A (natural) birth story: part 1

In the months of preparation before Mercy's arrival, I found it helpful to read other people's birth stories. I was hoping to have a natural childbirth with no interventions whatsoever, and by reading others' experience trying to labor naturally in a hospital setting, I felt more empowered and educated. 

I wrote one soon after she was born to help me remember some of the details, and here it is for those who may be interested:

I was expecting to deliver earlier than my due date, not because I felt some sort of intuition in my body, but because multiple people said they thought I would. When Mercy’s due date came and went, I started to get depressed. It's hard to describe why I was depressed. Part of the depression was due to the fact that I had scheduled my last day of work to be a week before she was due, so I was home alone with nothing to do. It was also sort of depressing waiting around for my new life to begin. I expected her on May 29^th, and consequently, expected my life to radically change.  Every day after that date I was just in a state of limbo. I didn’t have any stuff to prepare for the baby; I had already done it. I had no fun plans with which to occupy myself because I figured I would be taking care of a baby. Each day became increasingly worse. I didn’t want to go out and see people because I didn’t want to them to inquire about why Mercy hadn’t yet arrived. I avoided the phone as much as possible because I didn’t want to be reminded that she wasn’t here. 

Monday night, a week or so after my “due date,” Tim and I were planning to get together with some friends to play tennis (I would just watch), but at the last minute, I decided to skip it and stay home because I couldn’t bear the thought of being around a bunch of people, even though they were close friends, because I was feeling so down. When Tim got home, I was crying and just very lamentable. Another contributor to my bad mood was the fact that we didn’t have any food in the house; I hadn’t grocery shopped because I didn’t want to plan meals that I wouldn’t be able to cook because of the baby’s arrival. So I was not only miserable because of my depression, but because of my hunger. I was planning to just wait until breakfast to eat again since we did have some breakfast foods, but I finally had Tim get me a pepperoni sub at 11:30pm. I planned to eat half of it, but I ended up scarfing it all down within a couple minutes because I was famished.  It was a good thing that I ate this because I would be needing the energy very soon…

to be continued