To begin the story, I had a couple of weeks of contractions throughout lots of packing for our move and preparing for our homebirth. With Hubs working two and a half hours away, having accrued no time off at his new job and my midwife being an hour away without traffic plus my history of fast births, we discussed nudging things along if we judged that everything looked, felt, and seemed right. In her experienced professional and instinctual opinion, this seemed better than risking my delivering alone with three kids. The decision was something we were both very comfortable with and I was very scared about things going any other way. My midwife, Kate, arrived at my house around noon on Saturday August 10th and evaluated everything. We decided to break my water and get things going as my labors in the past have effectively done. It took an hour or two for contractions to get regular and painful, until then I walked around the house while the kids watched a movie and Hubs ran a quick errand. I retreated to my bedroom to relax and meditate with my Celtic music until Hubs arrived and started timing my contractions for me. Massaging my uterus in a certain downward motion seemed to keep the contractions going so I instinctively kept doing it. I got exhausted really quickly and decided to lay down but it seemed like my contractions would space out more if I sat or lay on the bed so I spent most of the time standing. My best friend was making lunch for the kids that for some reason made me crave a BLT so Hubs ordered down the street and had me one delivered. (I love him.) I ate bites of my BLT in between intensifying contractions. At some point Kate came in to check my dilation and said I was completely effaced and more dilated, but I didn’t want to know how far.
Hubs put on country for us to sway to together and I leaned in against him through every contraction and finally he insisted I lay down so we cuddled together on the bed through several contractions but I kept feeling the urge to squat so I got back up and leaned against him again. I kept squatting through contractions so I sat down on the birth stool and my midwife’s assistant came in to check everything out. She and Hubs had this look on their faces as I sat on the birth stool, as if they knew something I didn’t. She asked multiple times if I felt like pushing but I said no because my contractions weren’t close together enough and I remembered with my last daughter that I couldn’t even have a breath in between by the time it was time to push and these were still 3 minutes apart.
Minutes later, I insisted that I had to pee so I headed into the bathroom. I started to cry because I wanted to pee so badly but nothing was coming. Kate came in and suggested that I try to get into the shower and see if that helped the urge to pee but both her and the assistant kept assuring me that the baby was very low and the urge I have might be to push and I kept insisting that I wasn’t “in pain consistently enough” to push.
(picture taken by my midwife’s assistant, Brooke, a few minutes before he was born, my quick-edit for censored posting)
Getting into the shower didn’t help the urge to pee and Kate asked to check me, which I was reluctant for but then said okay. She told me that I could definitely push, there was a tiny lip of cervix and before she even finished her sentence, she’d pushed it out of the way and told me to push. I couldn’t hold myself well so someone grabbed me the birth stool and put it in the shower. I pushed twice and shouted about the ring of fire but there he was! She got him out and handed him up to me as I heard someone say for the kids to come see.
The first thing I did was apologize to him for not being able to admire him more because my vagina hurt so much. Then I said “Wait, I said ‘he’ but is it a boy?” and everyone laughed as I pulled the towel off of him and opened his legs to reveal, yup a boy! My midwife iced my lower region and I was able to cuddle him more and I immediately thought how he somewhat resembled Hubby’s dad. We waited a few for the cord to stop pulsating and the placenta to detach from me as my midwife noticed he had a true knot in his cord. She said it’s rare and it’s very cool but assured me that it wasn’t a problem and he was totally fine, he came out crying and perfect! I told the girls that they could cut the cord so she clamped it and his two biggest sisters both held the scissors and cut their baby brother’s cord! Kate asked if I wanted to shower since I was already there but I refused to give him up so she grabbed the shower head and cleaned me up while I got to keep cuddling my guy and everyone helped me walk to my bedroom and climb into my bed where I was able to nurse him for the first time. My midwife and her assistant evaluated him multiple times to be sure that he was healthy (and they also took his cord blood for testing). He nursed excellently and didn’t want to detach but finally we did so that we could get all of his measurements. As she put him into the little receiving blanket to be weighed and said seven pounds seven ounces, I swore I misheard her. “Six pounds seven ounces?” “SEVEN pounds, seven ounces.” “WHAT?! Is it broken?!” And 19 and a half inches long. That makes him my biggest baby by far! I’m still amazed that at 37 weeks and 4 days, he was 7 pounds 7 ounces!
My overall labor was about 3-4 hours long and the easiest, to the point that I was sure I had so much longer to go! As for homebirth…I love that my girls were able to be involved in the birth of their brother and I was able to comfortably labor in my own bedroom rocking to my own playlists with my husband. I love that I had so many options for where and how to deliver and never once did anyone try to second-guess what I wanted. I love that the only interruptions were the occasional Doppler checks for his heartbeat, no restricting IVs or monitors. After I birthed my son in my own shower, I was able to cuddle him in my own bed not hooked up to anything or being bothered by anyone…and then I spent my night watching my own movies, eating a home-cooked meal of steamed broccoli, green beans, chicken and biscuits made by my husband (that was delicious!), showering off in my own shower, and then falling asleep cuddled with my two favorite men. My birth and my baby boy were exactly as I wanted, hoped for, and am in love with. 🙂
