Submitted by Beth in Arlington, TX
I have to second Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. The stories in there were so much fun! There are some things that might make ya say, “What?!” but take it with a grain of salt. 
Either way, I really think it helped me a lot.
I used a birthing center run by a CNM and I went into labor at 36.5 weeks (3.5 weeks early) in the middle of the night. My contractions started fast and furious, none of this cute, “I think I might be in labor” business, 2 min apart lasting 20-45 sec at a pain level 8-9. And they never changed. Labor started and ended like that. I labored for 3 hours, had my boy out in about 20 min of pushing and went home a few hours later. Some fun facts (and the real drama to the story), CNM’s don’t deliver premature babies out of the hospital (usually), so we were to meet at the birthing center and go to the hospital if I was indeed in labor (b/c the pain had a weird pattern and I was early she thought it might be a kidney stone)
Well, I got to the birthing center and was fully dilated. So I’m ready to push out a premature baby. She also found out in that exam that my sweet one was breech, which is a birthing center no no. So we called 911 to transport me, but I was too quick for them! Not intentionally, it just all happened so fast, but baby was born butt first and came out hollering and weighed 6 lbs 4.5 oz, I was perfectly fine, so even with all the scary possibilities, everything turned out great! The emt’s ended up just being cheerleaders, which is fine with me! I will use that same midwife with the next one. She also helped me a lot with breast feeding. BF’ing preemies (although he wasn’t THAT preemie) can be difficult and I have big ol’ boobs, so we had trouble for many weeks, but we got our act together through her help and successfully breastfed for 10 months. That is also something to think about if BF’ing is important to you. The birth is one day, BF’ing is several months. You’ll want some support lined up for that, if, like I said, it is important to you.
I can relate. My daughter was breech, but she was delivered by c-section AND I actually did have a kidney stone during my pregnancy…. think I’ll save that story for a post =)
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