Birth Stories
Baby Mathilda 2008
Thursday March 13th Our Due Date: I woke up in a total funk today. Nobody knows more than I do that due dates are suggestions, not rules. Intellectually I can accept this today. Emotionally, however, this realization sends me over the edge. I did everything right. I ate right. I gained the right amount of weight. I went to all of my prenatal appointments. I took the right vitamins. I believe the right things about birth and babies and parenting. I want to be rewarded for doing things right, dammit. That IS how it works here in America, right? (okay that might be a bit facetious, sorry) I decide to spend the entire day pouting and wallowing in self pity since no one could possibly feel as sorry for me as I feel for me. My cankles are huge. My feet hurt when I bear weight on them. My hands swell when I…well, when I do absolutely anything. This child’s head is literally taking up every bit of available space in my pelvis which leaves room for about ½ teaspoon of pee. The biggest of my big maternity clothes no longer have the capacity to expand over the belly. I have become some monstrous caricature of a pregnant woman: a barefoot, swollen, waddling, nearly naked, puffy faced, screeching like some crazy Medusa-headed Harpe, who will never, ever, ever, go into labor. I will be pregnant forever– or at least long enough to make the skin on my feet explode while they wheel me into the OR for the miracle of my MRSA infested surgical birth. Then I will finally have the c-section which everyone will console me about while not so secretly scolding me for selfishly thinking that I had what it might take to pull off an empowering, healing, society-defying homebirth. Childbirth sucks for a reason, right? How dare I be arrogant enough to think that I could escape what our society has planned for me?
I have my daughter take a picture of my giant, distended, deformed belly to post on my website with some words that make it sound like I am a gracious, reasonable human being who values all human life. Because exposing the real feelings would force people to medicate me, and at this juncture, I might let them.
I vaguely recall some words of wisdom from my midwife…something about when you feel pretty angry and awful about being pregnant that it is just about time to have the baby. I laugh a joyless laugh, then wordlessly and viciously elbow my husband for taking up some of my 3/4 of the bed.
I finally give up my passive aggressive campaign to punish…something undefined…at midnight on the dot and end the 13th on a bitter, bitter note.
Friday March 14th Early Morning:
12:19am. (yes, i mean 19 minutes after I gave in to sleep): Ow! Contraction? Well, that can’t be since I will never go into labor.
12:24am. Another one? That was five minutes. Impossible.
12:29am. Third one. Not a pattern, necessarily. Now the bed is all uncomfortable and David is taking up more than his fair share of the 1/4 allotted to him. I have to get up. Which takes about 3 minutes to execute with all of the huffing and puffing and grunting.
12:34am. Walking around the room I get another one. Four in row is nothing at all and proves even less.
These alleged contractions continue: just uncomfortable enough to keep me shifting position, pacing, and angrily glaring at my sleeping husband, but not enough to convince me that I might be in labor.
3:30am. I run a warm bubble bath and drink a tall glass of water. The contractions continue to intensify. I wrap up in my fuzzy robe and migrate to the recliner and rock until I fall asleep.
4:30am. Ow! I can’t possibly sleep through that. I go to run another bath since that seemed to make me feel better. While the water is running, I attempt to coax a tinkle out (the old slumber party trick?) and instead find a mucous plug. Yikes. As excited as I am to see what is considered to be progress, I am pretty skeeved out by my first glimpse of a mucous plug. It took four babies to finally see one. I could have skipped it. The bath is not nearly as satisfying as the first one was.
7:15am. Called midwife to tell her to forget our 10:00am appointment since I “might” have to call her later for a birth…maybe. I wouldn’t want her to make two trips. I feel like I have jinxed it already by saying anything.
Later That Same Day:
Noon. Well it has been 12 hours and these are not getting any closer together, which means that I am not progressing, which means that I am not in labor. Actually, now that I have bothered to pay attention, they are sort of getting further apart sometimes. 5 minutes becomes 8, and then back to 6, and up to 9, then back to 5. Forget it. I am going to watch movies and rock in the recliner all day because i seem to have an urge to do that and the alternative is to clean my house, which I am not on board with at all. But at least I am definitely NOT in labor. Good to know.
10:51pm. I feel bad for canceling my pre-natal with the midwives and telling them to be on standby. They probably had things to do with their kids, or things to do at all other than hang around waiting for the miracle of my labor to begin…since I know for a fact that I will never go into labor despite having had three previous pregnancies which DID eventually progress to the point of labor, and even childbirth. So I send them an email to rid myself of guilt and to let them off the hook…again.
Subject: So what is up with Justine?
I’m sure this is the question on your minds right now.
The answer is…these contractions hurt like hell and practically leave me on the floor gasping. But they are all over the place. 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, 4 minutes, 15 minutes, 3 minutes, 20 minutes…the only constant is that they are consistently about 2 minutes long. They don’t change in intensity depending on what i am doing…but they DO slow down or speed up. I was in the recliner and i was having them every 5 minutes for about 2 hours, then i got up and had 2 at 3 minutes…then they petered out to 7 and 10 minutes when i was walking around and getting a drink.
I’m not at all certain whether or not my water broke…i might have felt a bit of a gush on the potty around 1pm today–but nothing since. Now, after this, the intensity of the discomfort DID increase, but the timing has never established a pattern, so i am really unwilling to cal it “real” When i do have a ctx i feel as though i could push her out if i was willing to do anything that painful and strenuous…i have no desire do that…it just builds an enormous amount of pressure with the ctx. No more bloody show after this mornings gore fest.
So i will give you a call Jill, if it looks like these things establish any kind of a pattern, or if a baby is hanging out of me. We are doing just fine here…going about the normal day, except me raising my finger to indicate no one should talk to me for a minute. Bug holds my hand like a dear mini-doula. She is so sweet. Right now, i want to try to get some rest and maybe have something to eat that is made of chocolate
11:30pm. Having found zero edible things in my house that even came close to being made from anything resembling chocolate, I request that my husband fetch me some tasty, healthy, nutritious, things from the store. He makes some attempt to wiggle out of it by pointing out that it is almost midnight and that I might be insane, or something along those lines. Well, that is what I hear anyway.
March 15th, 12:45am. After David returns from the store, I am too tired to eat. I decide to run a bath instead.
1:30am. It has been over 24 hours now since I started feeling these “cramps.” This thought creates a sense of panic and despair. Watching David sleep somehow manages to infuriate me to the point of madness. I leave the room and rock in the recliner until the springs squeak and I am seriously risking being the first woman to be charged with Shaken Baby Syndrome pre-natally. These crampy Braxton-Hickes (they are not contractions) are really taking up a significant portion of my resources. However, punishing the chair seems somehow childish and ineffective. I decide that pacing will certainly provide the comfort and satisfaction I crave.
1:32am. Back in the recliner. Pacing sucks.
5:00am. I wake David up to tend to the fire because it is frigid in our house…and I really cannot stand another minute of someone sleeping while I am awake.
5:50am. As a reward for his alpha-male, wood-chopping, Keeper of the Family Hearth actions, I show him the newest discovery in the bathroom. Yet another mucous plug! He remains almost entirely non-plussed. That is odd. He had seemed a bit sad that he had missed the last one. He usually loves it when I share some personal, embarrassing, previously unbeknownst-to-him tidbit about myself. This time, however, he really lacked the kind of enthusiasm I generally like to see in shared bathroom situations. He requests to be allowed to return to bed.
7:00am. So, after an hour of grunting, groaning, tossing, turning, madness I sigh heavily enough to wake the dead (but not my husband) and decide to clean. This is not out of a sense of nesting instinct…that burst of energy came and went a full two weeks ago. No, this is something simpler. I am bored. I am bored with looking at the clock and with consistently finding that the intervals of time do not ever create a pattern.
