Pregnancy & Childbirth

» cmoore5480 - very fast labor

Hi jcobsmommy and everyone else. This is a great discussion.

I had a fast labor too, and am a bit nervous my #2 will come even more quickly. I like what frida_swerdloff wrote about having the baby at home b/c it's safest. My first baby was born at home and the labor was fabulously easy (hardly any discomfort) but he was distressed (probably b/c of the swiftness of his arrival) and there was concern he had breathed meconium, so he was whisked away from me before I even got more than a spit-second glimpse of him in an ambulance to the hospital, put on antibiotic, and then kept there for four days of monitoring! He started out in the ICU and I didn't even get to hold him for two hours after he was born! Turns out he hadn't breathed meconium, and they say that if he had been born in the hospital the pediatrician would have had a better tool with which to verify this (than what the midwives could determine at my home).

Where to have baby #2? Many of the midwives on the team who would deliver me at home live outside the city and might take 60 minutes to get to me at home. We live 15 minutes' walking distance from the maternity hospital, five minutes by car (we don't have a car). So even though my husband wants another homebirth, and I myself would love another one, I think we're going to go to the hospital and hopefully have a quick delivery in the midwives' unit plus an early discharge (within a couple hours). Do any of you have thoughts on this?

My first baby came approx. 2 hours after my water broke, during a dinner party. I was completely relaxed and happy at home, having a great time, eating all four courses of my dinner, in no pain. Then when things got heated my lovely dinner guests turned into my birth assistants until the midwives got there (barely before the birth).

How fast might my second baby come? I do not want to have this baby in a taxi! I also do not want to be induced (I am prone to migraines).

-- posted by cmoore5480