It's a boy! Reid's birth story

I went my midwife appointment on Wednesday the 7th, and was 3-4 cm dilated, measuring 40cm. The baby was no longer posterior and everything was looking good. I was ready to go! I had been having non painful contractions for days, and had them that night about 10 minutes apart for a while. And then they went away. So we went to bed at about 10:30pm. I woke up at 11pm with my first painful contraction, and fell asleep between them for a little it. At about 11:45 I couldn't sleep anymore. They were sporadic when I timed them, and varied in intensity. From about 7-10 minutes apart. I decided to let Andy keep sleeping, and called my mom at 12:15am. My parents started getting ready and left their house at about 1am. I labored in and out of bed by myself, and woke Andy up at 2am. My contractions got closer, maybe 5 minutes apart, but then at 2:45am they spaced way out to 10-15 minutes apart again. We went back to bed for a while, and I was able to sleep between contractions until about 5:30am. They started picking back up, and I called Amy (my doula) at 6:30am and asked her to head over. 

The contractions were still kind of sporadic at that point. I labored a lot on the edge of the couch. Becca came to take Ruby out at 7am, and the midwives all got here at about 7:30 or 8am. My parents (who had stopped to sleep) came at about 9am. 

Pics from labor

My water hadn't broken, and some of my contractions were really hard. I just tried to relax and breathe through them. Holding (squeezing) Andy's hand helped a lot, and Amy massaged me in between them. Andy and Amy had gotten the tub ready. Carol checked me at about 9am, and I was at 8cm! That was encouraging. They had to boil some water to get the tub warm enough, and I got in at about 10am, right in the middle of transition. The contractions were really painful, I think because my water was still intact, and I was crampy in between them. Not so much fun. I found a relaxing position with my legs straight out and just kept trying to stay relaxed. At 11:22-ish I could feel my contractions starting to change to pushing ones. On my second little push, my water broke with a pop. That was relieving. I could feel pressure in my rectum then, and Carol said that was the head coming down. At that point everyone was there, including Ruby. I could feel the baby moving down and out, and it was really cool! Suddenly the head was right there and was crowning. I breathed out my baby slowly. The head came out (I tried looking down at it, but my belly was too big), and I slowly pushed the shoulders out. Andy reached in the water while I pushed the last little bit out. He said, "It's a boy!" as we pulled him up to my chest. He was perfect, born at 11:38am. Ruby got to watch her baby brother come out. He cried right away, and I think he got a 10/10 on his apgar. He wanted to nurse a little pretty soon. I pushed out the placenta about 15 minutes later, after Andy cut the cord. Then I got out of the tub and into bed. We nursed and bonded for a little bit. I ate chicken noodle soup at that point. I was passing a lot of blood clots, so they gave me a shot of pitocin to help stop the bleeding. It was a wonderful birth over all, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. We are so in love with our little boy.