Aki's Birth Story
Hi Vittoria,
Long time no see! I wanted to let you know of the birth of Yuto Ingmar Lendahls. He was born on Friday, October 23rd at 9:13am and weighed 7 lbs 9 ozs, 21 inches long.
As you may remember, I was told I had a risk of pre-term labor at 33 weeks. After a few weeks of bedrest, I was pretty much back to normal, then 36 weeks passed, then 37, then 38, then 39... I ended up making it all the way to 2 days before my due date!
The labor was very quick and painless! No, just kidding :), but the quick part is totally true-- from my first labor contraction to birth, it took about 4 hours total. I think what happened was that in the last month I had gone through the early labor phase gradually (without any pain), so by the time I started feeling moderately painful contractions at 5am on Friday morning, I was already in active labor but I didn't know it! I was timing the contractions and waiting at home for a while, then suddenly they picked up and my water broke at about 7:20am. By the time I got to the hospital at 7:45pm, I was already dilated to 10cm and was told I couldn't get an epidural (which I REALLY wanted at that point). I started pushing around 8am and an hour+ later, Yuto was born! He came out screaming, with a full head of black hair.
Looking back I'm glad I was able to have a natural birth. What I really learned is that it's important to be open to whatever happens, because it's never quite what you expect! I had some tearing but overall I'm doing great. He's a week old today and it's truly a joy.
Hope all's well with you and I hope to come to post-natal class some time in the future.