7:10am. I’ve done some laundry. Which (in our our house) translates into adding soap to the wet, previously washed load that was already abandoned in the washer. After that – I decide that no amount of boredom will really motivate me to clean.
7:40am. I have checked all of my email accounts, read all of the blogs I like to read, and Googled “Signs of labor” which don’t tell me anything that I couldn’t already write an entire novel about. The “crampy sensations in my uterus” are still there. Now however, they have this twinge of new pain I haven’t had before. It feels like a thin rod of burning pain is connecting my cervix to my lower back. hey Tillie, get off my tail bone, please? I have to breathe through them using my Hypnobirthing techniques. It does work to keep me relaxed, but it does not take away the pain. I just makes it more dignified to deal with it.
7:52am. I send the midwives another email :
Well, i did manage to sneak some sleep in between some of this…20 minutes here and 10 minutes here. I do feel better for having some rest, but man, this sure is tough! I guess it is meant to be, otherwise we would have litters and the whole parental investment thing would be worth a whole lot less.
I will keep in contact with you today on and off, just letting you know how things are going. I lost more mucous plug last night…shared my findings with David who was not as impressed as he had hoped he would be by mucous plug. There still is no pattern to these ctx to speak of, which has me very frustrated–and a bit worried. If this is just prodromol stuff, and i’m already struggling, then what might be in store for the real deal? Tillie has been super quiet thru all of this, which i guess i expected, but also has me poking and prodding her a lot. In a bit of good news though, I busted into my stash of labor food and am loving the dried pineapple chunks!
It is wonderful knowing you are available…but that you don’t have to be here necessarily. I would feel like a watched kettle if you were just here sitting around when it doesn’t really feel like a birthing environment quite yet. I think we are still wondering whether or not this is just another false alarm…we are a little gun shy after the previous near birth experience. i feel conflicted about wanting to be assessed so i can “know” something definitive, but I am also very content here in our cocoon…and basically i am off by myself which i really like. All of my labors i have been surrounded by people, and this time i really don’t even want David trying to provide comfort measures. I want to be in a dark room and just cope. I know it is wearing on him though…he feels useless and has taken up a computer project which is now spread all over my house and kinda has me irked since he is devoting energy to that instead of to handling issues with the kids. I will bring it up today instead of fuming from afar about it. Perhaps we just need to get back on the same page and re-connect. I’m sure this is not easy to watch for him.
A thousand heart-felt thank you’s for listening and thinking of me…i’m excited to meet Mathilda, but it still feels surreal that a baby will be here after all of this!
BTW Ctx seem to have picked up while writing this…i’ve had like 5 of them since starting this email.
Okay, i am going to see if i can pee like a normal person…it feels like I constantly have to “get something out of my body” but my body is very unclear about what signals it is sending…it is just a jumbled up bunch of nerve endings sending all kinds of erroneous info ‘cuz evidently my pelvis wasn’t designed for long-term infant cranial storage.
8:10am. A lot more mucous plug…actually, I’m sort of fascinated. i try to envision what must be happening to my body to cause this: my cervix must be doing something, but what?
9:00am. I try to sit on the yoga ball for awhile, but it really makes me more crampy and my back ache has intensified. A warm shower should do the trick. And besides, I need to make myself presentable. It is likely that I will have to reschedule my appointment with the midwives for later today since I needed to see them for my check up and I am not going into “real labor” anytime soon, obviously.
10:00am. I am freshly showered, exfoliated and groomed. I feel presentable and human once again. David has prepared a delicious and nutritious breakfast for me–a Greek omelet, veggie sausage, and orange juice…I feel sick eating it. He takes it personally.
10:40am. We mutually come to the decision to have a fight about it.
11:00am. I am laying in the bed with my elaborately arranged pile of pillows and cushions when David comes in to apologize. Or that is how I hear it anyway.
11:15am. David has given up trying the different massage techniques for relieving my back pain because I am complaining despite his efforts. He asks me to call the midwives. I say, no way am I embarrassing myself by calling them out and hour and half away for a false labor. Decide to take a rest instead.
11:20am. I was so tired that I actually dozed off within 5 minutes only to be ripped from that blissful moment by a gut-busting “crampy uterine sensation.” That is not a nice way to wake up, I had no warning that it was coming. With all the other ones i feel it tightening up before the “rod of pain” moment hit so that I could take the time to use my relaxation techniques.
11:25am. I still haven’t gotten out of bed when another one hits…but the “rod of pain” feels more like a paper towel roll sized rod now.
11:30am. Another one. And I really am using 99% of my resources to deal with the intensity of it. That is 3 in a row at 5 minutes. Well, I already have proof that it means nothing.
Noon. It has now been about 36 hours and nothing has really taken on a regular pattern. We discuss what might be going on. Either we have been in real labor, and if that is the case, then we might be getting closer than we suspect. Or the other scenario is that labor is irregular because there is a complication. We toss around the idea of calling our midwives…but the thought of having them come all the way out here to tell me that I am having some “great warming up contractions” but that “nothing is changing with the cervix” just makes me cringe. I am supposed to know something about childbirth! Being wrong–or worse yet– appearing to be ignorant about what real labor is or isn’t would just be too big of a blow to my already fragile ego at this point. I decide to take another bath and relax while I mull it over.
1:30pm. David takes the kids to the store with him to get some essentials while I pace (of course, I mean waddle) around the house.
2:00pm. When they return, things have gotten intense enough that I decide we need to call the midwives and have them come over to at least check on the baby. The idea of calling them over for the baby, not me, seems to ease my guilt somehow. I’m just a concerned mother, not a hysterically hormonal pregnant lady.
2:15pm. But the house needs to be straightened up before we can have people over. And I wanted the floor under the birthing pool to be vacuumed. And we need to put on the sheets I have set aside for the birth. And we can’t have all that trash on the porch. And did anyone check the mail today?
4:00pm. I finally deem the house acceptable to invite the midwives over.
4:04pm . I take a deep breath in between contractions and dial Jill’s number. This is it. I can’t undo this phone call. Once I say “I think this might be it–maybe we should check on the baby to make sure she is okay?” I can’t take it back. This one phone call will set in motion a chain of events that I am responsible for. She has to make arrangements for her kids, load up her stuff, turn off the casserole she was preparing, reschedule all of the other pregnant women who may actually really need her today, cancel her plans to have a long anticipated romantic date night with her husband…well, I don’t know if she had all that planned or not…but she could have and I am about to make it all come to a screeching halt because “Justine is feeling a little crampy”
4:05pm. How anti-climatic. I got her voice mail.
4:10pm. Of course she calls me right back and reassures me that she has been waiting for my call and I get the impression that she won’t have to cancel her entire life after she gets off the phone. As a matter of fact, she sounds a bit excited. I don’t make it through the whole phone call without a contraction. David finishes up the conversation.
4:13pm. Magically, they are coming about every 3-4 minutes now. Our midwives are an hour and a half away. Perhaps we waited too long to call? I know we talked about what it would be like to birth unassisted, but am I really prepared for it? I can handle laboring on my own…and I know what to do (or not to do) after the birth…but can I handle birth on my own? Well, David is here, I wouldn’t be on my own. I feel better knowing that. I really do think we could do this on our own…but only if we have to.
4:30pm. I enjoy spending time in the baby’s room when I have a contraction. It is bright, open and clean in there. I am not hounded by an obsessive-compulsive desire to straighten up or to rearrange anything while I am in here. It has been newly redecorated and it feels un-lived in as of yet; unoccupied. I know that our baby won’t spend much time in here in practice, but in my current state of mind, I am comforted by the sights and smells of infant-related consumer goods.
5:00pm. David has found the perfect acupressure points on my lower back. I feel more in control of the contractions at this point. I make a mental note that since I called Jill, I feel much better. The “rod of pain” has all but vanished. I feel a tremendous tightening, but very little pain–or even discomfort. Perhaps the acupressure has eliminated my perception of the sensations and has made it easier to cope with? Or perhaps I have finally relaxed and accepted that this is labor?
