Like everyone else, we are anxious to talk about our kids and their birth.  However, this time around we did much more studying and are motivated to spread the good word on natural child birth to our various friends who might be reproducing in the future.

For our pre-natal care and birth we opted for a midwife practice.  It's a great set-up as they are part of the UNC system.  The delivery occurs at the hospital with docs, meds, and emergency procedures available; however, if all goes well, you only ever deal with the midwives.  The difference was incredible.  Instead of check-ups revolving around tests and potential but unlikely disasters, they instead were concerned with making sure everything was in the range of normalcy and keeping me healthy, because then the birth is more likely to go smoothly and therefore the baby is more likely to have a healthy entrance into the world.

How she made her descent...Mark and I both finished working for the year on Friday December 19.  The following Sunday evening, Dec 21, we were attempting to meet more neighbors by delivering cookies and the contractions started.  Given that Malayna was induced way past her due date, we assumed this would be the same, so we figured the contractions were just brackston-hicks and would go away.  That night I slept, but was woken roughly every hour with contractions.  I got up the following morning and got the day going with Malayna as normal.  About 9am, I realized they were getting more painful and we needed to get our Malayna-accommodations rolling so we could deal with the contractions and decide if it was for real labor.  Fortunately my parents were on their way down that day, so we only had to tap our friends during the day.  Malayna went to one neighbor's for the morning and another for the afternoon and evening.  We really can't thank both families enough for helping us out in this way.

We started timing contractions that morning and they were a little sporadic, painful, but manageable.  The midwives said to call their pager when they got to 5 minutes apart for an hour.  Around noon, we called because they were averaging 5 minutes apart, although some shorter, some longer.  The midwife suggested I hop in the bath and then call back in an hour.  The bath slowed the contractions to about 8-9 minutes apart, so we hung out a little longer than the prescribed hour and then called back.  The midwife let us make the call on coming in.  She didn't want us to show up and be denied, but she also didn't want me to be in transition for the 40 minute drive to the hospital (in Chapel Hill).  When I got out of the shower the contractions sped up.  At some point we figured out that if I laid down the contractions came less often, roughly every 8 minutes, but were more painful, and if I was up and around they came every 3-4 minutes, but with less pain.

We decided this was real labor, we didn't want to deal with rush hour traffic or transition labor in the car, so we headed to the hospital, checking in around 3pm. 

At check in time I was at 8cm (out of 10).  We were surprised I was so far along, but executing the various positions we learned in classes, and especially the bath, really helped with the pain management.  At the hospital, we managed to avoid the hep-lock (sticking you to get ready for an IV) and continual monitoring.  Both of these decisions allowed us to just focus on laboring.  As noted earlier, it was much more manageable if I was up and moving around.  Changing positions every few contractions helped a bunch, as did spending a few in the shower. 

Having a midwife (actually 2 midwives... there was a resident midwife too, since UNC is a teaching hospital) was great!  We loved our midwife... she was really calm (which was therefore calming), encouraging, and good at setting the mood w/ the lighting.  Believe it or not, this really helped.  Her focus was on the natural birth and well-being.  Our last doctor's focus was on getting home from a long shift and speeding things up.  Another thing they allowed us to do was bring our iPod and a speaker in and play music, which also helped.  Just as it was getting tough, it was time to push.  Being on my hands and knees was the best position at the time to deal with the pain so the midwives encouraged me to stay in that position to push.  With Malayna pushing was a relief from the contractions, but this time it was more difficult (albeit, shorter)...not sure why the difference.  Regardless, neither the transition or pushing phases lasted that long, each about 10 minutes.  Pushing was only delayed by the midwives making sure it went slow enough to avoid tears or cuts, which I'm extremely grateful for now.  As soon as Lucinda was born I was able to hold and nurse her.  She latched on immediately and has been an eating champ since.

So why bother with this natural stuff?  We learned that the various interventions are a vicious cycle.  Once you do one, it's much more likely you'll need another, eventually inhibiting the post-birth process.  For example, if you do continual monitoring, your movement is restricted, when movement is restricted, it much more difficult to deal with the pain, when you can't deal with the pain you end up getting medications, which end up getting into the baby's system and of course mom's system.  The various medications reduce the body's release of hormones which enable the baby to be alert for feeding after delivery and enable you to deal with the pain.  Life is so much easier this time with a baby who learned how to nurse immediately.  My recovery was so fast that they released me the following morning, we just had to wait 24 hours for Lucinda to be discharged.  Aside from the health benefits, the process was a great experience and much more enjoyable than the first time.  With Malayna I didn't have an epidural, but a narcotic (sort of like hopped up motrin) that we swear made Malayna drowsy.  I was also stuck laying in bed the entire time out of my own ignorance as well as continual monitoring and an IV for fluids, which made it very difficult to deal with the pain, hence the narcotics.

To have a natural child birth with a doctor appears to be nearly impossible.  You will be fighting an uphill battle the whole time.  Here's why:  Midwifery is focused on the natural process of pregnancy and childbirth (ie:  things going right) while traditional medicine is obsessed with certain things happening at a certain time (ie:  things going wrong).  Unfortunately, this obsession in the US has lead to one of the worst infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. We highly recommend using a midwife if you can and if you are a good canidate for a natural birth.  Obviously, it may not be or cannot be for everyone.  And things can go wrong - we were grateful for being at a hospital in case they did.  But we really enjoyed the process this time.  Additionally, the fast recovery combined with a baby that nurses well are huge payoffs.