Sonia’s birth story is one of “be careful what you wish for,” and “the best laid plans.” I really wanted her not to be late, but also really wanted an active, unmedicated birth.
My water broke on my due date – perhaps in part due to the 5 miles I walked that day and all the supposed labor-inducing activities and foods we’d been trying since the previous weekend – but my body still wasn’t fully ready for labor I guess. Sonia was born 27.5 hrs later on April 18 at 6:59pm. However, that time consisted of: 12 hrs of waiting futilely for my body to start labor on it’s own, 13 hrs of active labor with a very high dose of Pitocin (and luckily a great coach in Daddy Eric), 2 hours of labor and transition in bed with an epidural, and a little over 30 mins of mostly numb pushing in a recumbent position as the epidural wore off slowly.
Although very little about labor went as I had planned, I had a wonderfully uncomplicated delivery – even though the cord was loosely around her neck and she came out in the oblique posterior position – with no perineal tears and only a minor laceration requiring just one stitch.
I don’t know if I felt the bonding hormone and endorphin rush that many mothers describe upon the delivery of their baby, but I certainly felt a crazy feeling of relief that it was over, and yet disbelief that the little human on my chest had really just come out of my body. In the end we got our beautiful, healthy, strong, albeit small, baby Sonia – and nothing is more important than that! She weighed in at 6 lb 4 oz and measured 19″ long.
