"We have two kids?" I said to my husband last night. "Two!" It's a little overwhelming when I think about it, but overwhelming in a good way: like a flood of joy and love and pride. I can't believe we're a family of four. After all the waiting and false alarms Jack is finally in our arms. He is here.

When Jack's due date (September 26th) came and went I began to wonder: OK, how long is this gonna go on? Sophia was born ON her due date, which is unusual but raised my expectations that Jack would be too. And when I started having contractions a week before he was due both my midwife and I thought his birth would come early. Jack had a different plan.

Every day after the 26th I was seriously in tune with my body. Thursday came, we spent the day walking around the Deerfield Fair, I was sure all the walking would start labor that night. No luck. Friday came and I felt disappointed labor hadn't started but distracted myself with a visit to my mom's and errands that didn't really need to be done.

Friday night we went to a friends house for dinner and on the way home I felt a little nauseous. In the middle of the night I had two strong contractions, which put me on alert. But I slept well and woke Saturday morning feeling "normal." When I came down for breakfast I was frustrated and upset that labor hadn't started and expressed this to my husband in a teary meltdown. Shortly after breakfast at 8:35 I had a relativley strong contraction. I thought OK, this could be something. So I paid attention to the time. The next contraction came at 8:44, strong but not crazy. I monitored the contractions until 9:30. They were coming every ten minutes. At that point I thought: This IS something.

So we set in motion our birthing-day plan: my husband called my mom and asked her to come pick up Sophia and I called my midwife to inform her of what was going on. Then I started to get Sophia ready. I gave her a bath and played with her a bit and by the time she was dressed and ready my mom was there to pick here up. In that 25 minutes I didn't have any contractions and thought: Great, I've set this whole thing in motion and its another false alarm. But shortly after my Mom left with Sophia the contractions came back and they were stronger.

My husband and I spent the time watching episodes of The Office and Modern Family. With each contraction I'd would sit quietly and breath through them or walk to the kitchen and move around during the contraction. The contractions remained about ten minutes apart from 10am until 1pm, but they intensified with each contraction.

By 1pm I had to breath through the contractions on hands and knees. I started timing the contractions, something I didn't do with Sophia mostly because her labor started at night and I was trying to sleep through them to get as much rest as possible. From 1pm to 2pm the contractions were about five minutes apart and were lasting longer.

At that point my husband and I decided to start the 45 minutes drive to the birthing center. I expected things would progress more quickly with this birth as my labor with Sophia was relatively short (8 hours). With Sophia's labor I was home for a large majority of it (8pm to 1am), on our drive to the birthing center I felt her head move down between my legs. I was 8cm and 100% effaced when we arrived with Sophia and was feeling the urge to push. She was born an hour after we arrived. It was all a hurried whirlwind and I didn't want to feel the same stress with this birth. So getting to the birth center early on was important.

We arrived at the birthing center at 2:45 and I expected I might be 3-4 cm as the contractions seemed strong, but I was still very coherent and I remember being very "out of it" with Sophia. When they checked me I was only 2cm. So the midwives sent us out to walk a local park to try and get things going. We drove around the corner to the park and spent the next hour walking around. I could feel the contractions getting stronger and the back labor getting more intense. When each contraction came I would stop, lean against Mark and breath through it. But it was hard to focus on relaxing when all the tension was in my back.

After an hour we took a break so Mark could get something to eat. By this time I was a more focused internally and wanted to shut my eyes to the world around me. I remember this being the predominant feeling as things got more intense during my labor with Sophia. We returned to the park around 4:30 and continued to walk, but with much greater difficulty and more frequent stops. The contractions were frequent and strong. Though I was becoming more introverted there was a moment when I said to Mark, "You have to take a picture, this is so pretty. I want to remember this." And he did.

At about 5:15pm, after about two hours of walking, we headed back to the birthing center. I knew at this point that if I was going to dilate any further I needed to be in the tub. The warm water relaxed me so much during Sophia's birth and I knew it would do the same this time around. When we arrived my midwife checked me and I was 4-5 cm. Not nearly where I hopped to be but I got quickly into the tub and breathed through some very strong contractions. At this point I was very focused on relaxing and breathing through each wave, trying to let my body do what I knew it needed to do. His head remained high, so the back labor was intense, but with my husbands help and encouragement I was able to release the tension. After about an hour and 15 minutes in the tub, three strong pushes and with a very loud cry Jack finally made his appearance at 6:44pm. He weighed 8 lbs. and was 22 inches long. Two ounces smaller than Sophia and an inch taller.

Laboring and delivering a baby naturally is by no means easy and I was reminded of that on Saturday. It's intense, hard work that takes mental focus and a lot of support. I'm so grateful to my husband who was an amazing coach and my midwives who delivered into this world my precious baby boy.

Not long after my parents arrived with Sophia and we were reunited as a family of four. What joy!

--Sarah

Jack's Birth Story

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