Credit
A month before I gave birth to my fourth baby I was fired. Reluctantly I spent a lot of time at home thinking about my upcoming delivery.
I searched the web and read a lot of birth stories. One of the stories caught my eyes because when I read it I felt like I was the one in labor. The woman described in details every stage of the delivery, both physical and emotional. While sitting in my balcony, I closed my eyes and imagined how would my own delivery be like. I think that I had experienced a guided imagery.
Reading stories and imagining my own delivery, helped me a lot when real time arrived.
My due date was September 27th 2009 which by chance happened to be Yom Kippur in Israel. I don’t know if everyone knows that On Yom Kippur everything in Israel stops. There is no transportation of any kind, there are no cars on the roads, all businesses, shops, restaurants, and entertainment areas are closed, and there is even no radio and TV broadcasting.
On that evening we took our kids for a walk like many other people do on this special day. My friends told me that I looked like a woman who was about to deliver. I didn’t feel any contractions or other signs of imminent delivery. I simply looked very tired as I was busy all day cleaning the house and preparing meals for my kids. Retrospectively, I can say that I was nesting which is one of the signs that labor approaches.
It was a quarter to eleven at night when my delivery started. After my first contraction, my water broke. My husband called an ambulance and a friend. We couldn’t drive the car since it was Yom Kippur…
Meanwhile, the contractions arrived every three minutes. I walked in the street back and forth trying to relieve my pain. It seemed like ages until the ambulance arrived but actually it took only five minutes. I took off my pants and saw I was bleeding. The contractions came every two minutes. I realized that I was in labor and tried to focus. Here I was in the ambulance, escorted by my husband, a paramedic who was also the driver and two non experienced young volunteers. All that time I tried to concentrate and stay calm. I knew that I was on my own now, I knew that I had to deliver without any help. I felt the baby going through me, the head was there. The way to the hospital seemed like an eternity…
It was eleven o’clock when we arrived at the entrance to the hospital. I screamed at the paramedic that I felt the baby’s head between my legs, I was right! He stopped the ambulance, the head was between my legs, I pushed a little and the head was out and then pushed again and the baby was out. Wow! it took me fifteen minutes to deliver my baby by myself. I think it was a miracle!
This labor was such a powerful experience, I had decided to share it with other moms.
This birth story was written by Sarit Bronstein who is the owner ofMy Practical Baby Guide which focuses on pregnancy, birth and babies.
