How Cooper made his escape

I've decided to write a timeline style description of Cooper's birth. It is really long (so was the labor), but I enjoyed writing it all down so just read what you want to! I didn't get too graphic, I promise.

Wednesday the 5th: At my appointment, the midwife offers to strip my membranes to speed the onset of labor. I decline, figuring the baby isn't due for a week so speeding the process up too early isn't prudent. She seems happy with that and says she'll offer again next week on my due date.

Friday the 7th: The delightfully British sounding "bloody show" (a sign that you might go into labor sooner rather than later) starts up. It is kinda yicky, but encouraging.

Saturday the 8th: While Matt is up skiing, I freak out and clean a storage cubbyhole in the upstairs office that we've been ignoring for months, proceed to make a huge to-do list, and then ignore the to-do list in favor of baking lasagna. Nesting urge, anyone?

Sunday the 9th:
2am- I wake up to a contraction that feels noticeably different from the Braxton-Hicks ones that I've been having for months. I go on to have light, irregular contractions throughout the night, interrupting my sleep noticeably and occurring about once every 15-30 minutes.
8am- The light contractions seem afraid of the daylight and basically stop, occurring about once every 45min to an hour. They are stronger, though.
Noon- I call my doula. She gets very excited. She suggests Matt and I take some long walks to speed up the contractions and call her around dinner time.
1pm- Long walk along the golf-course river trail with Matt and Lucky. Contractions get stronger when walking up hill, but stop when we get back to the house. I take a fitful nap when we get back.
4pm- Long walk in the bright sunshine along the Kim Williams Trail with Matt and Lucky. Contractions getting harder to ignore. Another fitful nap afterwards.
6pm- I call the doula (Kathee) again. She advises a light dinner and trying to relax.
7pm- I kick Matt's ASS at Scrabble, including a "scrabble" (using up all your tiles, I spelled "renderer") in a triple word box. Huge score. I am psyched.
8pm- Worried I won't sleep all night due to the pre-labor, again, I call Kathee. She advises a bath to help me relax and tells me that some women's bodies really like to only labor in the middle of the night, so a bath and another nap might be just what I need to get in some decent sleep before the real deal hits me at 2am again.
9pm- The bath proves to be really uncomfortable and instead of stalling out my contractions, it speeds them up and makes them stronger. This suggests that I'm no longer in pre-labor, but instead in active labor. Score! Let's get this show on the ROAD!
11pm- Matt and I have our hands full dealing with seriously hard contractions that are getting long and close together. We call Kathee and tell her to come on down. Matt packs up my gatorade, jello, and other snacks.

Monday the 10th
Midnight- Kathee arrives and checks my blood pressure and the baby's heartbeat. We are looking great and labor is getting very real.
2am- I'm now meeting the criteria to call the midwives and drive down to the birth center. Kathee does a labor check- I'm at 5cm. Matt calls the midwives and tells Deni (the midwife on call) to head on down.
2:30am- Labor stops while I'm in the car. Thank goodness- laboring in the car would have sucked.
2:45am- Arrive at birth center and get a labor check. Now at 7cm. Score! We are having a baby! Into the jacuzzi with me! Matt takes a cat nap in the barcalounger while Kathee and Deni take care of me. I eat lots of jello, applesauce, and gatorade.
6am- Labor check. Still at 7cm. Are you freaking kidding me? 3 hours and no measurable progress. I get annoyed and feel a bit dejected.
6:30am- Deni breaks my water for me. Holy crap does THAT change things. I spend the next few hours alternating in bed, shower, jacuzzi, and birthing ball. Matt supports me (now clad in his swimming trunks) the whole time- he was amazing!
7:30am- I develop intolerable, uncontrollable nerve pains in my back that follow each contraction. It is god awful. The second midwife (Jeanne) applies a sterile water block- a bizarre, sorta-homeopathic form of pain control that is when you inject little pockets of water into the skin near the spine. It works perfectly for about an hour, and then the pain returns viciously.
8:30am- During the next labor check the midwives feel the baby's head to find that he is slowly moving it from side to side- a sign that he's been asynclitic (holding his head kinda diagonally) and that is almost certainly what slowed my labor and caused the back pain. At this point, the back pain becomes horrific. I say this in all honesty- the entire labor up until this point had been something that was challenging, long, and intense. But it was totally workable and I had been feeling really good with all the support I had. But the back pain was completely and unbelievably beyond my ability to cope. I get rather frantic and weird, jumping in and out of the jacuzzi, shower, bed and birthing ball in a strange and incredibly painful attempt to find something that doesn't result in horrible back pain. Kathee and Matt take turns applying counterpressure to my back, which sometimes helps a lot and other times makes the whole thing even worse.
9:30am- Now that I've gone off the deep end emotionally from all the back pain, the labor check shows that I'm at 9.5cm and that baby has his head lined up correctly. The midwives (I now have two midwives, a doula, and a nurse with me at all times) tell me that I'm free to push and within minutes, I feel like pushing. Except that sometimes the pushing ends in excruciating stabbing pains in my back. Which sucks.
10 and 11am- I am alternatively pushing, whimpering, screaming and crying. The back pain escalates. I tell the midwives that I'm done with this nonsense. They tell me I'm doing great and that I'm almost there. This sort of penetrates the fog.
12am- The process of elimination shows that the only pushing position I can tolerate (i.e. that does not create horrific back pain) is the least efficient, most tiring, most challenging position. Damnit. But at least it works, so I keep pushing.
12:30pm- Baby's head starts to show. The midwives keep telling me that I'm gonna make it, and that they can see a fine head of hair on the baby. I keep telling them that I'm exhausted and that I just want this to be done and over with. I eat lots of ice chips and cry a bunch in between pushing.
1:00pm- I tell the midwives that I will do anything to make this baby come out faster. They tell me that if I can push just a little more, the baby will be far enough down to effectively use an episiotomy (incision that enlarges the "escape hatch") to speed up the baby's birth. This sounds AWESOME at this point.
1:10pm Baby's head is close enough so that I can reach down and feel his little fuzzy wet scalp. Holy crap there is a baby in there! I push harder.
1:15pm Bigger escape hatch complete. Thank god for local anesthesia.
1:30pm Baby's head emerges. Feels sooooooo good.
1:32pm Baby's shoulders, hips, and feet emerge each with their own separate push, which feels very odd but incredibly exciting. He immediately lets out a very loud screech and starts flailing wildly.

At this point, they held him up and said, "What do we have?" And I said, "OMMYGOD ITS A BOY" and Matt broke down sobbing uncontrollably. They put Cooper all wet and sticky on my chest and he screamed bloody murder, pedaled his arms and legs, and generally showed the world that he had arrived very healthy despite a long time comin'.

That night we got home around 7pm. Matt, Cooper and I all slept hard for about five hours until Cooper woke up wanting to be fed, at which point our little family sprang into action for the first time.

In the end, I had a 36 hour labor, 10 hours of which were "active labor", and 4 of which were spent pushing. My only complaint is the back pain- it was truly terrible. The rest of the experience, however, was amazing and I would not trade any of it for the world.