Colin's Birth Story

I had a hard time getting pregnant with my first child, Haley, who is now three. I was expecting it to take awhile when we started trying for the second one. Boy, was I surprised when I found out that I was pregnant after only three months of trying.

The pregnancy was fairly easy. It was a hot summer but we ended up buying an air conditioner, which helped a lot. We had to add on to our house in order to make room for the new arrival. It was a stressful summer in that respect but the work was all done by early September, and the baby wasn't due until October 13. We had a month to get things back in order.

I had seen the doctor on October 7 and nothing had changed. I was between 1 and 2 cm. dilated. The doctor said he didn't think I would make it to my due date but that if I did, I would see him on the 14th of October and he would induce me the next day. You see, I was really uncomfortable. I couldn't sleep at night and I was getting terrible leg cramps. I had sciatica pain. The last two weeks had been terrible.

On Wednesday, October 9, I was scrubbing the kitchen floor when my mother-in-law called and asked what I was doing. I told her and she said "You're going to have that baby soon." Lo and behold, I woke up at 3:30 in the morning on Thursday, October 10, to go to the bathroom. I had a contraction on my way there but didn't think much of it. I had a couple more while I was up so I decided to put a movie in and see what happened. At 3:56 a.m., I started timing the contractions. They were very irregular for about 20 minutes. Twelve minutes apart, then five, and then nine. Then they started getting more regular and were 5 to 6 minutes apart. At 5 a.m. I woke my husband and he knew that I was having real contractions because they made me cry. I got in the shower hoping that would help and it only made it worse. By then were about 2 minutes apart. I couldn't talk through them.

We left for the hospital at 6 a.m. and arrived there forty five minutes later.

I asked for pain medication right away but they told me that they had to admit me and then assess me. They discovered they were missing something in the room that I was in so they moved me. When the nurse decided to check me I was dilated to 8 cm. They forgot about the admitting and rushed to get things ready. It was too late for pain medication.

I started pushing at 7:30 a.m. and for about an hour and 15 minutes I pushed and screamed (remember, no pain meds!). They brought in an OB doctor because they couldn't figure out why the baby wasn't moving down the canal. The baby was stuck on the lip of my cervix and when the OB held it down during a contraction, the head made it past the lip. I pushed for another 20 minutes and then he came.

Colin William was born at 9:38 a.m. on October 10, 2002. He weighed a whopping ten pounds, ten ounces and was twenty two inches long. No wonder he had trouble coming! No one, the doctor included, expected him to be that big. I had done it completely natural with minimal damage to myself.

Colin is now four and a half months old and weighs twenty pounds, thirteen and a half ounces. He is perfectly happy and healthy.