5:15pm. Jill calls en route for an update. David speaks with her. I’m not really paying attention but am curious about how far away she is. I don’t feel that birth is imminent or anything, but it does feel as if there will be a direct correlation between her arrival and Mathilda’s–almost like her presence will give Mathilda (or me?) permission to fully let go and surrender to this process. Well, duh, why didn’t I call earlier if I believed that? We could have had Mathilda in our arms hours ago if all I needed was permission. Well, the truth is, I just now realized how much I must have been fighting before, because what I am doing now is oddly rewarding and satisfying, not at all scary or full of pain. No, this is right. Mathilda will arrive at the perfect time.
5:30pm. I have unconsciously been using some vocalization during my contractions–making an open mouthed sound like an ahhhh or an ohhhh with my exhalations. I’m aware that I am making the noises, but not making the choice to make them. I feel more and more of my actions are an auto-pilot. There is something very liberating about this process. And it is now crystal clear to those around me when a contraction has begun, so the vocalization also serves to create the ideal environment for me to attain a deeper level of relaxation with every contraction.
5:40pm. Jill has arrived and is setting up her gear…oxygen gets tucked into the corner, the sterile clamps and scissors for the cord go on top of my dresser. I tell her that I am a little “miffed” that my contractions had been so intense and although now they are better since I am trying to work with them and accept that they are moving my baby down, I am nonetheless wishing they would stop. Jill reminds me that I have to go though it to get through it.
5:45pm. Fiona Apple is playing on the “Birth Mix” and Eudora is holding my hands while we slow dance to Across the Universe. Jill presents a bouquet of softly colored lolli-pops for me to choose from. I find a white one that looks promising. Yes! A ginger flavored Preggo Pop. Could this be more perfect?
5:50pm. Jill takes my blood pressure (116/74) and listens to Tillie’s heart tones which are a perfect 140-150 bpm. We then decide to do the first pelvic exam of my entire pregnancy. This is the part where I get very nervous. Not because I have a problem with pelvic exams per se, but because historically, this is the part in my previous labors where my care-provider usually shakes their head and says something like “Well, you are only 2-3cms, 50% effaced, and the baby is still very posterior and up high. You’re going to be here awhile. Perhaps we should go ahead and get some Pitocin started?”
6:00pm. I’m shocked. Jill tells me that I am 6cms, 75% effaced and at zero station! I really cannot believe this. I have been in labor all this time! I called the midwives at just the right time! I didn’t embarrass myself by calling days before I needed them, or insisting that I was in labor when I wasn’t. This realization gives me a great deal of confidence in my ability to read my body’s cues. Confidence. Now, there is a word I haven’t been on familiar terms with in my previous labors. I can feel the hormonal high beginning to spread throughout my body.
6:05pm. I tell David to get the birthing pool filled. It really hits me–I am really going to have this baby!
6:06pm. I instruct Gabriella to call Nanny Featherbottom–the affectionate nickname we have for our best friend, Kelley, who will be in charge of Eudora-wrangling for the birth. Jill gives Jen a call around this time, too. I try not to read too much into that–does it mean that Jill thinks I am close?
6:10pm. I get into the birthing pool even though it is far from full yet. Instantly, the intensity of the contractions recedes by 80%. This, along with relaxation, confidence, and my ginger pop are making labor a pleasant endeavor. I am joking and laughing and talking in between contractions. Already this is shaping up to be a wonderful experience. I thank my lucky stars that I am in my home, surrounded by people I love and trust.
6:20pm. Jill checks on Tillie with the Doppler again; 136-144 bpm. My contractions are about 2-3 minutes apart…but I hardly feel them at this point. Or at least I hardly register them as painful if I am feeling them. Birthing pools rock.
6:30pm. I am continuing with my vocalizations and they lend a bit of sacredness to the proceedings. We will be having a conversation and I will inhale deeply and slowly–drawing air all the way into by belly. The conversation falls silent and everyone’s focus is with me. On the exhale, I open my throat and allow the air to leave just as slowly as I drew it in. That openness reflects what I hope is going on with my cervix. David is running the warm water over my belly which feels divine and also allows me to envision the muscles of my torso, abdomen and uterus as fluid, soft, and warm. The tension melts and I feel my body’s efforts to move the baby down–centimeters at a time– a feeling that would be imperceptible if I were fighting.
6:50pm. My uterine surges (that word describes them much better at this point than calling them contractions) are 2 minutes apart now. Jill checks on Tillie again in between them. She is in the 140’s. I have a Fun-Noodle Pool Floatie as an arm and head rest (the wisest $1.50 we have ever spent) to keep me above the water while I allow my legs, hips and lower back to be totally submerged in the warm water. This is heavenly and I feel Tillie move down, down, down with each and every surge.
7:00pm. Nanny Featherbottom has arrived and is successfully entertaining Eudora. I am really impressed with how well our four year old is handling everything. I have to attribute it to the preparation we did beforehand–explaining who would be there for the birth, what kinds of noises she would here, what things would look like. She isn’t a bit surprised at anything that is going on.
7:10pm. It was bound to happen sooner or later since it happened with all of my other labors; nausea. Along with it comes a marked increases in pressure. Tillie is closer than ever–and the nausea usually means one thing– transition. I’m impressed that Kelley’s first few minutes of witnessing my labor include vomiting. Boy, I bet she can’t wait to do this someday. Nice timing- I’ve managed to turn someone off of homebirth!
7:45pm. Just as Jen arrives, I experience the most incredibly overwhelming sensation. It is a hybrid of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and…ahem…an orgasm? I have been using my vocalizations, my hypnobirthing relaxation techniques, and rotating my hips in the water to move the baby down with each uterine surge. But this sensation is so overwhelming that all of those techniques are out of the window for the duration of the contraction. It is an odd mix of “Oh my god, this is so out of control!” and “Wow, if i simply surrender this would happen without my interference.” Jill tries to check on Tillie with the Doppler, but she is so much lower than last time that it takes us a few minutes. She is doing just fine in the 130-140 range.
8:15pm. Still in the pool and my focus now is to try to be as relaxed as possible so that my body can do this with as little interference from me as possible. When I am totally able to surrender, I can feel the tiniest shift in Mathilda’s position and I have complete faith that we are doing this! The other thing that is aiding me significantly is the music I have chosen for my Birth Mix. We put it together about 4 weeks ago, and whenever I was practicing my relaxation breathing, or doing trial runs in the birthing pool I would try to listen to it so that the association between relaxation and the music would be firmly implanted in my subconscious. Feist, Sade, Cowboy Junkies, The Innocence Mission, Broken Social Scene, Holly Cole, KD Lang, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann…these are my birth companions and we are on fairly familiar terms at this point.
8:30pm. I am struggling to find a position that I am comfortable in. Well, comfortable is not accurate. I know that I won’t be entirely comfortable, but I feel as if every position I get into is simply NOT going to work for birthing the baby. I had envisioned using a supported upright position to birth Tillie so that I could use gravity to bring her down and also have my hands free to catch her–but that doesn’t seem to be working. I try leaning over the side of the tub. No go. On my side. Nope. Some orange juice makes me feel a little better.
8:45pm. Some more vomiting. Orange juice isn’t so great coming back up. I try to see this as a good thing–or as good as one can see vomiting as being, I suppose. I know that this is my body’s way of ridding itself of tension and I welcome the help…however, i do wish there weren’t 5 people watching me hurl into a bowl while I hang over the side of a plastic pool. Afterwards, I explain to Kelley and to my 13 year old daughter, that I hope this all doesn’t look too horrid because it really isn’t…I describe the physical sensations that I am having as “commandingly intense“, but not painful. They make some noises about understanding and how well I am doing. We’ll have to wait until they are pregnant someday to see if they are convinced or not.
