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Alexandra Breckenridge has some qualms with her first childbirth experience.
The Virgin River star, 38, is mom to daughter Billie, 3, and son Jack, 4, whom she shares with husband Casey Hooper, and appearing on The Kelly Clarkson Show this week, Breckenridge recalls why she decided against another water birth after welcoming her first child.
"My son was huge. He was humongous," she says. "And I feel like the hippies lied to me, because I was watching these documentaries about these water births and I was like, 'Wow, I can do that. I can do that! I wanna do a water birth.' "
"So I go to this hospital where they actually allow water births in the hospital. My water breaks at 5 in the morning — pop, I literally felt it break. … Then the labor just started coming really fast," Breckenridge remembers. "My husband's like, 'Watch TV, it'll be hours, it's your first baby.' No, no, no."
They then drove to the hospital, she says, and by the time they made it there, she was 9 centimeters dilated.
"I push for two hours out of the birthing tub screaming bloody murder, and I was like, 'He's stuck! He's stuck!' " she adds. "I was waiting for someone to be like, 'Oh, we have to take him out of you via emergency c-section!' But I was like, 'Nobody's coming, and I'm still pushing.' "
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The This Is Us actress says getting into the tub "didn't really seem to make a difference, unfortunately." When she "finally got him out," her newborn son weighed about 9 lbs.
"When I got pregnant with my daughter," she says, "I got an epidural. I did. And it was a beautiful experience, magical. I should have listened to my two friends; two of my best friends had babies and they were like, 'Girl, get the epidural. Don't be stupid. … You need the good drugs.' "
She recalls her second child's birth as being "beautiful," and her newborn being a "glorious, happy baby."
Mom-of-two Clarkson, 38, also weighed in on the birthing preferences, saying she easily opted for the epidural.
"There were several different ideas of what should happen when you're giving birth, and I was like, 'If God intended for me to not have drugs and not have help getting this out, then he wouldn't have had me born in 1982."
Outstretching her arms, Clarkson jokes, "'What can you put in here to make it less hurtful?' I was like, 'Give me everything! The baby will be fine.' "
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