Early Arrival!

Oliver Charles arrived two weeks early on August 21st at 11:30 p.m..  He was 7lbs 15oz.

Everything went pretty well.  Labor is intense; it was and wasn't what I was expecting.  I thought I had bad gas when I woke up at four that morning and I ended up calling into work thinking I'd be okay to go in the next day after some rest.  In a couple of hours I woke hubby up and asked him to run to Kings and grab some gas relief meds.  After taking those and waiting for an hour or two with no result I texted my sister-in-law asking if labor could resemble gas, then decided to call the midwife.  She thought maybe I was just rumbling, getting ready for the real thing so we decided to check back later.  My sister-in-law called me back an hour or so later and said the same thing so I just sat tight, riding the waves of contractions as best I could.
I spent a lot of time in the bath.  My water/gas bills might be up a bit this month from reheating bath water, lol.
Our midwife kept checking in every hour or two (depending on how I said I was doing) and since things were progressing pretty steadily her assistant (apprentice?  I dunno what to call her) came over to check on my progress; seeing if my water broke, how I was doing otherwise, etc.  My water hadn't broken yet but contractions were getting more intense.
Sometime around dinner time I stopped being able to have conversations with hubby.  I spent most of my time trying to relax, which is more difficult than the books make it sound.  They all say to breathe through contractions and that does help a little bit, but if you can't relax while you're breathing it's pretty useless.  Breathing slow and deep (belly breathing) is the best kind of breathing but it was hard for me because extending my abdominal muscles hurt if I breathed in low enough.
The fight or flight part of my brain was really not helpful with the whole relaxing thing.  At all.  I was tensing with the pain, which would make it worse (slightly) then somewhere in the back of my mind the words, "I can't" would get sent out in various forms.  It took a lot of concentration to say, "I can" but it helped a lot on my exhales to say what it was I wanted to do.  For instance I might say, "relaxing," or "opening," or "letting the baby out."  For a little bit I was visualizing a flower opening in the sun.  And then I had to choose between visualization and relaxation.  I did keep saying the things I wanted to do, sort of like a mantra and it helped most of the time.  Sometimes the pain freaked me out just enough that I'd need something like rescue remedy to help calm down.
When it got dark the contractions were pretty much right next to each other, but by then our midwife had come.  She came in the door and said, "you're a rock-star," to which I replied, "I don't feel like a rock-star!"  She just laughed a bit I think.
Somewhere between then and pushing I ended up back in the bathroom.  For maybe an hour - keeping track of time was not a thing for me at this point - our midwife rubbed something on my back (probably arnica oil) which felt amazing.  She gave instructions on how to stand; I had been leaning over the sink marching on the balls of my feet and when she saw me doing this she told me to plant my feet and bend my knees a little.  I never would have thought of doing that myself, but it helped a lot.
Somewhere between that and pushing I ended up on my hands and knees hugging the toilet.  I don't remember how I got there or why I did it, but I have never loved a toilet so much in my life.
I think I pushed like that - leaning back and down while I bore down - for an hour?  I'm not really sure how long it took.  All I'm sure of is by that time I was exhausted because I hadn't eaten enough, or slept enough throughout the day, and the toilet lid was cold and awesome support for between contractions/pushing.  It also made a good sort of bar for me to pull on for support while I was kind of kneeling during contractions.
I didn't like the pushing stage because I always thought I was farther along than I actually was.  I think a lot of that had to do with how tired I was; I was dozing a bit between pushes at that point.  It didn't seem like it lasted very long, though, before his head was out and then his body.  There is nothing in the world that is similar to that sensation and I'm not even going to try and describe it, because I'm pretty sure it's impossible.  There is no preparing someone for that through words.
Once he was out I had pretty much no strength left so hubby, our midwife, and her assistant guided me backwards to lean against hubby's legs and the tub to hold the baby.  Then it was up into the birthing chair to deliver the placenta.
Delivering the placenta freaked me out and I'm not sure why.  For whatever reason I was afraid to push it out, but everything went fine.
I got light-headed from the blood loss, so we employed an oxygen mask for a bit while I tried to recharge with cheese and goodbelly.
I did tear, but nothing major.

We nursed and did all the newborn stuff like weighing and Apgar scores and such.  Hubby got the first pee right on his shirt before Oliver was diapered and swaddled.
Our midwife and her assistant sang a wonderful song after giving a few instructions and then we went to bed.  I think that was around 4 a.m.  So twenty-four hours of sleeplessness later, we had ourselves a beautiful baby boy.

He sleeps a lot, so resting right now is easy, but I'm expecting that to change soon.

So that's my poorly written account of how birth was for me.  I don't bite, so please ask anything if you'd like.