9:00pm. Things are picking up significantly. I guess the puking really did release some tension. The surges are less than 2 minutes apart and are lasting for 90 seconds. The midwives ask if I would like to try to go pee. Since I have so little time in between contractions, I decide to hop out of the tub to quickly make it to the bathroom and back. David jumps to attention and escorts me…but we don’t make it the 10 feet down the hall before I have another one. I manage to pee, but have a contraction immediately afterwards. I make it back to the doorway to our bedroom for the next one and wrap my arms arms around David’s neck and lean into him for support. I don’t make it back into the pool.
9:08m. I waddle over to the bed to try resting for a few minutes in between contractions. I try a few sitting up on the bed and decide that it is NOT the position I want to be in any more. The midwives suggest laying on my left side. I try one like that and know within 5 seconds that I never want to be in that position ever again! I feel like I am swimming up current…up a waterfall!
9:15pm. I grab every pillow within my reach and make a mountain in the center of the bed to lean into. On my knees, I feel that I am upright enough to allow gravity to assist me, but the pillows give me a place to rest if I need it. David is on my left. Jill is on my right. Jen is facing me. I am aware of their presence and support, but feel as though I am a million miles from this room, from them, from all of this. I hear my vocalizations from far away and they sound like echoes of someone singing. Jill quietly gets the birthing equipment ready.
9:45pm. Jen or Jill checks on Tillie and she is holding steady in the high 130’s. I feel we are both weathering this process very well. Despite being in the zone, and not feeling very connected with the real world, I am really very upbeat, happy, and excited. I feel myself involuntarily bearing down with the contractions at this point. I have one hand on David’s shoulder, the other on my belly. I ask Mathilda to move down. I tell her it is okay and that we are ready for her. I say these things out loud and as soon as I do, I feel a very significant change in the sensations…a tremendous pressure…my vocalization becomes longer, more drawn out, and changes pitch. We are very close.
9:55pm. I lean into the pillows for a small reprieve, but am drawn upward almost immediately by the next contraction. As soon as I grab onto David’s shoulder, my water breaks. David, who has as much birth knowledge as any doula announces that it is “copious, clear fluid” which means that there is no meconium staining and that our baby is not in any distress. And also verifies that my 20 week sonogram results of “low amniotic fluid” were a complete misdiagnoses. I feel Mathilda slide down with the gush of fluid. The contractions are 1 minute apart. She is almost here!
10:04pm. I hear Feist playing on the Birth Mix. I sense my body gently pushing Mathilda out. I know that I am grabbing on to David’s shoulder fairly hard. But I feel as though I am perfectly still and all is quiet. Like in music videos where the artist is standing perfectly still on a crowded street while life rushes by. Or more appropriately, this is how I imagine very deep meditation must feel. I am perfectly still and calm…in my mind. I am totally focused on this instant and no other.
10:05pm. I reach down and feel Mathilda’s soft head. She has hair. I ask David if he would like to touch our baby. He leans close and presses his face against my cheek while he makes contact with his new daughter for the very first time. All three of us share our first moment as a family.
10:10pm. I am allowing my body and Mathilda decide how quickly things progress. I am in no hurry to endure a perineal tear, instead I let the ebb and flow of my contractions bring her closer and closer. I ask for Gabriella to come back into the room so she can take the first pictures of her new baby sister. I tell them to wait on telling Eudora until Tillie is actually born in case it gets too intense.
10:12pm. Gabriella barely gets the camera tuned .. Tillie’s head emerges. I was waiting for it to hurt A LOT…but her head just popped out with a tiny bit of burning/stretching sensation. “She’s out!” I exclaim –more surprised than I thought I would be. I look over at David who is crying and smiling at the same time.
10:13pm. One little push and her shoulders and the rest of her body are propelled out at what seems like an incredible speed! I’m grateful that Jill is ready for this likelihood! I suppose I imagined her emerging slowly so that I would have time to help catch her. Jill tells me to reach down and pick up my baby. She is the most incredibly soft thing I have ever had the privilege to touch. She is perfectly pink and is making the tiniest little mewling noises. “You’re a real baby!” I announce… which I am sure petrifies her– what the heck did I think she was going to be? Certainly she must be questioning whether or not I am really the most qualified care-provider for her after hearing such a thing.
10:14pm. Eudora comes parading into the room, sees me holding our baby, slaps her own forehead and incredulously asks “Am I dreaming?” Leave it to her to manage to be even more dramatic than the birth of a new life.
After the Birth
10:15pm. Here is where the REAL difference in birth location becomes obvious–and more important than ever. Mathilda is calm and observant while in my arms. We all sing Happy Birthday to her, just as Eudora had planned. She is still receiving oxygen and blood from my body since the cord connecting us is attached— there is no rush to sever our connection. There is no rush to provide extra air to her–she is having no trouble breathing, her color is pink and healthy. There is no rush to take her from me to place her under an electric warmer since she is not suffering from blood loss (cutting the cord early denies a small infant precious ounces of blood which may lower their body temperature). She is laying skin-to-skin with me and is nuzzling my breast. Her eyes are wide open–she seems a bit perplexed at this strange new world–but she is not terrified or in pain–just curious. I hope these first few moments set the tone for her entire life.
10:20pm. I look into the video camera that is set up on the tri-pod in the corner of the room and speak these words (7 minutes after giving birth) I’m saying this so that it is on record–I would totally do this again. This was not painful or awful in anyway. There is a world of difference in giving birth at home compared to giving birth in a hospital. I would never do it any other way ever again. Although what I fail to mention was that i was so miserable the last week of my pregnancy that I probably won’t ever have another baby. But instantly, the thought of never makes me sad and I sniff Mathilda’s head…heaven.
10:23pm. Jill checks on the placenta to see if it is ready to come meet the world, as well. I am having a lot of cramps which feel a lot like contractions, which I am whining about. The cord has stopped pulsing and is kind of cold and limp feeling. I am surprised at how “spiral-y” it is. I’ve never gotten to play with the cord from my other births. It feels right to do this…like I just had acrylic nails put on—they feel alien and weird, but oddly like my own all at once. The cord is mine–it is part of me–I created it out of the blood and cells in my body and the nutrients in my food–but it is entirely alien and has no further function at this point. The placenta seems to want to stay in there for a few more minutes. We decide to allow it to remain since I do not want to repeat the traumatic postpartum bleeding experience that I had with Eudora from the OB pulling my placenta out before it was fully detached.
10:30pm. Mathilda has latched on to my breast and is nursing like a pro! This definitely increase the uterine cramps. My complaints bring Jill back over to check on it. Both her and Jen press on my tummy to feel the fundus (top of the uterus) which is miraculously right at my navel now. They both agree that the placenta is no longer attached and that it is safe for it to come out. Jill gives the cord a small tug to see if it will come out. It doesn’t. I am wary of pulling on it any more and ask if we can wait a few more minutes. Old fears die hard.
10:40pm. I am anxious for these cramps to end and feel like a real wuss for complaining about them…I did just give birth after all. Jill suggest that I may need to give a little “push” to help it along. I scootch down a bit and give a push…and feel it moving down…crikey! It feels bigger than Mathilda! I push a bit harder and this HUGE thing flops out of me! Holy Placenta! In addition to our daughter, evidently I was also carrying around the world’s most mammoth placenta. It is seriously big…and I’ve seen a few placenta’s in my day. This thing was taking up all of my tummy space and led us to believe that Mathilda was going to be a bit bigger than she is. Instantly, I feel like a new person. My uterus is entirely my own again. My body, although still showing the signs of pregnancy and recent birth, feels almost normal already.
10:42pm. After Jen puts the placenta in a bowl and has a good look at it to determine that it is all intact, Jill decides to take a look at my bits and parts to make sure that they are all intact. No one seems surprised to hear that there has been no tearing, no ripping, and no abrasions. I feel a little bit sore, but already I can tell my recovery will be much more pleasant without rips, tears or stitches.
