For what it's worth (not much), I'll chime in. For my first baby, my water broke long before contractions started, so I ended up on a pitocin drip. I don't think it was fun, but honestly I was *so* knocked out I'd only wake up to say "ow." I had to get the story about it later. With my second baby, I was a few days overdue, and saw my doctor on a Tuesday -- she said, well, I wasn't a week over yet, but she could try something called "stripping the membranes" -- I don't really know what that was
but I think it involved her poking around at my cervix. Later that night, contractions started (although I didn't trust them as I'd been having false labor on and off for weeks, so I just went to bed, and every so often during the night, I'd wake up to say "ow" -- apparently it's a theme with me), and early next morning, the baby was born
Almost *too* early in the morning, actually -- it turned out that by the time I got to the hospital, I'd already gone all the way through transition -- barely got in the door before feeling ye old "urge to push." I have to say, I hadn't really planned on natural childbirth or given a whole lot of time to childbirth classes, but the breathing/relaxing thing really did work.
And congrats, Kaylee! You'll do fine, I'm sure. It's a lot noisier once the kid's born
but at least then you can put the bundle of joy *down* somewhere to grab a break.
PJ
