First mama in the Birth Story series is Tineke! She has a great birth story and a super cute little guy. Read her story below and make sure to leave her a comment and check her site out! 🙂

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At about 28 weeks in my pregnancy I was admitted to the hospital because of many Braxton hicks or practice contractions. After a week in the hospital on contraction stoppers I was sent home with complete bedrest until week 36. Since I never noticed these practice contractions (they didn´t hurt at all, I only noticed if I had a hand on my bump) I was a bit nervous that I would not notice it either when I would go into labor for real. Another worry I had was that I wouldn´t get to the hospital in time to still get an epidural (One of my proud points when talking to friends at home in the Netherlands, in Spain everybody who wanted to would get an epidural not just if they doctor thought it was necessary!). But when I talked about these worries, most people laughed a bit: “If it really starts you will definitely notice, believe me!” “If you´re too late in the hospital for an epidural then the worst is already over so in that case you will survive that last part also”. Boy I wished they were right! But things went a bit differently…

During a night 10 days before my due date I woke up at 2am to pee, I noticed I might have lost some liquid but somehow I expected “breaking waters” to be a bit more dramatic, like lots of water and not just a few drops. So I went back to sleep. When I woke up at 7am I told C about it and he got a bit nervous so we decided to call his mom who works as nurse in the hospital on the newborn ward. She told us to maybe just go to the hospital to check but to first have breakfast and take a shower, no stress.

We left the house at 8:15 and in the car I noticed a bit of pain in my back. When we got to the hospital they told me “I had done a great job at home already” (which job? I hadn´t noticed anything!) because I was already 3cm dilated. So I had to stay but they told me to take it easy, this would still take a while. I was nervous but also still somehow calm (yes! I had arrived on time to get that epidural, everything would be fine), but that calmness might have lasted for about 3minutes. What hit me was a labor storm where contractions happened non-stop. So within 10minutes I was completely dilated and they told me I was going to deliver this baby right now. I panicked (what happened with my epidural? Where was C?) and when they lost the baby´s heartbeat the doctors (my mother in law´s colleagues) started to panic a bit as well. More and more of her colleagues came in to make sure everything would go fine, and although it was great that they had so many doctors and nurses on standby, it was so chaotic and I couldn´t deal with the pain, the fact that C wasn´t allowed to be there because of the risky situation, and that everything was happening in Spanish (my Spanish seemed to disappear at that moment). My bed went back and forth between emergency C-section or delivery room, but it was too late so I went to the delivery room.

In the meantime, C was waiting outside and one of his mom´s colleagues tried to be nice and did some chitchat to distract him. He asked her whether I was the one screaming so much, and she wanted to calm him down and told him it was another woman. If only the screaming wouldn´t have swopped from English to Dutch by then, he might have believed her…

At that point I wasn’t really collaborating anymore so they gave me something to put me out for a little bit. Five minutes later at 9.43am Lucas was born (so I was told), and when I opened my eyes a few minutes later C was standing next to me with a baby in his arms. It was so surreal because I thought the pushing “fun” still had to begin so I was really confused on whose baby that was….

Less than 1.5hours between my first bit of pain in the car and the birth, and they were quite chaotic and stressful. In the end everything turned out well, Lucas was healthy, I was fine but we we´re told afterwards that we had been very very lucky that we hadn´t waited any longer at home because the situation got very complicated so I don´t even want to think about what would have happened if we wouldn’t have been in the hospital!

Bio: I am Tineke, a Dutchie living in Spain, happily not-married to César and mommy of Lucas. Before becoming a mom, I always thought I was busy, however since we have Lucas the term “busy” got a whole new definition!  And all of that in a country which is not my home country and therefore causes quite some cultural clashes in this whole motherhood thingy.

Want to read more about my adventures as a working mommy abroad? Would love to connect!

Workingmommyabroad.com

Instagram: @workingmommyabroad

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/workingmommyabroad/

Twitter: @tinekefr

Pinterest: https://nl.pinterest.com/tinekefr/

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Thank you so much Tineke for sharing your story on the blog! Motherhood is beautiful and scary, but perfect at the same time. Can’t wait to read other birth stories. Stay tuned.