Last Thursday I was eight days past my due date, and I woke up that morning around 3:30-4 with contractions, finally. They weren’t crazy strong, but were coming every three to five minutes, and since I’ve always had fairly quick labors, I decided to get up and start getting things together for the big day. Much to my disappointment, though, as soon as I was up and about, the contractions dwindled off, so I went back to bed just before 5.

I woke up again at 6:30 with a strong contraction, and lay in bed for the next hour, timing contractions every fifteen minutes. These were much stronger, so I thought things were moving along. I woke up Olof at 7:30, and he called his mom to tell her to be prepared for the big event that day. And then nothing happened. Or that’s what it felt like at the time, anyway. Some time in the late morning Olof called his mom again and told her to stand by for updates, as we didn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon.

My water broke around 1:00 in the afternoon, but I wasn’t sure about that until hours after the fact. I lost quite a lot of mucus, some of it even pinkish, and I continued having contractions — fairly big ones — but even ten hours after they started they weren’t coming any closer together than every ten to twenty minutes, and they weren’t getting any stronger. Most of the day I spent either lying down trying to rest or sitting on my birth ball and playing word search on Facebook, and by dinnertime I was getting very discouraged and wondering just what was going on. This was so not the labor I’d anticipated having with a fifth baby, particularly considering that I’m usually a six-to-eight-hour kind of girl.

Around six in the evening we ordered dinner from the pizzeria — I had falafel pizza! — and that did boost my flagging energy some. After we’d eaten, I posted on a couple of message boards about my long, frustrating day, and two different moms wondered if maybe the baby was poorly positioned, face-up instead of face-down. I hadn’t thought that was the case, but after considering how that can lead to an irregular labor like I was having, I started to think that might be what was happening. I went upstairs to lie down again, first spending some time on my hands and knees, then moving to a knees-and-chest position for a bit, hoping to give the babe a chance to do some rotating.

Coincidence or not, I started having stronger, more regular contractions almost immediately, and not long before eight I asked Olof to call the hospital and fill them in. They told us to come in around nine, so we got busy getting all of our stuff together and Olof went out to plug in the car’s engine warmer and scrape the windows. By the time my mother-in-law had gotten here and we were ready to leave, my contractions were coming fast and furious, and I knew we were finally getting somewhere.

We arrived at the hospital just before nine-thirty and got caught up in the ten o’clock shift change, so it was a little after ten by the time we met the midwife who would be attending. She wasn’t someone I’d met before, and we turned out to be a bad fit. First she insisted on doing an internal exam, and not in the mood for fighting about it, I consented. She was rougher than she needed to be, and pronounced me dilated to a five. Then she hooked me up to an external fetal monitor for a twenty-minute reading, and I went along with that because, whatever. Things got tricky, though, when I told her that I wasn’t doing antibiotics for the potential GBS colonization I had. She pooh-poohed my reasonings, but didn’t push too much until both Olof and I told her that I wasn’t — no way, no how — having a hep-lock.

At that point she completely lost her cool, telling me, “You might as well just go home, then.” I allowed as how I would and started getting dressed. Olof jumped in then and he and I had a testy little exchange with her. She back-tracked ever so slightly then, saying that at the very least she insisted I sign a form releasing her from responsibility for my foolishness (“It’s not going to be my fault if you bleed to death.”). I said that was just fine with me, and she left the room to prepare said form while Olof went to the car to get our bags.

While I was alone in the room I started feeling very down about the whole situation. As I’ve mentioned before, I really hate having to fight for things to be how I want them, especially when I’m feeling particularly vulnerable and least prepared, physically or emotionally, to stand up for myself. When Olof came back, I asked him to go to the nurse’s station and request that a different midwife attend me. I half-expected him to resist, but he was all over that idea, telling me later that he’d considered doing just that when he’d gone out earlier, but that he’d decided to talk to me first. He went out immediately and came back just a few minutes later with the news that they’d done a switcheroo. I expect the original midwife was just as glad to see the back of us as we were of her, though she did still want me to sign the release.

Anyway, that switch made all the difference, and the new midwife was wonderful. Practically perfect in every way, to coin a phrase. She was supportive and encouraging and non-intrusive, and she was exactly what I needed then, thank God. It was going on eleven p.m. by this time, and I was heading into the transition period of my labor. Contractions were very intense and coming right on top of each other. I started feeling pressure from the baby and knew that I’d be pushing soon, so I asked for the laughing gas to be turned on.

Right around 11:30 I felt that pushing time had come, so I had Olof raise the back of the bed so I could stand on my knees and lean against it. Olof called the midwife into the room and I started pushing during contractions, but it was slow going. After about twenty minutes, I started getting a cramp in one of my legs, so I asked for help moving into a sitting position. We were making some progress then, but it was still taking some time for the baby to move down and the midwife suggested I stand up and push through one contraction. That was rough, but it made a big difference and it wasn’t too much longer before our baby girl emerged at 12:18 a.m. on January 14, 2011. All told, I pushed for about forty-five minutes, which is a good deal longer than I’m used to (with Brynja, for example, I pushed for nine minutes), but by that point I wasn’t surprised. It was just one more long part of one long day in one long pregnancy.

Once she was on the outside, though, my entire mood changed. I felt so relieved … carefree, even. The midwife kept asking me if it was okay if she did this thing or that thing, and for once I was entirely agreeable. I told her at one point, “You can do whatever you want,” and at that moment I meant it wholeheartedly.

I suppose one good thing I can say about such a long labor — or about this particular long labor, anyway — is that even at its worst it never got as intense as any of my others. I remember realizing from the physical signs that I was in transition, but not feeling anything near the almost panicky feeling I’ve had at that point before. Even the worst contractions felt manageable, which hasn’t always been the case. And the longer pushing phase, with the added benefit of having a skilled and patient midwife, meant that I didn’t tear at all and for the first time I didn’t need a single stitch (aside: the difference between two stitches and no stitches is far greater than I would ever have thought).

So that, at long last, was that. As soon as the doctor had been around and given the all-clear, we packed up and came home, at just past ten the next morning. Now we’re mostly settled in, just learning how to live with another ring in our circus.