Labour Day ⇒

Many people have asked me how my labour was. All in all I can honestly say it was a wonderful experience giving birth to our daughter.

I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for many months and closer to the due date, they got stronger and more frequent. By the time I was actually in labour, I felt like I had been in labour for weeks!

Pre-labour contractions started on, you guessed it, Labour Day (she has her father's sense of humour). Erin and I went into town and bought a chair at Inspiration Furniture. By 9 o'clock that night my back was absolutely killing me with every contraction and even though I didn't feel they were in a regular pattern, I decided to call Ren to see if she could give me advice on how to stop my back from hurting so much. While she was on the phone with me I had a couple of contractions so she determined that my labour was really kicking in. By 11:00 she advised us to drive into town. We had this great plan that we would spend the bulk of our labour at the Sheraton Wall Centre but my back was hurting so badly, I decided to get assessed at the hospital to see what was what. Surely, things were moving right along, afterall, I'd been having contractions all day. Alas, I was only 3 cm dilated - active labour just getting started and already I was exhausted. Ren also assessed the position of the baby and it seemed that she was not in a position that should have been causing such an intense back labour so we don't know why I experienced it. I can't even describe the feeling of some of those contractions - hot knives in my tailbone doesn't seem to capture it quite right.

So we were all checked in at St.Paul's (kudos to the staff there). We had our own private room (all the rooms there are private) with a deep jacuzzi tub and all the birthing equipment you could ask for. I spent a lot of time in the bath. Time went by really fast and I really don't know what time everything happened except that at 5:00 in the morning I was overcome by paralyzing fear with every contraction (a reaction I wouldn't have expected from myself). I tried so hard to breathe through them. Some of them were managable and some were overwhelming but I never knew which was coming and they didn't really establish a reliable pattern so it became very scary. I decided to have an epidural. I was disappointed at the time but it turned out to be the best thing and I enjoyed the rest of the morning very much.

It took an hour or so to get it. Put in the IV, order the blood tests, wait for the results, wait for the anesthesiologist who was in surgery, answer all the questions they asked, let the intern make two attempts to get it in then finally get her supervisor who put it in a different place. From the time I decided to get it to the time it was finally in and the drugs were starting to drip I had gone from 5 cm to 8 cm. Another hour or so and I was ready to start pushing.

Despite the fact that I couldn't really feel my legs, I used the squatting bar (a solid bar attached over the bed) to hoist myself up. I had been practicing squatting for months at martial arts and in yoga - I was determined to use this to my advantage. It worked very well for me along with the breathing exercises we had done so many times at martial arts. I pushed her out in about an hour.

I had planned on watching my baby be born but I was expecting to have a little warning (so was Ren, apparently). We got her head out then there was supposed to be a pause when the shoulders would come out but alas, she came out in one fell swoop and I missed it because my eyes were closed. All of a sudden I felt her slide out and she was on my belly before I knew what was going on.

I remember asking "is she ok?" and then realizing no one had even said what "she" was. I asked if it was a boy or a girl and Ren said "why don't you guys look and see?" so Erin and I looked together to discover that she was a girl - this is a moment I strongly urge future parents to experience...discover the gender of your baby together.