01/06/2026
Birth story🦌
Putting my birth story into words has taken me over a month. Not because birth was traumatic or scary but because it hasn’t felt like I ever made it back into my body after to write it all down.
A couple weeks before birth we moved into our house and started making it a home. In between moving boxes, empty clothing hangers and making simple meals I wasn’t fully grasping that I could be giving birth any day.
When I hit 37 weeks I felt that shift. Instead of pushing all thoughts and worries about this big change aside I welcomed them, embraced them.
When my midwife checked me two days before going into labor I was 2cm dilated. Knowing how tired my body was I asked her to do a membrane sweep in the hopes that it would move things along. Having had prodromal labor with Whimsy I didn’t have high hopes of going into labor that same night. So, as the sun set and we started unwinding I bathed in the feeling of knowing that she would let me know when she was ready.
The night before my birthday, as I was running errands, I felt an intense Braxton Hicks’s contraction. Intuitively I knew I was going into labor but didn’t want to fully acknowledge it. I started timing them and slowly made my way home. The drive back to the house felt like hours and with every deep breath I took, I felt realization washing over me.
When I made it home I didn’t want to have Lucky worry or get excited about us having a baby that night and surely I wouldn’t have her on my birthday, right? So I made us dinner, we ate and every time I felt a contraction I breathed through it. When Lucky came back downstairs after tucking the kids in bed I told him that my contractions were picking up in intensity. He saw how tense I was, grabbed my hand and ran me a shower. Unlike my previous two labors the contractions kept rolling in gradually and in between I had the clarity to get myself ready for bed since I didn’t think she’d make her arrival.
At 10:30 my contractions started to shift into feeling the urge to push.
When I dropped to my knees infront of our bed, Lucky knew it was time to call the midwife who was still an hour and a half away.
