Birth Story: Madison Elizabeth Vogel

In the early morning of October 4th, 1:48am to be exact, I received a text from my Germany-based, college roommate and close friend Kylie: "Sarah I JUST woke up from a dream you had your baby!!! So vivid! Maybe today is the day!!!". A few hours later, around 3:30am, I woke up to pee and read her text. I hadn't yet crawled out of bed as it took some mental preparation at this point in pregnancy to muster the energy to move my body and figure out the best method to go from horizontal to vertical. Grunts and groans are certainly involved in the process. As I laid there I noticed my contractions had a more distinct pattern to them than they had had for the days and actually near two weeks prior. There were a few occasions in the previous two weeks where I texted my midwives, Heather & Hilary of Loudoun Homebirth, thinking I was possibly in early labor. This time, I wanted to be sure what I felt was even more legitimate before waking them with a text. Although they always reassured me that everything I felt was important and to never feel bad about alerting them, I didn't want to call out another false alarm. I laid there for about 20 minutes before responding to Kylie and half-jokingly informing her she had quite the premonition. I decided to start timing and soon realized my contractions were 5 minutes apart, 45 seconds to 1 minute long and as strong as they'd been in the last few days. I was in denial it was anything true but decided to share this with Heather and Hilary. They said to check back in after 30 minutes to see if the pattern continued. I then crawled ever so gracefully out of bed, graceful as a 10 point turn with lots of sound effects, and headed to the bathroom. My contractions immediately jumped to a closer pattern and with greater intensity but still very manageable. Typically a 2-3 minute apart pattern would indicate active labor but because they weren't what I would call painful and they weren't increasing in length I was thinking we had a case of prodromal labor. This pattern could also indicate a wonky positioned baby, so I decided to do some stretching & movement and a few inversions to give baby a little more wiggle room. The pattern continued so the next step was waking up Kevin. He joined me in the kitchen while I hydrated, had a snack and continued some stretching. After awhile I shared my pattern with the midwives and ultimately decided to get back into bed. If this was true labor I was not about to go into an unmedicated home birth sleep deprived.

Around 7 am, I checked back in with the midwives to let them know I was able to rest but couldn't sleep through the sensation of the contractions. As I read it now it sounds obvious but at that point I still didn't believe I was in labor. I got up to hydrate, have a snack and take a hot shower.

Intuition told me to have Kevin's parents come get the boys. I felt a strong instinct to create a quiet, peaceful environment. Something about my boys' high

energy felt threatening and over stimulating. I sat and took one last picture on the couch with them, kissed them each for as long as they'd let me and sent them off with their Mimi & Papa. I was certain I'd see them again the next morning, still pregnant.