Levia May

I won't bore you with every gory detail, but I do want to share Levia's birth story.  I feel so fortunate in the care I got and the way we decided to go about having our beautiful girl.

We decided to have her at Mountain Midwifery (a birth center) instead of going the traditional hospital route.  I was seen by midwives throughout the pregnancy, we took classes which were very helpful, and I felt like the midwives knew me and took time to answer all of my questions or concerns.  I have never liked doctors but I never felt scared or nervous about visiting my midwives.  One of the biggest comforts going into birth was that throughout our classes the midwives were honest about the pain of birth but made me feel so comfortable and not scared for the actual labor.

On Friday night at about 8:30 I started having small contractions (far apart and not very consistent) so I thought they would just go away.  I went to bed that night just fine but woke up a few times with contractions.  At 1:00am I woke up with stronger contractions and they were consistently 5 minutes apart.  I was throwing up a ton and lost everything in me by that point.  I was nervous about the throwing up so we called the midwives a little earlier than we planned- at about 5:00am when contractions were 4 minutes apart.  They told me to come in by 6:00.  By the time we got there my contractions were really close together.  Because I had lost all my food and water, they gave me a bag of fluid through an IV to help give me some energy.  At about 7:45 or so I got into the birthing tub.  I decided I love birthing tubs! Just about after that point I could hardly tell what was a contraction anymore.  --lots of pain and pushing part--  and Levia was born at 8:28am.  After she came out of the water it took her a minute to breathe which scared me but the midwives helped right away.  The midwives and the nurse there were awesome and talked me through some of the hard parts.

Although it was obviously not fun, I had an amazing birth experience.  It was so surreal and just indescribable the spirit that was there and the overwhelming love that I felt as my husband and I looked at out little girl for the first time.  I know everyone says it about their own child, but to me she was just the most beautiful thing I had ever seen- and still is!