A Birth Story...

Sophia Colette Nourse

As most of you know, Sophia joined our family on Thursday, September 27th, 2007. It was the most beautiful (and painful) day of our lives. I am going to share the story over the next several posts, as there is so much to tell.

After our labor date on Tuesday night, I went to bed discouraged because I was not having any contractions. During the night, I woke up to several contractions, but they were very sporadic and infrequent. I woke up Wednesday morning and went to nanny as usual. I started at 9AM, and told Cara that I had been having some contractions, but they had mostly stopped by 7AM that morning. Almost immediately after she left, the contractions started up again, and they were only 7 minutes apart! I was in constant contact with both Jared, and Cara, keeping them aware of the situation. By 2pm, Cara was home and helping me through the "painful" ones (retrospect clearly shows these contractions were nothing in comparison to what was to come). Jared arrived at 3PM. It was at this point that my contractions sped up, and were now only 4-5 minutes apart. Jared drove me to Gary's house, because he has a huge jacuzzi bathtub. I soaked in the warm water for about 20 minutes before we realized it was slowing down the contractions. So I got out immediately. After about an hour, and the contractions were getting more and more intense, we left for the hospital.

This is what the sky looked like on our way to the hospital. God painted us an amazing picture to welcome our miracle into the world.

Jared pulled the car up to the emergency entrance, and I opened my door and climbed out. The second that both of my feet were on the ground, my water broke. Talk about timing! I waddled into the ER, and they wheeled me up to the maternity floor. On the way up, the nurse told me that they only had one room left-- the waterbirth room. Little did she know that we wanted to do a waterbirth! God saved that room just for us. At this point, even though I was in intense pain, I was completely amazed at how God was working everything out. To top it all off, our favorite midwife was on-call, and came in to deliver our baby.

We arrived at the hospital at 6pm, and endured 6 hours of painful contractions before they allowed me to get in the tub. When we arrived, I was dilated to 3cm, 80% effaced and baby was at "0" station. When they finally let me in the tub I was 100% effaced, and baby was at +2 station, but I was only 5cm dilated. It took about 1.5 hours of tub time for me to dilate to 8cm, at which point I got the urge to push. The midwife told me to wait (which was incredibly difficult). After another half hour, I was dilated to 9cm and started to push. After a little over an hour, Sophia made her entrance! Jared pulled her out of the water and held her up for me to see. He told me with amazement, "It's a little girl!"

Jared cut the cord, and then I got out of the tub and onto the bed, where I spent the next 45 minutes cuddling and loving my daughter...

Sophia Colette Nourse

6lbs 13oz

20 1/4 inches long

3:12am, September 27th, 2007

Woodwinds Health Campus

Labor Date

We tried it all. No baby. Just two bruised ankles, a sore back, and a bad attitude. Ugh.

We started with a twenty-minute ankle-pushing session (um, OUCH), then headed up to the bedroom for hanky panky, immediately followed by a mile-long power walk. At this point, I was having contractions pretty frequently, so I was getting excited. As I made our spicy tacos for dinner, I started feeling crampy, and my lower back was beginning to ache. Two more good signs! We finished dinner with burning lips, and laced up our shoes again. Back around the mile loop for a brisk after-dinner walk. Now I was feeling very crampy, my back ached pretty intensely, and I was feeling a TON of pressure on my crotch, but the contractions had ceased, so I bounced on my big birth ball. Then it was back up to the bedroom.

I fell asleep with a backache and cramps, and have been awakened at least seven times since then (it is now 3am) by very strong contractions. I guess there is still hope... I am not getting too excited though.