Five years ago, my sweet, lovable, sensitive blue-eyed girl was born. The girl we all call “Banana”. She’s always been pretty tiny, strangers often ask me if she and her three year old brother are twins. She’s a sharp one too. Just yesterday, our cocker spaniel got out and bolted down the street. She went and got the dog’s ball and squeezed it, which immediately brought the dog back. She was a climber when she was an infant and that’s never stopped, I turn around to find her on counters or creating makeshift ladders all the time. Last week she stood right behind me and put the cat food container on a stool to try to reach a high shelf. Within thirty seconds, she had what she needed and was down. Her birth was my first natural birth and it’s a pleasant and touching memory that I’d love to share as is, the way I wrote it while still in the hospital and watching her sleep peacefully!

The midwives at my birth center sent me home at 5 cms and 80% effaced. Both of the midwives in the practice were going on vacation at the same time and I had only found this out because I was eavesdropping (oops!) so I was nervous. My husband and I weighed the pros and cons to decide what to do next. Knowing my history for progressing rather quickly at the end of delivery, we were concerned that he would be at one of his distant work sites and the baby would arrive before he could even get to me. As we got further into the next day, my contractions picked up again and based on the uncertainty and displeasure with several of the birth center aspects, we decided to head to the hospital after I had a chance to do a little research on the maternity centers in our nearby hospitals.

When we got there around 9:30pm or so, the hospital was a little baffled at our situation. I could tell that they were surprised to see that I was sent home because they kept saying “She’s already 5 cms!” when they checked me in somewhere. After they checked me to be sure that I was actually that far, around 10:15pm, they found that I was still 80% effaced and Baby was at -1 station but also that I was now 6 cms. They knew immediately that they were keeping me and their L&D admissions nurse asked me about preferences, I rattled off my long list and she didn’t even bat an eyelash at my alternative requests! She wrote everything down, told me that the hospital is quite an accommodating one, and set all of my questions in motion.

Around 11:30pm, I got settled into my L&D room with possibly the best nurse that I’ve ever met. I walked her through my special requests a little more in depth than I’d done with the first nurse; such as desire to keep my placenta for encapsulation purposes, declining of the erythromycin for the baby, ability to move around during labor and possibly deliver in my own preferred position, etc. She was more than welcoming about all of my decisions and informed me that they’d already set the ball in motion for figuring out how to obtain my placenta, a request they have actually never had so they were unsure of the protocol.

By the time I was all settled in, my contractions had disappeared again. I let the nurse know that Pitocin is simply a waste of their time, it has never helped me and their best bet was to break my water and I also warned her that I go quickly at the end so she might end up delivering our baby. She wasn’t sure that they would take my word for it but to my surprise, she came back to tell me that the next step would be to break my water! I donned the gown that I bought just for this occasion, my husband turned on the relaxing Celtic music that I’d chosen to labor with, and around 11:55pm, they broke my water and instead of a gush, I had a lot of slower leaking fluid because of the positioning of the baby’s head so I believe it took a bit longer to actually “empty out”. I decided to stand on a pad they placed on the floor for me and rock my hips to help the water and hopefully encourage contractions. James  had me laughing hysterically. Unfortunately, the laughter displeased the baby and her heart rate spiked up so they asked me to lie down for a while and I just ended up laboring there out of comfort.

 

After 12:40am or so, I finally started to feel contractions come on. They began really far apart and not bad but by 2am, they were 1-2 minutes apart and much more intense. James coached me through each contraction, telling me to breathe and warning me when they were approaching, peaking, and on the decline, which seemed to make them go by more quickly. He walked me through my visualizations, like the image of waterfalls pouring into a body of water. My main complaint was a nauseous heartburn feeling that was lingering through all of my breathing, making me really want to vomit.

About a half hour later, I felt different and wanted to be checked again… when the nurse told me that I was “7 cms, 8 with a good contraction”, I reached the point that I warned my husband about. I felt defeat and begged to be given an epidural. My husband supported my preferences like he promised he would, telling me that we couldn’t do that and I needed to breathe. I pleaded with him and he pretended to push the nurse call button a few times, stalling because he knew that it wouldn’t be long now and if he could hold me off, all would be well. The nurse heard me and came in, also prompting me to breathe through the contractions and telling me that if I wanted an epidural, it would take at least thirty minutes for him to arrive. I looked from her face to his face with no answer but “You guys suck!” and then reached the other seemingly inevitable part of the stages of natural labor that I’d told me husband would happen after the “defeat stage”…the “just do it stage”. I breathed through several more contractions, with a few “ugggggh” sounds thrown in and some whining, turned onto my left side as the nurse had suggested earlier but then I felt a bit more pressure and had her check me again. She said that the baby had moved down and I was much closer. That wasn’t good enough for me so I bore down through a contraction and turned to the right side, to which I started really feeling it.

I yelled “Push! I have to push!” James and I were the only ones in the room at the time and he immediately looked and yelled out to the hall “OH YEAH! She’s coming!!” The nurse ran in saying “Blow it out, blow it out”, which I yelled “What does that mean?!” and there was so much commotion with all of the staff trying to get in there that I had no idea what she said but others told me to push gradually but it was impossible, my body was taking over. I tried to slow it down just because I was worried about tearing but the pressure was just too unbearable. The “ring of fire” slipped my mind at the moment and I thought the feeling I felt as I pushed her out was me tearing, but with three or four pushes, she came slipping out into the nurse’s hands at about 3:03am.

The first thing I said was “She is so small, is she okay? Is she okay?” She just looked too tiny to me but it turns out, she was my biggest baby of all weighing in at 6 lbs 9 oz and 19 inches long! For the first time, I had requested to wait until the cord stopped pulsating to cut it so she was on my belly for quite a long time as I sat touching the vernix I’d really never noticed on my babies before, probably because they were always washed so quickly afterward. I kept stroking her and telling her how slippery she felt, while I got nervous about delivering the placenta with that burning feeling still reeling down there! Everything came along okay and a NICU team member did an “unofficial” evaluation for us because she was only crying quietly at first, due to my pushing her out too fast for anyone to suction but all was well within a few minutes. She latched immediately afterward with a wonderful suck, so breastfeeding is going well so far!

Everyone at the hospital has been so pleasant and helpful, no matter how odd or new my preferences seem to them. The director of nursing has even come in and talked to me several times, very interested in the placenta encapsulation process, because she has been really bending over backwards to be sure that I obtain my placenta. The hospital has no established policy for such a thing due to never having had the request, so this lovely woman has called around to local hospitals and discussed their policies and the law with them. The verdict is more than likely that I will be able to have my placenta but because the paperwork needs to be filled out, filed, and waivers signed by me, they will keep it in their freezer until Monday or Tuesday when the people who need to handle the paperwork will be around.

(I made this outfit for her!)

I felt that my entire birth experience was beautiful and empowering! I feel proud not only of myself but of my husband for doing such a wonderful job as the most perfect support person I could ever ask for! We definitely did this together from start to finish and I don’t think there’s anything that I would change in the end. I love my life and my family, proud doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about my husband and three precious daughters.