11:00pm. David gets to hold his new daughter for the first time while Jill escorts me into the bathroom for a shower. I am happy that I hear no cries while I am gone. And I am also very happy with my investment in the all natural, organic, Rosemary-Mint soap i purchased just for this occasion. Both of these things make up for the adult diaper I am wearing…but even that sure beats two giant Kotex precariously shoved into a pair of great big cotton granny panties.
11:10pm. Back in bed…a bed that has fresh sheets on it ala the midwives. Is there anything that they are not awesome at? David makes some sexual innuendos about my industrial-strength panties. The midwives jokingly ask is we are aware of the many benefits of spacing our pregnancies.
11:30pm. My midwives bust out the cheescake they had brought with them to celebrate my daughters birthday. Cheescake. A freaking cheescake. I challenge anyone to top that. Cheescake.
Midnight. We are tucked into our clean, warm bed. Belly full of cheescake. Arms full of new baby. Heart full of love. Our birth music mix plays softly in the background. One last hug and congratulations from the midwives before they return home to their families. We did it. Mathilda is here. Everything was just perfect. She snuggles into me and nurses all night long while I stay awake and marvel at the incredible journey that has brought us to this time, this place, this outcome.
Cody Ryan Arnold, Born at Home on March 22, 2009
Written by Gretchen Arnold. I will start by saying that my idea of birth is that women grow the perfect baby for their body and give birth naturally.We had our idea of the perfect birth plan in place for the birth of my first son Jeremy. We had a good midwife and support team including 2 doula’s and a supportive hospital near Atlanta, GA. We read everything you can think to read about natural birth. We even took a 10-week Bradley Method class. So much to our surprise we ended up with an emergency cesarean after about 10 hours of un-medicated labor, five of which was pushing. When it was all said and done we were blessed to have a healthy, beautiful 9lb 9oz baby boy. Even though everyone told me to feel blessed because he was alive and we were both healthy, I couldn’t help but feel like something wasn’t right. It was a very long hard recovery. I nursed my son for 19 months and together we worked through a very emotional journey.
We moved to Erie, PA on March 21, 2008 and soon after I found the local chapter of ICAN (International Cesarean Awareness Network). They were very informative and inspirational. I started to believe in my body and the ability to birth a baby. My husband and I decided we were ready to have another baby. The next month we found out we were pregnant. YEAH and scary! What now? I need to have this baby the way I know my body can. So my husband and I had many talks about what we needed to do to have the experience we wanted. We came to the decision that I was ready to take the emotional and physical responsibility of a homebirth with a midwife. It was a wonderful 9 months filled with questions, fear, hope, inspiration and love. But most importantly I was able to have a supportive team that respected my choices and me! I had to heal from my surgical birth and know that I could trust my body and birth my baby. I read birth stories, talked to only a few very supportive people and drew birth art, inspired in part from the book Birthing From Within by Pam England and Rob Horowitz. I was ready and confident that my body knew how to naturally birth a baby. I still had some anxiety and fearful thoughts would creep in every now and then but I just talked about it with my support team and family and never let it consume me. I felt strong and ready. Now we wait.
Every morning for a week I told my little baby “you can come now we are ready.” I made lasagna and put it in the freezer for after the birth and I made my husband and my almost two-year-old son clean the house Saturday the 21st, one year to the day after moving to Erie. I even splurged Saturday night and had a piece of warm apple pie with vanilla bean ice cream. Yum! I was officially 39 weeks pregnant and feeling very ready to have this baby.
Much to my excitement I woke up Sunday morning at 3 am feeling a few mild contractions. I stayed in bed and was able to doze off to sleep waking up every now and then with a few contractions. By 5:30 am I was very uncomfortable in bed and decided to go to the living room to watch T.V. I didn’t want to wake my husband and my son Jeremy who were still sound asleep in our room. I sat quietly watching dating shows and infomercials, there is nothing on at 5:30 am Sunday morning! I rocked in our glider and continued to have contractions every 7-10 minutes lasting about 30 seconds each. At 7 am I needed to take a shower. My back was starting to hurt and I knew the hot water would help. I was also hoping I would wake the boys up so I could let them know we were probably going to add a new member to our family that day! I didn’t have any expectation about when the baby would come if it took 5 hours, great; if it took 3 days that would have to be great too. I needed to let go of control and just let my baby move down with each contraction. TRUST! Right! That is what I worked on; trust your body.
I was glad that when I got out of a very hot shower I heard my son’s sweet voice “Mommy, all done take a shower.” He was very happy to see me and I was glad they were awake. I sat on the edge of the bed and told my husband, Nate, that I had been having contractions since about 3 am. He said he knew something was up when I got out of bed at 5:30. He then got up on his knees and pretended to catch a baby and hand it to me. He looked at me and said “I’m ready, let’s do this.” We all got up and ate some eggs for breakfast. I sat on the couch and read to my son and laughed with my husband about what time was too early to call the birth team. Every time I had a contraction I would just sit quietly and think, “feel the baby move down.” It was a beautiful sunny day and I was in a very good mood. I called my birth team at about 8:30 am and let them know what was happening. I told them I wanted to labor alone and I would keep them up to date. I snacked on peanut butter toast and granola bars. I was able to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated. The contractions kept coming. I decided to take a short nap at about 9:30 am. I was able to get some sleep between contractions. I cuddled in my king-size bed all by myself; normally we have my son, two dogs and the two of us. It was nice to have some space. I listened to a relaxation CD and rested thinking I can trust my body to move my baby down and make sure everything was in the right position. I woke up about an hour later with back labor and wanted to take another hot shower. After my shower I called the birth team to let them know that everything was still ok and I would call them a little later in the afternoon.
The family all had lunch together. Then we took my son down to the basement to watch the movie “Bolt.” He dosed on my lap toward to middle of the movie and my husband took him up to his bed for his afternoon nap. I rocked downstairs as we finished the movie. I watched the results for American Idol – I had to know who got kicked off that week. When we were done watching T.V. we came upstairs. It was about 2:00pm and I told Nate I had to lie down for a little while. I was able to sleep on and off for an hour. I woke up with really bad back pain. I looked at Nate and said, “I think I want to call my midwife.” He said, “Then let’s call!” I talked to her for a few minutes and told her I thought I needed support. She said she had been biting her lip all day and was so excited to come over. I told Nate she was on her way and I wanted him to start filling the birth pool.
At this point it was about 3:30pm and I had been laboring for about 12 hours. The contractions started to pick up and were now every 5 minutes lasting 50 seconds to 1 minute. I had to close my eyes and really concentrate on my breathing to get through each one. I sat in the 3-ring plastic baby pool with a padded inflatable floor and colorful fish on the side until my midwife arrived. I got out of the pool so she could listen to the baby and check my status. It was about 4:30 and my blood pressure was perfect, the baby’s heart rate was in the 130-140s and I was 8 cm dilated. She said “you are in labor and it looks like you are going to have a baby today.” I went to sit on the toilet for a while and Nate drained about half the water in the pool and added hot water so I could get back in comfortably. I sat quietly in the bathroom listening to my midwife call her support midwife and Nate calling my doula. I laid my head against the bathroom wall and closed my eyes. Each contraction was harder then the last and I tried to relax, breath and visualize my baby moving down lower in the birth canal. My son got up right before the midwife arrived after a 3-hour nap and was in a great mood. I loved listening to him running around playing. I wanted him to be around and be as involved in the birthing process as he wanted.
