Tirzah's Birth Story

I know this is long overdue...but today Tirzah is one month old! I can't believe how fast time is flying...she is quite a good eater and is gaining quite a bit of weight. When we went to the pediatrician last week she was 8.11! She is not the best sleeper but I was blessed when Gideon was born to have a good sleeper so I'm not complaining. She is also quite a noisy sleeper. Gideon is now very interested in his little sister and wants to hold her hand, pat her head (sometimes a little too hard), taker her blankie and all things that big brothers should do. :-)

So on January 29th I was excited because there was a big children's clothing sale going on that I wanted to go to...I went in the morning and stocked up on clothes for Gideon and then being overwhelmed by the cuteness of little girl clothes I decided to buy some baby girl clothes too with the hope that I would have a girl! Boy am I glad that I did! Later in the afternoon Joshua and I decided to take Gideon for a walk outside, he loves being outside and we have the perfect places to walk. So we took him on his little bike toy but right before we were ready to walk out I started having some severe contractions. It wasn't that unusual seeing I had had contractions for weeks but these were a little different. Still I decided to ignore them and go walking. While walking I had to stop every couple minutes to breathe through the contractions so we decided not to walk far and returned to the house. When we got in I timed the contractions and they were as I had guessed about two minutes apart and stronger than normal! Time to call my midwife!

We called to tell Alicia that we thought she should come and she was on her way. Then I called my parents and told my Mom she should come as soon as she could and we called Joshua's parents and they came and picked up Gideon. My contractions had started around 4:15pm and by 6pm my midwife Alicia arrived with her assistant Michael (who is a lady). Joshua had brought out our kiddie pool and started to fill it with water and I picked up the house a bit and breathed through my contractions. They stayed about the same.

My midwife checked me when she arrived and said I was about 5cm. She offered to break my water if I wanted to but I wanted to wait till my Mom arrived. She got to the house around 8:15 and we talked about what to do and around 9:11 I decided it was time to get things rolling. My contractions were very doable at the time and I just had to concentrate and breathe through them but I was ready to have this baby. So Joshua finished filling the pool and my midwife broke my water. I got in the pool and then things changed drastically! I must have dilated those last five cm in five minutes and skipped transition because baby was ready to come! The contractions were super intense at that time and soon I knew it was time to push...and that was really hard too but my Mom and my midwives and my husband kept saying that I could do it, because I was no longer sure I could! And then she was here! And I saw that I had a baby girl--it was 10:15.

After that came clean up, a bath, nursing her, her little check up--she is absolutely perfect, calling family members with the news, and all sorts of excitement and then getting our new little family all into bed so we could sleep around 2. My Mom stayed with us and helped us in the morning. Overall it was a wonderful experience, no spotlights on me, no stress from doctors yelling at me, the support of my mom, husband and midwives. It was amazing and I hope to do it again someday!