I feel like everyone I’ve heard that uses the Marquette method strongly recommends taking a class and I’m trying to understand why? The method is already very expensive and my understanding is you really just pee on a stick every morning. Is it really worth taking a class and is there anything valuable that you can’t get out of just doing some research on the method?
After 9 months of lurking in this sub and reading so many birth stories, I wanted to share mine in case it’s able to help/ encourage anyone! Feel free to ask me anything :)
I began losing my mucus plug gradually and then got bloody show at 2:30 AM on 5/22/26. I was able to go back to sleep and nothing really happened that day. I thought my water broke the next day in the middle of the night after a huge gush of water came out. After 24 hours of no contractions, we went to get an NST and test to check whether my water had actually broken. It turns out that it was the forebag breaking, not the actual water. So we continued waiting and that same day my water actually broke with a contraction, and things ramped up quickly from there. It started almost immediately with 5-1-1 contractions around 4 PM and they got progressively closer until the midwives arrived at 9 PM. By that point, I had been using the tens machine, laboring on the toilet, using my birth ball, and getting counter pressure with every contraction. By 11 PM I decided it was time to get into the birth tub as the pain was really bad and contractions were starting to come back to back. Another hour and I started feeling pushy, got checked, and had a cervical lip. My midwives suggested that we do 3 contractions on each side with my leg up on the stool sitting on the toilet. This was by far the worst part of labor. I started to feel like I couldn’t do it and if I was in a hospital setting I 100% would’ve asked for an epidural at this point. After getting back into the tub, I was ready to start pushing pretty quickly. The pushing lasted about 1.5 hours and I definitely felt the ring of fire. He was born at 2 AM and my placenta came out about a half hour afterwards. I opted for getting a shot of pitocin to prevent hemorrhage, which seemed to help a lot since the midwives mentioned the bleeding was a lot less than they normally see. Baby was born at 8lbs and 21 inches long! I had minimal tearing but no stitches were required.