I was sitting alone taking in all the wonderful sounds of home when Nate came in to tell me that everyone was on their way and ask if he could do anything for me. I decided at that time I wanted to move back to the pool. I sat down and relaxed in the warm water. It was wonderful. My doula arrived and sat next to me by the pool. I remember talking to my midwife about bed size. We agreed you needed to have a king size, a queen just would not do. We also talked about where to find a good deal on California-king sheets. As the contractions intensified I just closed my eyes and breathed deeply, making sure my shoulders and body were relaxed through each one. I had a wonderful doula for my son Jeremy who came over a few times during the previous month to really get to know him. She arrived and my son barely said two words to his dad he ran outside to play with her. My doula told me as soon as my son was taken care of and my husband was by my side my contractions really picked up. They became very intense and lasted longer. I had to moan and vocalize each contraction. I remember wanting to keep my eyes closed in between each one to help recover and prepare for the next. I threw up during my next set of contractions and my back started to really hurt. I was not comfortable sitting in the pool. I turned over on to my hands and knees and laid my head on the side of the pool with my husband’s hands on my back and shoulders. My doula put hot washcloths on my back and shoulders and rubbed my back with oil to help me relax. I remember them telling me that the pain was normal and my body was doing just what it should be. I remember hearing my midwife say, “You are so brave for doing this.” It was the perfect thing to say to me for some reason. I remember thinking I am brave and I can do this. I have to do this. There is no way I am getting in a car or ambulance right now. I can’t even open my eyes. There is no magical surgeon to swoop in and take the pain away. That’s not what I want! Trust! Trust my body to do what it needs to do.
Looking back at one of the pictures I see that my midwife was holding my head and supporting me at 6:40 (on her watch). I asked my husband later, “If Cody was born at 6:57 where the heck were you at 6:40!!” He said “I had no idea you were that close and I needed to put the lasagna in he oven.” I had this crazy need to plan and make sure the lasagna was done for everyone to have dinner. He was just doing what I asked. HAHA. Back at his post, supporting my head and whispering how much he loves me in my ear, I started feeling my body push. I remember thinking, “is this ok?” “Should I already be pushing?” I pushed for about 5 hours with Jeremy and I did NOT want to do that again. I went back to thinking TRUST! If my body needs to push, I need to push. I heard my sons voice near. I knew he was there. I wanted him there. My breathing slowed and I remembered to relax. I heard my midwife say, “whatever you are doing right now is perfect, you are opening beautifully. Just like the flower.” We had used the metaphor, open like a flower, naturally, slowly and in its own time. I was trying to breath and remember that each contraction was bringing my baby closer. I needed to listen to what I was feeling and give in to it. Just let my body work to bring me my baby. I was crying a little and I kept saying, “it really hurts. REALLY, REALLY hurts!” Everyone reminded me “you are doing just what you should be. All those feeling are ok.” I heard my other midwife say, “do you want to reach down and feel the head?” “No! No,” I exclaimed. I don’t want to change anything or move my position. I knew I needed to be just how I was to deliver this baby. I was not moving!
I heard my midwife say you are close to holding your baby. I thought “yeah right she says that to everyone!” I felt a lot of pressure and burning. “It’s just the water sack you are going great,” she said. “If the water sack hurts like that how in the world am I going to push a baby out,” I thought to myself! “Oh, another contraction! Ouch!” Then it happened – I felt the baby come out. First his head and I pushed again and he slipped right out, like it was nothing! What it relief! I had a baby! I did it!! I flipped over immediately so I could hold my beautiful baby. In doing so I dunked him in the water and wrapped the cord around his neck. My midwife said, “Just hold on one second.” I had to see, I had to hold him and know what the sex was. As I pulled him to my chest I remember looking down and saying “We have a boy! We did it Cody, you and me!”
I felt Nate and Jeremy’s hands on me as they looked over my shoulder at our new little baby boy. Jeremy was there for the last 10 minutes and was able to see his little brother come into this world. Jeremy was calm and relaxed. I don’t want him to ever think birth is scary. He just kept saying, “Baby came out of mommy’s belly in the wawa,” (water in toddler). It was everything I needed it to be. I delivered the placenta, Nate cut the cord and I got up to lay in bed with my two boys. Cody was born with the water sack around so no infections, blood mixing or bath to worry about. Native American legend says that if a baby is born with the water sack intact the baby will be a healer. How appropriate. He has already helped my family heal and I know that we were right to believe in natural birth and trust my body.
I took a shower and put on my clean nightgown. I climbed into bed just as they weighed my 9lb 3oz boy. He was 21 inches and perfect. Everyone held Cody and enjoyed lasagna. It was 10:00pm and my house was clean; clean sheets, dishes washed and dirty laundry in the machine. The birth team left and I was in bed nursing my new baby boy and holding my other son as we all drifted off to sleep.
Karen’s Story
I gave birth to our third, Aren, this month on May 3rd with Jen and Jill. Jen has been encouraging me to share my birth story (and a few little things I learned) and I figured I’d better get around to it before it becomes too foggy to remember.
We had a great birth. I couldn’t have asked for better. My first two were non-medicated, midwife attended hospital births. While my husband and I had a little hesitation to choose homebirth this time, once we’d committed, I wasn’t expecting it to make so much difference that I was at home. It did. The two most noticeable improvements to my birthing experience were being truly comfortable with the people in my labor setting and having a much easier emotional/psychological/physical recovery.
With my first two hospital births,
I didn’t feel that my expressiveness in the heat of labor was hindered by my environment. Vocally and physically, I would say that I was able to put myself where I needed to be. However, the comfort and SECURITY of being at home this time led me through a different process verbally and emotionally than I think I might have had otherwise. And being able to express more verbally and not being challenged by my environment brought me to greater awarenesses about what I really experienced and process during birth. Those were realizations that I didn’t come to during birth, but rather after. I had a chance to look at how I reacted and the “gestalt” like response that came out of me, and it opened up new personal realizations about my life and where I’m at.
The familiarity and relationship that we built with Jen and Jill (aka Jill and Jen !) made the birth experience more intimate in that they had a sense of our relationship, our boundaries and our needs during labor. That was fantastic. I need a lot of space to myself during labor, and their sensitivities to what WE needed were a big part of what allowed me to dig into a more emotional process than I had with my previous births. Albeit I had a little extra emotional moment or two – the benefit of being at home again shining through as the support o
f my husband and the midwives helped me overcome being sucked into a fearful or emotionally consumed state.
As far as recovery goes, the security and comfort of being home and not having to relocate from my birth environment to my home environment was HUGE to me. I have had a hard time in the past with the shift in environment from hospital to home, and especially putting such a tiny, precious thing in a car seat and traveling. That was so stressful to me.Not having to deal with such a huge environment shift when you’re postpartum is a beautiful and healthy thing. I didn’t feel that there was any delay in my being able to begin healing/revitalizing myself and bonding with and enjoying my son. My family was around me. My wits were, too. (Self-assessed opinion… you can ask my husband if he agrees!) I’ve had ups and downs in the last couple weeks, but I think this is by far my best postpartum experience, yet.
I’m putting in a big hurrah here for the midwives… who allowed me to birth my son at his pace without any forced pushing whatsoever…… What a blessing!!!!! I’m guessing it was a combination of this being my third and not forcing pushing, but I had so little perineal discomfort that I was beside myself. Unbelievable.
Two little things I learned from this process: If you already have children, I recommend getting them out of the house the first few days for overnight stays intersperse with short visits to see you and the baby. My kids were home TOO soon. They overnighted with grandparents the first two nights and were home 5-8 hours during the day. Although I had help in the house (my husband took vacation time), I needed more solitude with the baby. The noise and the chaos of daily life wore me out the first week, even though I wasn’t doing the chasing, feeding, playing, etc. Next time I’ll be bossier about carving out a week plus of solitary confinement with babe.
