Birth Story

My due date was October 3rd but it came and went with no real signs of labor, I wasn't very surprised, I expected to be late and I was sure I'd make it to my 40 week appointment on Wednesday the 6th. After midnight (so October 4th) I started to toss and turn. I had actually been sleeping pretty well up to this point but figured I was having some sort of stomach issues. I was awake from about 2:30-3:30am and then fell asleep again until around 6 when Dave was getting ready for work. I told him I was feeling funny, a little crampy and called my mom to find out what she thought. We decided that Dave should go to work and I would call if stuff was really happening.
I got up and in addition to getting ready for work I got any last items I wanted to bring to the hospital packed, and took care of the animals food and water. At work people were moderately surprised to see me since it was over my due date, I didn't say anything about starting contractions but I started writing down times as I filed. By 10am I was starting to show a pattern and a few of the contractions were painful. I texted Dave that he could for sure get a substitute teacher for Tuesday. I got up to get water at 11am and had a couple even stronger contractions. I would stand up for them trying to relieve some of the pain but it didn't really seem to help. After conferring over text a bit more with my mom I decided to go home at lunch (about 1pm). I told a few people at work, including my boss and got well wishes. I drove myself home and experienced 2 or 3 contractions (bearable, didn't affect my driving) on the way.
At home I tried to rest but between the pain and excitement I gave up on that quickly and got into the bathtub instead. The warm water felt good but did not seem to make the contractions feel any better. The contractions were now between 2 and 6 minutes apart and getting more regular. At 2:30 I called Dave at work and asked him to come home immediately after the students left (3:20) rather than staying after like teachers usually do. He asked if he should be leaving right then but I told him to go ahead and finish out the day, I also asked him to stop and get some treats for the nurses on his way home. Dave called me when he was on his way home and while on the phone with him my contractions started coming every 1-3 minutes. This distressed him some but I convinced him that it was fine and he should still pick up nurse treats, that I would get the last minute stuff (a change of clothes for him and his shaver) ready so we could leave the minute he showed up, I also tried to convince him not to speed (he comes home on a highway so it's easy to do). It seemed to take me forever to do anything because I would stop with each contraction.
Dave showed up and I made my way to the car. The ride to the hospital was pretty short but I was not pleased with any little bumps or sharp turns on the way. On our way to labor and delivery I had to stop a couple of times for contractions. I went up to the admit desk (about 5pm) and told them I thought I was in labor so they brought me to a room and checked me - I was 6cm dilated, this made me very happy. There was no way they would send me home (part of the reason I stayed home so long is because I dreaded being told I had to go back), and I wouldn't be in labor for days. They put in an IV (just the port, I wasn't given fluids or anything), took my blood pressure, and hooked up the monitors (two round plastic things that were loosely belted around my abdomen to monitor the baby's heart rate and contractions). They asked me about pain meds (I had a birth plan but never even ended up taking it out of the suitcase) and I told them I didn't want to be offered medication but that I might ask for it later. I also asked if there was anything that wasn't an epidural or intrathecal. She told me about nubain, a drug that would be administered by IV and would take the edge off the contractions. I decided to keep this in mind for later. She ran the tub water for me (they had a great jacuzzi-looking tub) and I sat in there for about an hour. They checked me again at 7pm and I was disappointed to learn that I was still at 6cm. I told Dave to find the camera so we could get early pictures of the baby and it was no where to be found. I was a little freaked out and made Dave go back to the car to look for it. I started thinking of neighbors I could call to break into the house and drive the camera over, luckily Dave came back with the camera, it had fallen under the car seat. I was getting very sleepy and occasionally drifted off between contractions. Once they started getting harder and closer together I began to kneel upright on the bed for them. It felt a tiny bit better than being on my back and the gravity must have been a huge help because when they checked me again at 8pm and I was 9cm. At this point they made me lie down and let me turn on my side for the contractions, I'm still not fully clear on whether or not I had back labor. My back ached quite a bit during contractions, but Peter was facing down (normal and usually not a cause of back labor). Poor Dave tried pushing on my back for counter pressure but I was so incredibly picky about exactly where it was applied and how much pressure that I only had him try it a couple of times and the rest of the time attempted to apply pressure myself. Sometime between 8 and 9pm I asked about trying the nubain, but I was too far along and it could go to Peter too. I thought to myself, "great, this is exactly what you wanted." I thought it both sarcastically and seriously because it was what I wanted, a natural childbirth, but I was also starting to have a lot of pain so I was a little disappointed.
At 9pm they broke my water (no pain at all but it felt like I had wet myself - a lot) and the doctor told me that very soon I could start pushing and it would probably feel better. "Really???" I said. I think they found that mildly amusing, but he was right, it did feel better to push, as long as I pushed through the entire contraction. The nurse told me to (at the beginning of each contraction) take a deep breath in, let it out, take another deep breath, hold it and push. I always knew when the contractions began, but since the pushing helped I didn't know when they ended... unless I stopped pushing too soon, and then the back pain was pretty awful so I learned to push beyond when I thought I was done. Soon Dave and the nurse used their hands as stir-ups for my feet when I would have a contraction. They could get me in a better position that way but it must have been a lot of work because even I was starting to get Charlie horses.
Sometime around 11 the baby was getting really close, and the pushing started to get painful, this is when I started to get pretty loud screaming and moaning. I definitely wasn't thinking about much and didn't care about the screaming. I think the baby was crowning close to 11:15pm and the screaming turned primordial. The doctor at one point told me that the pain was not going to go away, it would continue to burn and then I started to dry sob and they gave me some oxygen. The sobbing was mostly a response to the fact that I wasn't going to escape the pain and I was probably a little panicked. Finally he was born (I believe that part was pretty fast- under 2 minutes). They placed him on me, I thought he was huge. It seemed like they had to suction him for a long time so again I was a little panicky and asked if he was alright (he was). Dave cut the umbilical cord and they gave me a shot of Pitocin to help deliver the placenta, that took about half an hour. I got a few stitches afterward and they asked us if we had a name. We didn't because we had never made a final decision on a boy name. I had Dave get out the list of names and read them to me. We had one that we both liked the most - Peter, and we chose Dave's grandfather's name as his middle name, Frederic.
That's pretty much it. I'm glad it went the way it did, I don't know what I'll do next time... if I'll try the nubain or not, but overall the last bit of pushing was the only unbearable part (when he was crowning). I'm still glad that I didn't find out his gender because it was an added surprise at the end of delivery.