Vaginal water birth! It was my first one ( even though I assisted at births before). It was an amaizing experience. Actual labor was pretty long, hard work, but not unbearable.
When people heard that I was planning on natural (no medication/intervention) birth, I got variety of comments, mainly along the lines "you would not be able to bear the pain", "you just dont know what you are talking about, when it will come you will have to take painkillers", "its impossible", "most first time mothers HAVE to have episiotomy", etc. Apart from many other reasons why I wanted to have all natural birth, I also had an important one, -- I am highly allergic, and having any medication might bring on life-threatening condition. ( I almost died in the hospital after miscarriage, because of the meds). Of course most people who commented did not know that.
All that to say, I took my preparation for labor seriously. We re-took Natural Childbirth Classes ( I have studied before in order to assist others, but this time we wanted to have a refresher and really apply ourselves
)
I had to move countries just weeks before the birth. So we did not have midwife till 11 days before I went into labor. It was a bit scary, as we thought I might go into labor earlier. But God was in control, I carried my baby till 42 weeks, we found excellent midwife, who supported our every wish.
And... desire of my heart, -- I had a water birth. Most of my labor we walked and enjoyed the garden, did some relaxation, I listened to meditation music, used essential oils ( by the way, Jasmin brings on contractions while taking away some of the pain, it works great!). Then once I felt like pushing, I was given a few choices, and I definetly felt like water. There were no checking dialation, putting me on clock, pressuring. Once I felt like pushing, and got in the water, it felt very nice and ralaxing, awesome sensation and to my surprise, no pain. And 2 hours after I got in the pool there was born our baby girl. My husband caught her and helped me to nurse her right there in the pool. She was really alert. We were discharged to go home 5 hours later. No tearing, no interventions and she was 8 Lb.
Would I do it again? Definetly! Even though the actual labor was quite long and laborous
, hard, hard work, and even though I felt like giving up in transition stage ( which was unusually long in my case) I would not trade it for the faster one with interventions... And the actual birth was one of those experiences that I want to re-live!
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