Also, we called our family members to tell them I was in labor early on, which resulted in everyone coming to the house to visit/hang out regardless of whether they were invited. We thought we had formulated a good plan for the kids to be taken care of, etc. However, I found myself managing grandparent expectations and phone calls to get people out of my house while I was in labor, which was an unnecessary stressor. I recommend being
very clear about your expectations of who will be with you when you birth with anyone who you’ll be calling once your in labor. I wasn’t concerned about hurting anyone’s feelings before I was in labor. I just didn’t think I needed to tell people that they weren’t welcome to be in my house while I was birthing. Not so. Then, once I was in labor, it seemed like a bigger issue that it probably really was. For us, we just wanted it to be husband, wife, midwives and new babe. It ended up being just that. The family came after the birth, which was perfect.
All the thankfulness in the world to Jen, Jill, and the support of the growing consciousness of the world for putting homebirth into my experience!!!!
Blessings-
K.
Scarlett’s Birth
Written by Emily Render Graham
Scarlett surprised everyone (except Jill) by coming a week early. Throughout last week, after a night of love with Jason (husband), I was having “late pregnancy symptoms” including a dull lower backache, PMS-y cramps and soft stools, beginning on my birthday, Sept. 11th. Some days the symptoms were so strong I felt convinced that labor was about to begin. Some days they would disappear altogether. I had also been waking up nightly to cramps and myself moaning. (Jason would moan back to me in his sleep, what a sweetheart!)
smelled the liquid and it was not urine, it was clear, covering my wood floor in the bedroom. I called Jen and she advised me to see if I had any strong contractions over the next hour or so, and if not, try to get some sleep. She said it could take up to half the day for labor to begin. But half a day!!! We were shocked.
would be home at noon. I sat in the rocking chair, breathing and moaning a little for several hours.
her crowning for quite a while, it stung badly. I announced this in chant form during the rest period. Then on the next contraction I pushed very hard, while pushing my tissues hard with both hands. I felt movement, Jen announced that she felt a nose. I pushed again and felt the amazing relief of her head birthing, and I was only stretched around a tiny neck!!! I relaxed and at the next contraction was expecting a little push and a body to come slithering out easily. Unfortunately for me this moment, baby’s head was 3/4 inch smaller than the shoulders, so I felt then rotate and had to really push to get them out. I raised my body out of the water and bellowed “what is that? Pull it out!!” Jen of course didn’t pull, just waited for a few seconds and my pushing did its job.
Juliana’s stories
Birth of Abigail – 2004
Hey Justine,
I’m going to attach a word document that was written to the midwife I had initially hired to provide my prenatal care and to catch Abigail. The last physical contact I had with her was when I left the doctor’s office (noon) for the hospital to have my labor augmented on March 9th, 2004. Abby was born in the wee hours on the 10th. After we ended up firing the doctor, he forbid anyone in the office, my midwife including, to have any contact with me. Just know for yourself though that the office had a doula available for my use (I would have had to pay an additional fee directly to her). One problem though: even though she was for hire, she also worked for the doctor and midwives in the office. Can you say huge conflict of interest where a doula is concerned??? One other mom that was in my childbirth education class (coincidentally also taught by the same doula) had actually hired her to be her doula. Ended up being C-sectioned by our doctor. So the key here is that your doula should not, under any circumstance, be remotely associated with your doctor, especially financially. My situation was very complicated because I had been led to believe that I would be attended at home. All I needed was a true midwife, not a medwife and definitely not a doctor. Hugs, Juliana
Dear S,
I want to start off by telling you that having the experience I had at the WHP has made me even more leery of obstetricians and certain that I could have given birth at home. When I switched to your care last October, I thought I was going to receive the type of care that I had read about in all my midwife/natural birth/attachment parenting, etc. books.
The truth is that I did with you… up until my care was commandeered in January by Dr. W and his wife. The less I saw you, the more I should have started to question things. M. always referred to me as a patient. Dr. W. stuck me so hard for my CBC in January that I had a huge bruise on the top of my hand for 2 weeks. He never came to the house to inspect it in February. M.M. had the same insurance as me but she wasn’t being allowed to have a home birth. All these little things I overlooked that now tell me how Dr. W. had no intention of allowing me to birth at home. I spoke with M.M. a few months ago and have yet to hear her complete story but when she told me that she wasn’t allowed to have a home birth, I know I should have researched a little more. I can’t help but think that once you weren’t issued a provider number by my insurance, my hope of having a home birth was a lost cause. I try not to feel betrayed, I’m sure Dr. W promised you all kinds of things that he never followed through with, including that he would let me birth at home. What I believe in my heart though, is that I could have if I had been only under your care. I wonder how many home births Dr. W had ever attended and how naive I was to think that he was going to allow me to birth my baby instead of him gallantly delivering her.
I know you must have a lot of questions that he never answered, I will try to fill you in as much as possible and allow you to draw your own conclusions as to his actions. I arrived at the hospital at about 3:30 and at 4 pm I was hooked up to the Pitocin. Dr W came in to check me and said I was dilated to 2cms. I was so relieved…finally some progress for all this pain! I was still going to try to do it without pain relief and was doing alright-sitting on my birthing ball, changing positions, etc. I went to the bathroom at about 5:30 and was cornered by Dr. W saying he wanted to give me something light to help me sleep. I refused at first but wanted so much to trust him (I was thinking back to some stuff I read where the doctor said his exact words and how the mother eventually was given a C-section). He gave me Stadol. It knocked me out cold for what seemed like 15 minutes and then came the tidal waves. The contractions were so much more intense now that I was so completely groggy, they were unbearable. He came in again (6 PM) and told me I was thinning nicely. I thought I was dilated 2 cm 2 hours ago? Remember when I left the clinic on my way to the hospital and I started to well up with tears? You told me it was good to cry, that it would release endorphins. Being so groggy and in so much pain, I finally broke down and started to weep. The nurse told me to stop crying because it would waste my energy.
At about 7 pm, he came in and told John that I was spoiled. I’m not exactly sure why but something about me having to have my way because I was refusing the epidural and not listening to his (Dr. W) pestering me to get it. Then he told me that I wasn’t letting the contractions work for me because I was tightening my abdominal and thigh muscles. The last straw was when he came in and said he could have had this baby out 2 hours ago by C-Section.
At that point I accepted the epidural. I ended up getting it at around 8:30 that evening. After that I fell asleep and woke up with a strong pain on my right side similar to my bladder being so full it felt like it was going to burst…that kind of pain. I don’t remember who checked me but I heard that I was at 10 and that it was time to push, it was about 2:20 am, March 10th. There I was laying on my back, not allowing gravity to help bring the baby down, delivering in the position most likely to cause tearing.
Everything he was telling me to do was the complete opposite of all that I had read. I tried to think back to how we were told to do it in the childbirth classes and realized that we hadn’t been told. I’m assuming that we hadn’t been told because there really was no specific way of doing it, you just breath the way you normally breath, right? That’s what all my midwife books said. I still had that annoying cough and he was telling me to hold my breath for the entire contraction on the monitor. When I had to let my breath out he would tell me I’m not doing what he asked. He told John to push my head down into my chest while I was pushing and holding my breath. During my entire pushing time, his cell phone was ringing off the hook. Finally he gave it to John to answer and after John told the caller that “Dr. W is in labor”, they just hung up. John later told me it was probably M. I pushed for a bit and Abby was born at 2:53. I asked him how badly I had torn and he ignored me. My mom later told me while I was pushing he had 4 fingers in there stretching me out. He cut the cord without asking John. I’m assuming he never read the birth plan John and I had made requesting that either he or my mother cut the cord. I was so certain the nurses would be the ones who weren’t going to accommodate me, when he was the wolf in sheep’s wool the whole time. The birth of the placenta was awful; he was pulling on it and pushing down immensely on my belly because I guess I was still bleeding. I believe his aggressive delivery of the placenta and hurrying to go home led to a bit of the placenta being retained and hence more blood loss. I had several black outs that morning prompting Dr. W to say that I might need a blood transfusion. The more I thought about it the less comfortable I was with the idea. Then I spoke with my father and he told me that there a bunch of things that the blood is not screened for including Epstein-Barr virus that some percentage of Americans are unknowing carriers of. I was still undecided when Dr. W called the nurses to see how I was and whether or not I had agreed to the transfusion.
