Kiriah Anne Taylor

Well, I guess it all started later in the day on February 4th. Tim and I had... taken certain measures to try and get labour started. I had little contractions all night (like 15-30 seconds long, 2-4 minutes apart) but nothing that really caused us to panic. When they kept going the next day, we called our midwife but she said not to bother going in to Rocky until things got a bit more serious. I also called my mum and they decided to leave the next morning to come our way. We were feeling pretty antsy by the evening of the 5th and decided that we would rather drive to Rocky at a leisurely pace, pick up some groceries, and spend the night at The Guest House even if baby wasn't coming right away. We continued to "help labour along" and my contractions kept going, though at a rather random pace. We spent the evening, night, and next morning (the 6th) watching John Wayne movies, walking around, and trying to rest.



I don't really remember exact times, but at some point Tim called our midwives again and they agreed that Barb (head honcho midwife) should come over and check things out. At about the same time she got to The Guest House (4:30ish), my mum also arrived. My contractions had really started working in the hour or so before, so I was pretty hopeful that things would start happening. Barb checked me out and was quite surprised to find that I was already 6 centimeters dilated. She called our midwives (Jen and Jess) and told them to get their butts over to us. They had an hour drive ahead of them and Barb thought maybe things could happen fast. At that point I made the mistake of letting myself get comfortable instead of letting my contractions work for me, so everything slowed down quite a bit. A lot of the details have already slipped my mind, but I do remember Tim and my mum taking turns rubbing my back.
When Jen and Jess arrived they encouraged me to go for a walk and then switch things up by laboring in an uncomfortable position for a while. Well that kick started things. My contractions got serious and they started to fill up the birthing pool (aka: a fishy pool :). I guess it was somewhere around 10:30pm or 11:00pm when my water broke. Pretty soon after that my body just started pushing... it was like I didn't even have to consciously do anything, my body just took over. It was pretty cool. I got into the water then and after a couple of minutes Tim got in too. I was on my knees, leaning over the side of the pool and he was sitting behind me. My mum was at my head feeding me ice cubes :)
I pushed for 45 minutes and all of a sudden, at 11:59pm on February 6th, Tim was catching our baby and passing her to me. I sat back on Tim's lap and we just looked. She was so perfect.
We left the cord attached for a while, then Tim cut it and we got out of the pool.



The rest of the night/early morning is a blur...
We got into bed right away and I started nursing Kiriah while Jess gave me some stitches. (Kiriah came out with her fist at her head, so I had some tearing and artery damage) Then while everyone else cleaned up, Tim and I tried to digest the fact that we were parents... we just sat and cuddled and bonded with our baby. It was so awesome.






Side Notes:
Our midwives were AMAZING!
Having a home birth was AMAZING!
Having a water birth was AMAZING!

It was such a blessing to have Tim so involved and interested in everything that happened... also having my mum there was pretty sweet - very helpful!

When we got home from Rocky and had hardly unpacked, Tim looks at me and says "so when can we have number two?"

:)

Coming Soon...

I have great intentions of getting on here in the next couple days and writing out Kiriah's birth story (along with post some pictures). But for now I'm quite happy to spend my time staring at my beautiful daughters face. :)