but, first the end result (for those who don't want to read the whole thing):
Emiko Evangeline Demary
{Emiko means "beautiful blessing child"}
Born Thursday, June 20th, 2013 at 7:32am
Weighing 9 pounds, 3 ounces
Measuring 21.5 inches in length
She had dark brown hair from the start and her eyes are showing to be a beautiful blue just like her daddy's (and 3 of her grandparents).
i'm all about context and i feel like it's hard to understand some of the details of this story without at least a little bit of context, so here's how the days/weeks leading up to her birth went...
Emiko was due june 7th (though we'd been given a few dates and had told most people the later one: june 10th... this was because we heard how common it is for first babies to be "overdue" by about 10 days, so we thought this would give us some cushion without people worrying or bugging me too much. little did we know she would go even further past the typical 10-day-past-due mark!)
Randy was set to graduate from Fuller on june 15th, so we wondered if Emi would decide to come early enough to attend graduation as a baby or if she'd stay in long enough to attend from her womb perspective...
as graduation day drew near, we started praying she'd stay in a little longer, mostly because Randy came down with a bad cold and fever on june 10th. terrible timing! we knew he wouldn't be able to
companion me through labor the way we had planned and hoped for if he was sick and sleep deprived.
at our 40-week appointment with my midwife Lori, she encouraged us to start some natural means of inducing labor. we decided to wait until the night of graduation (why try to induce it the day before graduation when i really wanted to attend this important event in Randy's life?). this is where the breast pump we registered for came in handy... (note: nipple stimulation is one of the natural ways to induce labor used by many midwives.)
not much happened as a result of the breast pumping until tuesday at 1:30am when my water broke. thankfully, we had just taken Randy to a clinic to get checked out (we wanted to make sure he didn't have anything serious and get him stronger medicine to kick the rest of the cold he had been fighting for a week). he was starting to feel better and was just beginning to sleep well for the first night in over a week when i woke him with the news of my water breaking.
we called Cherish (midwifery assistant). she told me to go back to bed and that labor would probably start on its own within 12-24 hours. i went in to the birth center about 12 hours after my water broke to have the baby checked and Lori was pleased with how she was doing. i was given instructions on how to avoid infection (the main concern with my water having broken) and was told to continue with the breast pump, add some homeopathic remedies to my regimen and start checking my temperature regularly.
at this point, Randy and i both started feeling like this was a lot of work to just get labor started... i knew that labor itself would be work, but not the process of getting my body to start labor. i was beginning to feel emotional and tired, worrying about why my body wasn't starting labor on its own.
4am wednesday morning, i started feeling contractions (hooray!). we continued everything from the day before (per Lori's instruction) and finally started getting some consistency and intensity by late morning. at this point, they were lingering but not progressing fast enough, so Lori suggested we buy castor oil and try that method of inducing labor. this is not a fun process--it basically does a number on your digestive system to get your bowels really moving in an effort to stimulate contractions. it was getting later in the day and we began to be nervous about traffic driving out to chino (from 3-7, it would be miserable to sit in the car having contractions in the middle of really bad traffic). so, with encouragement from my parents (who were in town still from Randy's graduation), we decided to drive out to Chino and get a hotel room just in case contractions suddenly increased. by the time we made this decision and had the castor oil in hand, the contractions had increased enough that we called Lori and she said i didn't have to do the castor oil thing (praise the Lord!)
we set off for the hotel in Chino, with me pumping in the back seat. (good thing we got the travel system!) contractions continued and were finally consistently 3-4 minutes apart and about 1 minute long. after consulting Lori we stopped around 7pm and visited with my parents for a few minutes, but the contractions slowed again. this was very disappointing for me! we restarted pumping around 9pm, called Lori at 10pm and were told to stop and go to bed. she said we should get rest and wait for the morning.
well, around midnight, the contractions started up strong and fast again completely on their own. i laid in the hotel bed trying to time them with an app on my phone for about two hours, waking up Randy here and there to tell him how serious it was getting. (the poor guy was so sleep-deprived from the previous several days, that he just couldn't stay awake with me.) around 2:30am, i woke him and said i thought we should call Lori. we told her how frequent and long the contractions were and she finally agreed that i was in active labor, though she warned us it could still be several hours before any real action. i was pretty adamant about going to the birth center sooner rather than later, so we agreed to meet there.
we arrived at the birth center around 3:30am. my vitals were checked and i immediately got into the tub. once i got accustomed to contractions in the water, there was no getting me out! Lori sat with me and walked me through several contractions encouraging me to visualize being on the water, treating each contraction as a series of waves gradually increasing in intensity until i reached the crest, and then gradually coming down off of each one. it helped SO much! Randy listened to her coaching methods and then talked me through the rest of my labor the same way. the most wonderful thing about water was that i could concentrate on just trying to float (rather than telling myself "just relax")... as i focused on floating, my body naturally relaxed more and the contractions seemed much more bearable. even as they grew in intensity, i stayed in my zone of visualizing waves, breathing and groaning through each one. as Randy and Lori listened to my breathing and groaning, they could almost always tell how intense and long the contraction was. this was how Lori could tell how my labor was progressing.
around 6am, i felt a really long and strong contraction that compelled me to push (though i wasn't trying to). i literally felt the baby moving further down inside of me. at this point, i told Randy to get Lori because i knew i was going to need to start pushing SOON. he texted my parents (who had just left to get breakfast) and got Lori and the other attendants to start setting up for delivery. i started pushing around 6:50am and Emiko came out at 7:32am. when her head was crowning, Lori told me i could reach down and touch my baby's head (!!!). when i did, i felt her full head of hair and was so happy because in the several days leading up to her delivery, i had begun to have a feeling that my baby girl would have dark hair from the beginning. that was a nice little happy distraction for me to get through the rest of pushing her out.
she was born into water and Lori saw that the cord was wrapped around her body 4 times--twice around her neck, once around her torso and another time around her legs. Lori quickly twirled her in the water to untangle her and brought her up to my chest. we immediately heard Emi cry a little, but it wasn't the strong cry Lori was looking for, so there was a tiny bit of resuscitation done while she was on my chest before we heard a good cry. due to the cord being around her neck, she had been unable to get the fluids squeezed out of her lungs in the birth canal the way most babies would, so she just needed a bit of help.
overall, i am so happy with how things turned out. i had the natural birth i wanted and loved being in water. i highly recommend laboring and/or giving birth in water to any who have thought about it before. :)
we feel so blessed to have had our baby at Ancient Paths Midwifery with our midwife Lori and her assistants Cherish and Beth. Cherish had taught the birth class Randy and i took and we felt extremely helped by the relaxation techniques we learned through it. the visualization of waves and water that Lori and Randy used while i labored in the tub were easy for me to use because of all of the relaxation practice we had done through the class.
so, there's the story.
we are so in love with Emi and though having a newborn is very challenging, we are loving learning about her, caring for her and figuring out what it is to be a family of three.
