Week 1 Postpartum: The day I gave birth

Monday, July 8th

Almost 24 hours after my water broke, around 1 pm on Monday I started to feel slight cramping in my stomach.
Having had cramping and false signs of labor for weeks now I wasn't sure if this is now the real deal or just some false labor again. I didn't want to get my hopes up and get dis appointed.
I tried to go back to sleep, but the cramping slowly got worse and I noticed a pattern forming. Once the contractions hit the 10 minute mark, I decided to go look for one of the midwives.

The midwife hooked me up to a NST and sure enough I had regular contractions. I stayed in the delivery room with the NST for about 2 hours until my butt started to hurt so bad that the midwife sent me back to my room. I suffered by myself for a bit until the midwife came back to me at around 7am to do a cervical check. 

I was told that I was already fully dilated and that I should call my husband  to come to the hospital!!
I was a bit shocked about the fully dilation. I was in pain, but it was still bearable and not at all like everyone described it. Nonetheless I called my husband to get to the hospital and he immediately was on his way.
After a couple of minutes the midwife also got suspicious about my lack of pain and screaming and pain and she decided to check me again only to find out that I wasn't fully dilated at all, but only at 4 to 5 cm. She asked if I want to call my hisband again, to tell him it would take more time, but since he was on his way already I didn't call him again. I was actually very happy that he would be with me during the later stage of labor.

When my husband arrived at the hospital we sat together in the lobby, since he couldn't go into my room. I would have preferred to be in labor at home or in a single room, instead of going through contractions in the lobby with multiple people watching, but I didn't have a choice. At around 10 am the doctor came to ask me if we would like to speed up the last stage of labor with an contraction inducing hormone and I agreed. I was in so much pain at this point, I would have agreed to anything that would make this stop.

They prepared the delivery room with the IV and around 11 am I was finally able to get away from the lobby onto the delivery chair.
After breathing through more painful contractions and a small panic attack the doctors cane to check me again.
They confirmed that I was almost fully dilated and I was so relieved that this would all have an end soon. I regretted  not having practiced more breathing techniques at home before going into labor. Maybe the pain would have been more tolerable then.

Once I was fully dilated I noticed the immense urge to push. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to push yet, so I tried to hold it in until the midwife told me it was ok now. I followed her instructions and finally pushed put my baby. The doctor had to make a perineal cut to get the baby out, but I didn't even feel it.

Once the baby was out they immediately put her on my chest. It was a really surreal feeling. While she was lying on my chest I pushed out my placenta and then the doctor started sewing up my cut. The pain from the sewing as well as the contraction pain that I still felt made it hard to focus on my baby.

After a while they took her off me to measure and test her and then put her next to me again. I immediately asked the midwife if I could try to breastfeed her. I was planning on solely breastfeeding her, so I wanted to have her latch on immediately to stimulate milk production. The midwife showed me how to do it and baby latched on with no problems.

We stayed like this for some time in the delivery room while my room was getting prepared (I was moving into a single room from today). 
We took pictures, called our parents and were just happy that she was finally here with us.
Even though I had the perineal cut I was able to sit and all in all I felt really well (might have been the rush of hormones). The after contractions were pretty bad though, but with the painkillers that pain went away too. I hadn't slept in two days at this point, but I didn't feel tired.

In the afternoon we were finally able to move to the single room.
The hospital still had restrictions on visitors, but since I got the single room they allowed my husband's parents to visit that day to see the baby.
My in-law's left eventually and when dinner arrived at 6pm my husband also left for the day.

The first night in the hospital the midwives took care of the baby during the night, so that I could get a good rest.

When everyone was gone and the room was finally quiet I fell asleep immediately.