Birth - not for the faint of heart.

Why not try a home birth, I thought. Future thought is not my strong point but I will say now before I begin that I am not disappointed that I tried home birth and ended up at the hospital. In fact I am better for have taking a chance and finding out I wasn't strong enough than to never have tried at all.
Yes the truth of the matter is that after labor started at 2am and got into hard labor by 8am, I was exhausted by the time we decided to go to the hospital at 5pm.
I always thought an ambulance ride would be embarassing. But its not. If you are in enough pain you don't care which one of your neighbours sees your naked butt being carried outside. The drivers were good that they trucked me downstairs and one even found me a slipper. yes just one.
In the ambulance the driver is talking about mundane things. I assume he wanted to take my mind of the obvious pain and I tried to be polight and answer his questions.
At this point of leaving I'm 91/2 cemtimeters dialated. So we needed an ambulance in case the baby decided to be born on route.
But why leave then? Why not stick it out and have the little one at home if I was so close?
Because I had been "close" for hours. Yes, my little baby boy inside was tangled in his embilical cord round his neck and arm and was basiclly bungi jumping on the inside, unable to really get his bags packed and moved out due to a short leash.
However, after 3 hours at the hospital, a gallon of laughing gas (which by the way I recommend to anyone in labor, even the husbands), my water was broke (a second time) and my little boy was forced out.
Since his cord was still too short to let him go quietly it tighted and his pulse went down to 50bpm. They say that's really really not good.
I wake to someone taking my gas mask away and two midwives and a nurse in my face basiclly yelling at me "push!!", and I'm screaming back "I can't!! It's gonna rip!!" I was so angery and scared at the sudden change in pace that my husband said I looked crazy, my eyes becoming gigantic.
It turned out good though. Its amazing how much you naturally push when scared, angry and under that kind of adrenalin.
And then there he was.
My new little boy. So tiny and crying.
A moment ago all I wanted to do was save myself. My physical being screamed not to hurt.
but not now.
No, he was beautiful and worth all the pain.