My due date came and went. A whole pineapple, a fair bit of sex, a lot of raspberry leaf tea, and six days later I still had no pre-labor signs. Although the third trimester had treated me pretty well, the suspense was killing me and the longer I went without so much as a lone Braxton Hicks, the more I felt broken. Fears of induction and timing out of the birth center started popping up. I got it into my head that she was just waiting for me to finish all the baby projects, so I kicked them into high gear and finished them that sixth night after my due date and triumphantly put my sewing machine away, declaring to her that she could really come out now. My back was sore from sewing for hours, so my husband gave me a back rub and we went to bed.

Early the next morning, as he left for work, nothing magical had happened and I complained and he told me (nicely) to shut up and go back to sleep. At 9, I woke up again. Contractions. Unmistakable ones and already strong enough that I couldn't sleep through them. Apparently, she really was just waiting for those projects and that back soreness was really very early labor!

I still didn't want to get my hopes up that it was the real deal but I got up and told my mother, who had flown several thousand miles to be there for the birth of her first grandchild. She said I should time them and they were already a 30-60 seconds long and 90 seconds apart. I asked my husband to come home from work at around 1 in the afternoon and we played video games to distract me as the contractions intensified, though I still ate a light but fairly normal lunch and took a couple hot showers.

We'd been checking in with the midwives every couple of hours and they'd said to come in when I could no longer talk through contractions. However, I never felt like that--I certainly didn't want to, but that was different in my mind. I was waiting for the promised "Labor Land" and I was still fully present and clearheaded. My mother and Ken started telling me that they thought we needed to go in but I was unconvinced and wanted to wait until after rush hour as it was now about 4:30. Even the midwives were fairly ambivalent about it. But, my mother won out and we headed out at about 5pm.

And got stuck straight in rush hour. I highly discourage this timing! A 10-minute drive took us 45 and it was the most miserable part of my whole labor. I remember assuming that I was only about 50% of peak intensity and, if so, I could see why some women got pain meds later on. I still wasn't zoned out, though, and was joking about gas prices.

After we got there, they tried to get a read on her heartrate but had trouble since she had already descended into the birth canal--I was 100% effaced and a bit more than 7cm dilated. In other words, I'd spent the first part of transition in the car and then lying on a hard exam table. We finally gave up on the heart readings as they were sporadic and with strong decels every time I had a contraction and squished her head, which they said would be bad news earlier in labor but was pretty typical for how far along I was.

Finally I got to get in the warm tub around 6:15 or so. It. Was. Heaven. Instantly, I felt like we wound the clock back to 2-3pm in contraction intensity. My husband did some counter pressure and in what felt like no time, they told me I could push. This took me complete by surprise, as I felt no urge to do so whatsoever. Since I didn't have my body's explicit instructions helping, it took a couple contractions to figure out exactly where and how hard to push. This part was tough but honestly I think it was harder getting our heavy couch up the narrow, long flight of stair that led to our last apartment with only my husband's help. The couch certainly took longer--I was pushing on that thing for about two hours!

As her head started coming out, they gave me a mirror and let me feel her and we could tell that the amniotic sac was still covering her black hair. A couple pushes later and out she came at 7:26 pm--barely 11 hours after I'd first felt contractions. We were married on 7/26, so we thought that was just perfect. The last contraction I got impatient, pushed through the end of the contraction, and felt myself tear but didn't really know how bad since it was pretty buried under all the other sensations. I don't think I would have torn at all had I waited for the next wave but even as it was, I only needed glue on one and no stitches.

My husband caught her on the way out and the midwives said the very first thing she did as her head came free was open her big eyes under water and look straight up at them. The sac broke as they lifted her out, but she was officially born en caul (a lucky sign in many cultures and fairly rare). I delivered the placenta pretty easily about 10 minutes later and my husband cut the cord.

We snuggled in bed for a while and she stayed awake for a whopping three hours straight out of the gate (in hindsight, this should have been a warning sign about her penchant for sleeplessness) and nursed like a champ. They measured her at a petite 6lbs7oz and 10 inches (the coming home outfit we'd brought was far too big and she fit preemie until about 4 weeks) and sent us all home at about midnight. By 1am all of us were in our own bed with her cuddled up skin-to-skin.

I feel incredibly lucky that my first labor was so relatively quick and easy and I like sharing this story to let other women know that it's a possibility. I never felt the need for medication at all and it was neither the hardest nor most painful experience I've ever had. I don't know how much my water never breaking contributed to the mildness of the contractions or if there were other factors too but I have only a fairly average pain tolerance, so it's not because I just don't feel pain. Hopefully I get even half as lucky the next time round!

Edit: I was also Strep B positive. My midwives gave me a range of options from IVs to nothing unless there was a substantial gap between my water breaking and labor and research to help us choose. I chose no interventions unless necessary, which they weren't.