~Meet Leah~

Leah sent me her birth story and it’s beautiful! I sure hope you all enjoy reading this & celebrating with her in her birth, as much as I did.

Thank you Leah for submitting your birth story. :)

A Beautiful Birth by Leah Feltner

On Sunday morning, a week past my due date, I woke up to some bloody show. I was so thrilled to finally see a “sign” that labor was just around the corner. I called my midwife to let her know that perhaps today would be the day. However, I wasn’t having any contractions so my midwife told me to get some sleep and to call her if anything changed.

The whole day went by with no more signs of labor beginning. It wasn’t until around midnight that I started to get consistent contractions. My husband, Matthew, and I started timing the contractions and we set up the birth pool that my midwife had left for us a few weeks ago. Since this was our first child, we weren’t sure how fast or slow everything might happen so we wanted to be ready.  Once the contractions seemed to be 3 to 6 minutes apart, we called my midwife and asked if she would come over.

She arrived around 1 or 1:30 (I wasn’t really aware of the time) and her assistant arrived a little while later. For the next hour, or so, my husband and the two midwives were busy setting things up and filling the pool up as well. Once the pool was filled up, I immediately got in it. I felt like the contractions were intense but they were still around 3 to 5 minutes apart. At about 2:15am I asked if she would check to see how far dilated I was. I was positive that I had to be very far along. After checking me, she told me that I was only 3cm dilated. Even though this was my first birth, I knew that 3cm was not what I wanted to hear. Once my midwife realized that I wasn’t far along, she and her assistant told me that the baby was coming but probably not for a while so they were going to go home. I felt like crying at that point. They both left at about 2:30am. My husband was upset that they left because he was afraid that the baby would arrive while they were gone and I was upset because I wanted to have my baby now. I called my mom and asked her to pray for me because I was very disheartened. Once getting off the phone with my mom, I started speaking to my body and speaking to my cervix to dilate and prayed that my baby would arrive quickly. Even though I was still having contractions, they seemed to have subdued so Matthew and I decided to go crawl in bed since we didn’t know what else to do.

After being in bed for a short time, at 3:00am, my water broke. I jumped out of bed and ran to the restroom. While in the restroom I had a very long and intense contraction and started throwing up several times. My contractions seemed like they were very close together and they were extremely intense so Matthew called my midwife. She told us to time them for another hour and that if they were still consistent to call her again and she would come on over. I decided to get back in the pool and tried calling my mom but I could barely talk to her because the contractions were about a minute or two apart. She felt strongly that we should have the midwife come over right away. Matthew called my midwife and asked her to come over as soon as possible. Since my midwife didn’t live far away, she and her assistant arrived a short while later.

From then on out the contractions seemed to be on top of each other. There was no pause or break in between them. I have never been much of a screamer, so I never once screamed or yelled. I just seemed to exhale a whole lot. Any time that I wanted to say “I can’t do this!” I forced myself to say instead “I CAN do this!” Then, I felt the urge to push. I grabbed a hold of my husband’s hand, he was kneeling behind me outside the pool, and started to push. I don’t think I waited for a contraction to push, I just pushed. My midwife put a mirror so I could see the little head come out which gave me more ammunition to keep on pushing. After 4 minutes of pushing, out came my beautiful daughter, Milan Sophia. She was born at 4:53am, January 4th, 2010, and was 8lbs.15oz and 23 inches long. My midwife immediately put Milan on my chest and I held her close as my husband and I laughed with joy. It was the most amazing and wonderful experience of my life! I had such an overwhelming sense of relief, joy, amazement, and most of all of LOVE.