Leif's baby brother, Bjorn Stefan, came into the world IN A HURRY early one morning in mid-May, four days before his due date. Since Leif was born nine days past his due date, I had been prepared to wait out the entire month of May for this baby, joking to my friend Shuli in an email a few weeks ago that I was going to hold out for June 1st and then plan on having precipitous labor with an accidental home birth. Moral of this birth story: One shouldn't joke about such things....
On the night of Bjorn's arrival, I woke up with mild cramping and a bit of a backache at 2:45 AM. This was a pretty typical time for me to wake up in the middle of the night throughout the last trimester of pregnancy, but this time I felt a little different, so I thought it *could* be a sign that labor was going to start soon. I went to the bathroom and hung out there for 10 or 15 minutes to gauge how I was feeling before deciding to wake up Aaron. I told him I thought this *could* be labor and to be safe I was going to call my parents and ask them to start driving over to watch Leif, in case we needed to head for the hospital sooner rather than later. At 3:00, I called my parents and told them I wasn't sure if these pains would continue or go away, but asked them to come over just in case. I also called our doula and told her I thought I might be going into labor -- just a heads up -- and I would call her back with a status update once my parents arrived at our house.
Right after that conversation, my labor -- yes, it turned out those were real labor pains! -- gained strength with truly astonishing speed. By the time I talked to the hospital operator at around 3:15, I was shouting my contact information at her through contractions that had already become quite painful and seemed to be only a few minutes apart. She told me she would have the midwife on call call me back. I timed a couple of contractions and found that they were now only THREE minutes apart (a sign of very active labor). At 3:25 my water broke, and I texted our doula to let her know. Immediately after that I realized that I could feel something that felt suspiciously like a baby's head beginning to crown. Through all this, Leif was asleep in his bedroom just down the hall and Aaron was downstairs, getting things ready to go to the hospital. I called our doula's cell phone (since the midwife on call still had not called me back) and told her I thought I could feel the baby's head. She wisely instructed me to hang up and call 911. I was glad to have someone calmer and more experienced with births than myself telling me what to do!
I yelled for Aaron to come upstairs, and by the time he arrived, I had 911 on speakerphone. They took our address and sent EMTs immediately. Fortunately, there is a fire station just at the end of our block, so it took only two or three minutes for a truck to arrive. When the EMTs joined me upstairs, they suggested I lie down in our bedroom to see if that would slow my labor down. I sensed things were already past that point and said I would prefer to stay upright in the bathroom. Within another contraction or two, out came Bjorn, quite blue at first but very healthy. I caught him myself, with two of the EMTs looking on. My entire labor had lasted only 45 minutes from beginning to end.
The EMTs clamped the umbilical cord and suctioned Bjorn's nose and mouth while a whole parade of other interested parties were streaming into our house: my parents (who of course had no idea what had happened in the last half hour), our doula, and a team of paramedics who had been dispatched in an ambulance from a farther away fire station. The midwife on call at the hospital, who presumably had been busy delivering another baby, finally called me back at 3:45 AM -- about ten minutes AFTER Bjorn was born. Big brother Leif somehow managed to sleep through the entire thing, to my amazement.
Aaron, Bjorn, and I headed for the hospital in the ambulance, a little bit shell shocked but excited. The baby and I were both doing fine. Later that morning, my parents brought Leif to the hospital to meet his new baby brother, and in the evening we were visited by Auntie Sarah, Granny and Grandpaw G.
Thank you to everyone who helped us get through this (hopefully) once in a lifetime experience! We're excited to be home now and begin to adjust to our new life as a family of four.
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