BIRTH STORY
Several people have asked for the birth story of one little Cyrus Allen Sellers, so here goes....
I woke up Sunday morning around 5am with contractions. Seeing that this had happened SEVERAL times in the last week, I went back to bed, knowing that if they were the real thing I would be woken up again soon. Justin and I got up around 9am and I was still having contractions, so we started timing. They were around five minutes apart and were intense but not awful. We called and cancelled brunch plans with some friends just to make sure we didn't have any water breaking incidents at a nice place and then ran to the grocery store to grab a few things, not knowing when we would be going again :)
We went on several walks and through all of this the contractions were still 4-7 minutes apart, increasing in intensity. We called our Doula, Mandy, around 1pm to let her know we thought this was the real thing and talked through some things to do for speeding up labor. Not that anything helped. The contractions started to get more intense, and Mandy came over to be with us around 7pm. We labored at home for awhile trying to get the contractions closer together and as intense as possible. The oh so wonderful back labor started about then. For anyone that has not experienced back labor with no pain medication, I can honestly say it is the worst pain I've ever had in my entire life. We worked on some positioning for the next while, and decided around 11pm that it was time to head to the hospital.
We got settled into the room at the hospital and were greeted by our nurse, who was actually a huge natural childbirth advocate and natural birth mom herself, which made us happy. They said I was around 4cm dilated, which was pretty disappointing with all the time I had been laboring. The back labor was pretty tough and I definitely doubted if I was going to be able to do this as planned, but at some point I think he finally turned from being posterior which helped. I labored all night, and when my doctor came in at 7am to check in on me I had progressed to around 8cm. We decided to break my water to see if we could speed things up. Although this wasn't something we wanted to do, I had already been leaking and it seemed like the path of least resistance, so I said okay.
Even with breaking my water, I still had no progress at 10am when Dr. Williamson checked back in. At this point she was starting to get worried and suggested that maybe we use a little Pitocin to get things moving so that I could still deliver naturally like I wanted. They started the drip around 10:30am. DEAR GOD. This was moment #2 when I definitely doubted being able to give birth naturally. Luckily it only took 30 minutes of Pitocin-induced contractions to get to 10cm and we were ready to push.
I pushed for about 20 minutes or so and Mr. Cyrus Allen Sellers was born naturally after 27 hours of labor at 11:39am. He weighed 7 pounds 1 ounce and was 20 1/2 inches long. His head was 14 inches around. We're thinking this might have been part of what took so long ;) He has a head full of hair and big blue eyes and couldn't be more perfect.
We are doing great; I only had a small tear so not many stitches and everything else has been completely normal. I was pretty exhausted after his birth so I slept most of the day Monday other than when Cyrus wanted to nurse. I'm having the normal soreness and things you have after giving birth, but nothing too painful and I have a great husband around to take care of me :)
For those that don't know what a Doula is, please see Mandy's website here:
I cannot say enough how AMAZING Mandy was throughout the entire pregnancy and birth process. I definitely could not have made it through the labor process naturally without her and am so glad that she helped to facilitate the birth we wanted. If you are anywhere near Charleston and having a baby, I would HIGHLY recommend her services.
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