Birthdate: December 27, 2016
Location: UCSF Mission Bay Hospital
Time: 7:48pm
Weight: 7lbs, 6 oz
Height: 20 inches
Birth Story:
Willa was born 13 days after her due date (Anya was only 4 days late). Laura tried every alternative therapy possible to try and get labor started: pineapple, acupuncture, herb tinctures, other things (ahem). Finally our midwife said that on December 26th we should do castor oil and if that didn't start labor then we'd have to do it again on December 27th. So I took the castor oil. It wasn't fun but started the contractions, yet very intermittant-- like every 10-45 minutes but only lasting for about 30 seconds long. Pat and I were able to get sleep on the evening of December 26th, yet I was waking up every 45 minutes with a contraction and going back to sleep. On the 27th, Maria (our midwife) came over and I was about 6 cm dilated and she said we could try some more castor oil or alternative therapies or break my water. She was confident that my labor would go fast once labor actually started. At this point, I was tired of trying all that other stuff so she suggested we drive to the hospital and they could break my water there so that I didn't have the baby in the car on the way to the hospital. We leisurely drove to the hospital and should have stopped for lunch as we ended up waiting for 4 hours to get my water broken. Once my water broke, things progressed quickly and I was uncomfortable- mostly my (once) broken tailbone was hurting significantly. At this point, Maria suggested that I get into the tub which really took off significant pressure from my tailbone. So I did that for a while (maybe an hour?) and things got more painful so the hospital midwife came into check and I was about 8 cm dilated at that point. They suggested then that I go into the bed and I laid on my side off of my tailbone and started to take Nitrous Oxide through a mask. I was doing that for a while and then they told me it was time to push. 13 minutes later Willa was born. So, once the water was broken, she was born about 3.5 hours or so later. They moved us to a postpartum room and we stayed over one night to get all the paperwork done and went home 24 hours later.
