I can't believe Danny was born almost a month ago! I've been meaning to publish these pictures of the birth experience for weeks now, but only now took the time to do so. I wanted to share a bit of my water birth experience. For those of you who are not from Brazil, you will appreciate this even more knowing that here in Brazil vaginal births are almost regarded as "old fashioned" and "risky", most doctors discourage mothers from having them and that makes Brazil the second country with most cesarian births in the world! So the fact that I had a water birth is almost a miracle and unheard of here. Luckily I found a wonderful, Christian doctor named Dr. Luis Carlos Pinheiro who was an angel in this process. He was also the one that did Lucas' birth 2.5 years ago!
Some of you may remember that when I was pregnant with Lucas I waited until 41 weeks and 5 days before we finally decided to induce the birth…with my second pregnancy I was sure I wouldn't have to go through the same torturous waiting…but I did!…we had to induce again! This time we waited till 41 weeks and 6 days!
This time I felt much more prepared for what was coming. I had the help of a wonderful doula named Kimberly, she is also a missionary. She was fundamental in calming me through the whole process! Thank you Kim!
Mario was also present the whole time and even helped Dr. Luis fill the birthing pool! I think he enjoyed being so useful!
I was induced early in the morning and began feeling faint contraction at irregular intervals…after a couple hours of waiting for things to get going with no such luck, Dr. Luis suggested we break my water to see if that could speed things up…it worked!
Soon I began to feel short, but very strong contractions…Kim walked with me up and down the halls and rubbed my back during the contractions…Mario also encouraged me and helped rub my back now and then.
Finally the pool was full and I got in at 7cm…
I felt an immediate relief…I remember thinking, "This was a great idea!"
but only until the next contraction! After I got into the pool it only took about 20 minutes for Danny to be born…in other words…it took less than 20 minutes to get from 7-10cm dilated….no one, not even the doctor, was expecting that! It was very intense and I confess I was pretty scared because I thought all that pain was only from the contractions to get dilated and I thought things were still going to get a lot worse, I remember thinking this could not be normal and that I was not going to make it through the pain! I didn't realise I was already at the height of the pain and was actually already pushing the baby out! At one point I reached down to "see" what was going on down there and if I was not ripping open and to my surprise I felt the baby's head…that's when I realised Danny was already coming out and I screamed out "the baby is already coming out!" After that I had one more contraction and Danny was in my arms!!
We had a big scare when he came out blue because the umbilical cord was wrapped really tightly around his neck, and Dr. Luis has some difficulty getting it off because Danny was already out of the water we couldn't lower him to unwrap it and I couldn't prop myself up to help, but in a few second Dr. Luis was able to unwrap the cord and immediately Danny started to cry! What a relief!
About 30 minutes after Daniel was born my parents arrived bringing Lucas who was ecstatic to meet his little brother! My parents told us that when we called home to let them know Daniel was born, Lucas was jumping up and down declaring "Daniel James, nasceu (was born)!
Daniel James Braun Milhomem was born at 1:25 pm weighing 3kg 700 grams and was 53 cm long! Thank you Jesus for another beautiful, healthy baby boy!
Here he is a couple days later looking handsome as ever!
Thanks to all those you prayed for us!
