyone who wants to feel really great about their pregnancy and learn to relax. It really helped me out.

Well, enough on the back story, here's what happened the day Lila was born!

I went to my yoga class as usual on Thursday night, which happened to be November 20--my dad and my brother's birthday. I was hoping that either me or my sister Clarissa (who was already a few days overdue) would have our baby on my dad's birthday, but it just didn't happen. Three generations would've been cool on one day! I was still five days from my due date, so I really wasn't expecting to have Lila on my dad's b-day anyway. Well, I didn't expect Lila to be born the next day! So my yoga class had been at 7:30pm that night, and 12 hours later, at 7:30am, I was having contractions. I went to the bathroom and got out my pamphlet titled "Is This Labor?". I had the "bloody show" and a few other indicators of what they termed as early labor. From what I read, it said that early labor could be up to 48 hours before labor were to really begin. So an hour later Darren was getting ready to leave for school and I told him that, "Today could be the day that our baby is born!" He asked me if I wanted him to stay with me, but I told him no, knowing that he would finish with class at noon and my contractions didn't seem to be that close together yet. I told him to have his phone on so he could come home if I needed him, and kissed him goodbye. Well, in the next hour my contractions became pretty strong. I decided to try getting in the bath tub to see if that would relieve the pressure I had started feeling in my back. That didn't really help and the contractions felt quite strong, so I called Darren and asked him to come home. He made it home at about 10am and by then I was draping myself over my exercise ball, trying to find some relief from the contractions. I hadn't eaten anything yet, so Darren fixed me some oatmeal. By the time he brought me the oatmeal I could hardly eat it because my contractions were about 2 or 3 minutes apart. 

We called my midwife and I told her what was going on and that my contractions weren't exactly regular, but were fairly strong. She told us to call her when anything changed, or when my contractions were regularly 2 minutes apart. She happened to be up in Salt Lake at an EMT conference and she thought that I was probably only in the early stages of labor. This was at about 10:30am. After we hung up the phone with her I started having Darren put pressure on my back every time a contraction would come. As time went on they were just getting stronger, and I was moaning a bit and really having Darren push hard on my back. By the time it was noon, my water broke. We decided then that we should probably time my contractions now. I had Darren so busy pushing on my back every time a contraction came that he was too busy to be timing my contractions earlier! So we timed the contractions and called my midwife, but she didn't answer her phone. We were concerned, so we called the head midwife from the practice. As Darren was on the phone with her I had a strong contraction that I moaned through. She heard me moan and told us we better come to the birthing suites soon (she was aware that we live 25 min. away). Well, it took us nearly another hour to get out the door because I was so slow moving and needed to stop everytime I was having a contraction (every 2 minutes!), but we finally arrived at the birthing suites at 2pm. My midwife wasn't there yet, but the head midwife was and she checked to see how dilated I was. Well, I was fully dilated!! She filled the bath tub for me, my midwife arrived and the fun part started! 

I got in the tub and Brigette asked me if I felt the urge to push. I hadn't really felt it yet, so I just kept having Darren's put pressure on my back through the contractions while I was in the tub. About an hour later my midwife started urging me to start pushing. Looking back, I'm not sure that at first I really knew how the whole pushing thing was supposed to work. Eventually I got the hang of it, but I sure did take my time doing it! It was somewhat uncomfortable (ok, just a bit painful) when I was pushing Lila's head out. I took my time, and Brigette really had to be firm with me, but I finally did the hardest physical work I have ever done in my life and pushed Lila out. It was so amazing to see my brand new baby! And the pain that I had felt instantly melted away. I'm serious, the pain lasted probably less than 5 minutes (when I was pushing her out) and then it was gone once she was out. She was born at 4:15pm. We stayed in the bath tub together for another hour, and then Darren cut the cord and Lila was finally measured and weighed. She weighed in at 8 pounds even, 21 inches long. She had a bit of conehead since I took my time pushing her head out (sorry, baby!) and her nose was a little crooked, but absolutely perfect in every other way. 

We didn't call any member of our families until two hours after she was born (sorry!), we really wanted to enjoy those precious moments together. Darren's mom and brother did come see us at the birthing center at about 7:00pm and brought us some dinner. I was starving!! My advice to any expectant mom would be to make sure you've eaten before you do all the hard work of labor! I think that's why I took so long with the pushing too, because I hadn't eaten a meal since the night before. My energy was zapped! Despite my lack of energy, I had a great birthing experience and loved having a waterbirth. I welcome any questions that anyone might have and wish the best experience to all my preggie friends and family!