We delivered our sweet baby Landry at home, and we did it on purpose. We have had lots of questions over the past week about the delivery, so I decided we would do a quick post with a few of the (not too detailed) details. :)
First of all, we made this decision after lots of discussion and LOTS of prayer. I am not a great "hospital person," and we knew that delivering a baby in the hospital was going to really stress me out. That is when we started researching other options. We met with several midwives and several doctors in the area before we finally decided on delivering at home with our wonderful midwife, Nancy. We didn't tell a lot of people before the delivery that this is what we were doing because we didn't want to question our decision just because of what other people had to say. Our families did know, and they were wonderfully supportive!
Next, we wrote a vision for what we wanted our birth to be like, and we prayed over that for several months. We also had some special friends that were praying with us. When we look back now, God fulfilled every item on our vision. It was an unbelievable experience to feel God working in our home and protecting us from any danger. He is the only thing that kept me going through the long labor. Our midwife even said that my contractions were some of the worst she had seen in 30 years, and that she was a little worried that I might be in shock. God pulled us through and was faithful to deliver our sweet baby to us safely.
The labor itself was an amazing experience. Amazing, but long. I was officially in labor for right at 50 hours. Yes, 50 hours! My water broke at 2:30 on Wednesday morning, and Landry arrived at 4:45 on Friday morning. I didn't start really hard labor until about 9:00 on Thursday night. It was not messy. We did not deliver in the bathtub. I will absolutely try to deliver this way again with our next child.
Here are a few pictures of the experience. My mom didn't have nearly as much time to take pictures as we originally thought. Once we were in hard labor, it was pretty much "all hands on deck."
This was before the hard contractions started. Probably Thursday evening about 7.
Here is Landry's first picture!
Landry getting cleaned up. Me in the background hardly believing that she was here!
This is about 2 hours after she was born. We were all three WORN OUT!
Here is Landry with our sweet midwife, Nancy. She will always be a dear friend of our family!
I think you can tell from the pictures, but Micah was amazed. He was so excited, and he stayed right next to me the entire time. He was able to help deliver Landry and was extremely overwhelmed by the experience. This was an amazing adventure for our marriage, and we feel closer already because of what we were able to make it through together. What a blessing!
I am sure that I am not covering everything that people have asked. If you have any other questions, just let me know! :)
