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When did you realize you were really in labor?
When I had to focus on counting to get through each wave...about 6 hours before my guy was born.
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What was the most challenging thing about going natural?
The outside opinions! I believed in what I was doing and never wavered, but it seemed everyone around me thought I was crackers! I was the first in my family to birth at home and the majority of my relatives have elective sections and inductions-they all thought I was the odd one to WANT to feel and be present and partner with my baby to birth together.
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What was the most helpful thing you did to prepare for childbirth?
Watch and read and learn everything I could-even if it was just to be assured of how I didn't want things.
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What surprised you about your birth?
How...wonderful and powerful it was. I still rub my guy's soft little noggin and remember how it felt just before he was completely Earthside.
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I felt powerfully undone. How else to describe the moment you first see the reasons you have lived and fought and begged and prayed for?
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What pain relief strategies worked best?
Counting, oddly. I knew if I could just breathe until I got to 30, I was golden! Not a strategy I had planned, just one that evolved as birth unfolded.
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What position did you end up delivering in?
Good 'ole hands and knees in the fishy pool!
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How did it feel to hold your baby for the first time?
Like God had engulfed my heart and oceans of love in a perfect little body cradled in my wobbly arms. I felt powerfully undone. How else to describe the moment you first see the reasons you have lived and fought and begged and prayed for?
