Tracy joined our prenatal class when she was expecting her first child and continued to practise when she was carrying her second child.Her firstborn was born in December 2014 and her second child was born June 2016. This is her birth story.

When I was pregnant with my second child I thought I knew what to expect but it was so totally different that it threw me off!

With my first, I had a bloody show at 3am and contractions started few hours after. It was a dull backache similar to when I had my period. I didn’t really feel any stomach pains. Initially I thought ‘this wasn’t so bad. I can get through this. it’s like having my period’. Fast forward to 8pm I felt as if an elephant was on my back. I seriously wanted to break my back in half.

With my second, it took me a few hours to realise that my water broke (I thought it was my bladder). Went to the hospital in the morning with no contractions until evening. Which was so weird that I started googling how to naturally trigger contractions. when I finally had contractions it was from my tummy and not my back. Not sure which was more horrible. Both felt really awful towards the end.

I took pethidine for both pregnancy but only because I was tired from having contractions for almost a day. I wanted to avoid asking for epidural but wanted to reserve enough strength for pushing. Both time it took within 2 hours of administering pethidine for my cervix to dilate from 4cm to 7cm.

First pregnancy took an hour of pushing. Second took 11mins. Hubby didn’t even have time to enter the labor room.

Oddly enough I didn’t feel much pain when it was time to push. With my second child I could feel my daughter’s head and that was my focus (no hubby to distract me).  I was somewhat visualising the labor. It felt so surreal when baby came out and I remembered both time how amazing the body was to be able to naturally push out a baby from such a small opening.

I started breast feeding within minutes of delivery but if possible I don’t recommend any painkillers because baby gets really drowsy and doesn’t feed well for couple days. The nurses at ripas were really nice and I could always ask them if I had any latching issues.

In short, labor is nothing like in the movies. It’s loonnng, intense and the continuous intermittent pain is exhausting but every time I look at my babies the pain seems less and less significant.