On the 28th of July I had a midwife appointment at which I was given a recipe for a labour-inducing cocktail. Its effectiveness was not a guarantee, especially considering I was still two weeks before my due date. My midwife told me to drink it on Wednesday morning and to continue to take it until I felt something happening. On the next day my chiropractor shifted my pelvis so that the baby would engage more, increasing my chance of going into labour.

When the morning of the 30th came around, I drank the disgusting cocktail and waited. Cramping began around 13:00. However, just the week before I had a mischievous false alarm and I wanted to be sure before making the trip from Chilliwack to Surrey Memorial. I drank the cocktail again around 15:00. Three hours later my contractions started getting fairly regular with intervals of three minutes apart. I continued to wait it out and see whether they would fizzle out like they did the week before – I was still, even with all my proactive attempts to have this baby, two weeks early.

Around 20:30 it hit me that I was going into labour. We didn’t want to drive all the way to Surrey for a false alarm again so we went to Chilliwack General Hospital first. I was immediately checked and told that I was 4cm dilated (as opposed to the 2cm I was the week before) and 60% effaced. They were hesitant about letting me go, but because I did not have a delivering physician in Chilliwack they were relatively easily persuaded in letting me go to Surrey Memorial Hospital (SMH) where my midwife would deliver the baby.

We were on our way to SMH by 21:00, and during the car ride I just wanted to jump out of the car – the pain was excruciating. Brad said he could tell that it was not like the week before. I knew that we weren’t danger of having the baby along the way, I just wanted to make sure I got my epidural – that was the main reason, after all, I was going all the way out to Surrey. We arrived and were upstairs at reception at exactly 22:00 (I think Brad was driving a little faster than normal). We were immediately given a room (all of them are private at SMH); my midwife checked me at 5cm dilation and thin. I was told that the anesthesiologist had just gone to the O.R. and would not be available for a while, so they gave me some N2O to help me with the pain. Being a lightweight, I started cracking up hysterically the moment I put it to my mouth – they said they had never heard a woman laugh so much during labour.

The contractions were becoming progressively closer together and exponentially more painful to the point that I could not let go of the gas. I requested (or demanded?) over and over for the epidural and kept asking when the anesthesiologist was going to get his butt over to my room. By the end of the hour my instincts told me that I was having this baby without my drugs. Just after 23:10 I felt the greatest urge to push and I knew this was happening NOW.

The midwife and nurse were talking amongst each other and trying to sooth me. Brad says that the midwife decided to check how I was doing, but when she lifted the blanket she saw what was going on and they both went into panic mode – they had not expected it to happen this fast. They actually told me to not to push – which I thought, of course, was sort of silly since my body was doing everything non-voluntarily. I cannot describe the burning pain. They had just got everything quickly set up when I let out the biggest blood-curdling scream (which thanks to my husbands video camera I can re-live over and over again). The midwife literally had to catch the little girl as she came flying out. I had pushed only twice. At 23:18, Eva Simone Richert came into this world with a delicate cry. We had arrived at the hospital only one hour and eighteen minutes beforehand. While it had not been my intention, I had my first natural delivery. While the pain was brutal, my body felt back to normal fairly quickly. I had no tearing and no side effects from the drugs to recover from.

Eva Simone Richert
Born July 30, 2008 at 23:18
Surrey Memorial Hospital in Surrey, B.C.
2.79kg (6lbs, 2oz), 50cm (19.7”)