Alexandria Grace Streff was welcomed into this world at home Saturday April 24th at 10:06 pm!! Deciding to have a home birth was not something we took lightly. Experiencing a few friends home births in Texas, while we lived there, really opened my eyes to other options other than a hospital to be the setting for the birth of our little girl :)!! So after much research we found an amazing mid-wife, who has been in practice for 25 years and Landri happened to be her 765 birth!! She had seen it all and this was truly her calling so we knew that there was no better choice!! I had decided to have a water birth and since we don't have a nice big garden tub in our house, with the advice of a friend who had a water birth at home, we went to no better place than Wally World!! And bought ourselves a $25 inflatable pool, which worked our great!!!
So at 4:15 am Saturday morning my water broke, well it took me a while to figure out what was going on. It wasn't a big gush like you see in the movies, so I was a little confused. But with a call to my mid-wife she promised me that I was in labor and had me time my contractions, which were 1:30 long and 7 minutes apart. Needless to say she was on her way with a 3 hour drive ahead of her!! After I had gotten up and moved around they slowed quite a bit. So Justin got the pool ready and mowed the grass as I patiently waited!!! The mid-wife came and set up shop and we just waited...and waited...and waited! I walked the neighborhood, cleaned a little and at about 5:00 pm my contractions were strong enough to get in the water! Note the picture of me smiling below. The water defiantly was relaxing and helped take the edge off, for a little while ;)
With a posterior cervix and a nasty cervical lip, I labored in the pool for a while and starting pushing at about 7:00 pm. And pushing...and pushing....and pushing!!!! After 3 hours of pushing and giving Justin the best triceps workout ever with my death grip. Landri Grace was placed onto my chest..... it was the sweetest moment I've ever experienced!!! After getting over the shock of what I had just done for 17 hours I looked down at my daughter and thought......Oh my God she looks just like JUSTIN!!
Please be aware this terrible picture was right after those 17 hours of labor ;)
2 comments:
Wow! What an accomplishment Amber! So proud of you. I often think that Kella & Ryan are such easy girls as a reward for having natural births (wink!) We loved seeing the pics and reading the story. Kella was a little confused when we told her the news, I think it's because she never saw you with a big belly!
Congrats Amber! Great story and so glad everything went well! Landri's adorable -looking forward to seeing more pictures!
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