When they told him of my indecision, he asked to speak with me. He told me that he thought we agreed that he “would be driving this bus”. The bus being my body and me just a passenger? I asked him to let me think about it a little more. At about noon on the 10th, I had this terrible urge to use the restroom and when I got up I passed a tennis ball-sized clot. I passed out on the toilet in the head nurse’s arms and had to be revived with smelling salts as my blood pressure had plummeted to 50/40. The nurse paged Dr. Ware to inform him about my situation (they were thinking I might need a D&C) but he didn’t end up calling in until past 3 pm. They had brought in a local OB/GYN to check me over and while catheterizing me again, the nurses gasped. It was very swollen and bruised and one of the nurses remarked how awful it looked.
When Dr. W finally called in and was told that I had transferred care to another doctor the nurse said he seemed quite pleased. And that was it. It was not a gentle birth by any stretch of the imagination. I am thankful he didn’t practice his other surgical skills by giving me an episiotomy or a C-Section. I have since joined a group called the Birthing Circle of Frederick here in Maryland and have learned even more about midwifery and healthy, natural childbirth. Thing is, the more I learn and review my labor start to finish, the more I realize I was cheated. I trusted my body, my baby, and a doctor. Two out of three isn’t bad, right?
Birth of Caroline – 2005
With Caroline, all I kept telling myself is that as long as no doctor was being consulted regarding my “progress”, I would be OK. And I was. After mild contractions for about 2 hours, I got into my own bathtub and floated. An hour later Caroline was born gently in our home. No complications, no hemorrhaging, no latching on difficulties. Nothing but a healthy mama and baby!
Stacy’s Births:
I am so thrilled to be able to share these two wonderful homebirth stories with you; the births of Baby Orlando and Baby Mica. Thank you to Stacy at Mama-Om. Be sure to visit her site and pay homage to yet another homebirthing goddess! I’ve just had a good chuckle reading about the redecorating efforts of her very creative boys :0
Mel’s Journey to Homebirth
My journey into homebirth came after experiencing a rough, medicalized hospital induction with my first child. In our society, if you become pregnant…you give birth in a hospital, right? I would go to my pre-natal appointments and wait in the waiting room for at least an hour, then the OB would see me for maybe 5 or 10 minutes. I felt like just another patient in a busy practice. I was bummed that I wasn’t able to experience going into labor naturally. I was induced. I was given a ridiculous amount of medication: Cervadil to soften my cervix, Pitocin to start contractions, Stadol to numb the pain…they broke my water. I had a painful episiotomy and what felt like a hundred stitches! A day or so after the birth, I spiked a fever and they gave me a shot of something. To this day, I have no clue what it was. They shoved a bottle of sugar water in his mouth after his birth. We ended up struggling with breastfeeding for the first week or so. I had a 3 day hangover because of all the meds. I could go on and on about how rough my hospital experience was and how long my recovery was, but….my son is wonderful and healthy so I hate to complain and down his birth. The day I left the hospital, I knew that if I ever had another child, I would do things differently. That’s exactly what I did!!
Steve was in nesting mode. Cleaning, making BBQ Chicken of all things and Peanut Butter Cookies. Definitely can’t do that in the hospital! Jen decided to leave for a few hours until my labor got more active. Her office is about 10 min. from here, so she left to run some errands and pick up some things at her office. I felt comfortable with her leaving because I knew that she could be back quickly if things started to pick up. I decided to take a hot bath, just to see what I thought of being in the tub while in labor. I was having contractions that were maybe every 8-10 min. and they were very mild. My pain was maybe a 3 or 4 on a scale of 1-10. After the bath, I felt incredibly hungry. I was almost nauseous and shaky because I hadn’t eaten since about 11 that morning. Too much excitement, I guess! I had some yogurt and toast…something that would be forbidden if I were in the hospital. I felt like having a small amount of food was important. My body felt like it needed calories to birth my baby. I wasn’t having extremely hard or painful contractions, so I ate! It was about 7:30 PM. The contractions felt like they were starting to pick up in closeness and intensity but were still not all that bad. It was going on 8:00 and I decided to lay down in bed. Jen showed up about then. I tried to rest but by 8:30 my pain level got surprisingly intense and I was in full blown hard labor. I tried to breathe through it the best I could….I’m not going to lie….it was quite painful!! I moaned through the pains, needing Jen’s arm to grab onto. OK, so maybe I yelled through most of them from that point on! Jen called Emily, her assistant and student midwife (who also
had a homebirth about a year ago). Things definitely felt like they were going fast at this point. I labored like that for maybe about an hour or so, then started feeling urges to push. Jen checked me to make sure that my dilation was complete and it was. I started pushing on the bed. I couldn’t get over the intense pressure on my bottom. Major ouch! Jen directed Steve to the kitchen to heat some water and she applied hot compresses to my bottom when I pushed (which felt wonderful) I wasn’t having much luck pushing in bed, so Steve sat on the edge of the bed and I squatted in front of him while he supported me. This lasted maybe 2 or 3 pushes or so. I just wasn’t comfortable in that position, so next I sat on the toilet. After a push or two on the toilet, I decided that I didn’t like that either. I stood up and leaned against my bathroom sink in a stand/squat position. I just couldn’t find that “happy place” that I felt comfortable in to push. I was glad that I was given the option to try different positions until we found something that worked. She felt hard to push out!! While standing at the sink, I remember grabbing a dixie cup and gulping down water. I was dying of thirst and starting to feel exhausted and frustrated. Jen suggested that I try getting into the bathtub. I would’ve delivered in the fish tank at that point!! Steve rushed to the other bathroom and got a hot bath going. I climbed into the tub and got into a squat position on my knees. When my poor bottom hit the hot water it was like instant relief!! I ended up getting on my back and it was easy to relax and be in control. Emily poured cups of water over my belly. The hot water was a blessing!! I pushed only when I felt urges and for the amount of time that I felt was necessary. No directed pushing or counting to 10!! I started to feel a burning sensation when I would push. I reached my hand down to support myself because the burning and stretching sensation was intense. Finally, I could feel her head (this is after about an hour of on and off pushing total) I could actually feel her hair floating in the water, so that really gave me the motivation to get her out!! Finally, her head was out….face up which is probably why she was a little harder to push out. Jen said that the cord was 
around her neck once. Not a situation to panic about if you have someone there who knows what they’re doing. Jen unlooped the cord and the rest of her body just kind of floated out. Her eyes were wide open under the water when she was born (or so everyone else said…because mine were closed!!). Jen lifted her out of the water and onto my belly. She was heavily covered in vernix!! We wiped her off with some towels and stimulated her. After she started to perk up and cry, Steve put a little hat on her and cut the cord. Her time of birth was 10:40 PM, after about an hour of hard labor and an hour or so of pushing…talk about fast!! I was wanting to get out of the tub because my lower back and tailbone area was killing me! I birthed the placenta in the tub, then Jen and Steve helped me out of the tub and back to bed. While I was laying in bed, the afterpains hit me! They were almost as painful as labor. I took a couple of ibuprofen, Jen massaged my belly a little and checked to see if there were any tears. I had no tearing and needed no stitches. Woo Hoo!! I headed to the shower to rinse off. After getting dressed I offered the baby to nurse and she latched on right away. Jen and Emily stayed until about 2 AM. After they left, we all got some much needed sleep! I couldn’t believe that I had done it! I had just given birth in the comfort of our home, without poking, checking, IV’s, pitocin or any other intervention…..EASILY!! We are grateful for our homebirth experience!
