Monday, August  1 2011.  Violet’s due date.   7:00pm – Violet was very active inside the womb this evening.  We went to bed thinking nothing of it.   
12:00 midnight – Jaime woke up with some abdominal cramping.  She was not sure if it was real labor so she went downstairs  in the kitchen and waited about an hour to see if a pattern was established.    The contractions where 3 minutes apart and about 40 second long.   
Tuesday August 2, 2011  
1:00am – Jaime phones Andy and asked him to come down stairs.  We decide to wait a little while before we call Rosie, our doula.   
2:00am – After things continued on like this for another hour, we decide to call Rosie.  We told her about what was going on.  She suggested that Jaime get in the bath, thinking that it would relax her and make her contractions more regular.  We agreed that she could wait to come over to our house but that she should be ready.  We called the midwife at UCSD and he said the same thing – get in the bath.    We tried having Jaime sit in the tub but the contractions were strong enough now that they needed to be taken bent over so the bath did not work out so well.     
3:00am – Rosie our doula arrives and begins coaching Jaime on breathing through contractions.  There is now little to no rest between the contractions and Jaime is feeling ready to go.   Jaime goes from wanting help to wanting to be left alone.  She wants total silence during contractions.  Back compression and massage with oil is helpful.   
4:00am  – Jaime has some bloody show and decides it is time to go.  Andy and Rosie get the SUV loaded up.  The contractions are now very strong.  Jaime gets into the back seat of the truck and leans over the back seat back which is the best way to take the contractions.  About ½ way into the 45 minute ride Jaime’s water breaks with a loud splash.  After that she quickly goes into transition and feels the urge to push.   Rosie coaches her to blow instead of pushing.    All her contractions are now accompanied by a yell akin to a warrior going into battle.  The yelling seemed to apply counter force to each contraction which enabled Jaime to release pain and take back some control over the process.   Jaime remembers telling Rosie she felt like giving up another sign she was in transition.    
4:30am – Andy calls the midwife again.    We really wanted a female midwife but the one male midwife they had was on .

5:00 am – Jaime tried a variety of pushing positions, but the one that worked best for her was on the bed, on her knees, facing backwards or standing up.    The staff tried to encourage her to try the side lying position but she was having nothing of it.  She knew what was working and that was all she was interested in doing.  After pushing for a while, the flesh stretching pain turned into a burning pain.  This made Jaime relived again because she knew that meant the baby was crowning and she was getting closer.  Since this was Jaime’s first baby, she had no idea how long she would need to push.  So she decided she would push hard, as much as she could.  At one point Jaime realized that she couldn’t get up and walk around anymore because the baby had moved down and it felt like her hips were locked forward.  So she just kept pushing.  The midwife gave her a couple of pointers.  He told her to tuck her tailbone under and push towards her butt.  
6:54am ‐ After two hours of pushing the midwife told Andy to come around to catch baby.  Violet 
shot out like a rocket just before Andy could get around.  Good thing the midwife was able to catch her!   Her first action in the new world was to poo all over the birth space and the midwife.  After she was cleaned up she was handed to Daddy for the first cuddle.  She was fully awake and alert, looking all over at the bright new world.  Andy handed her off to Jaime for a few minutes.  Jaime’s mom was called in to 
cut the cord.  After the cord was cut, Violet was handed back to Andy as Jaime was sewn up, because she had torn in two places.  This process seemed to take forever, as we were really hoping that she could breastfeed right away.  The midwife showed us the placenta and the bag of waters.  We were surprised to see how big they were.  Then they put Jaime in a wheel chair and took her up to the recovery room.  Once in the room, we breastfeed little Violet and watched her sleep.  We couldn’t believe how quiet she
 was and how cute she turned out
8:00am ‐ Although Jaime was still in a great deal of pain and totally exhausted we thanked God for our little girl and  could easily say it was all worth it.