sorry this took me so long.
Ethan Alexander Bell's Wonderful Homebirth Story. (Really long)
Just to give you a bit of background, I have three other kids. ALL three born in the hospital, with pitocin, IVs out the wazoo and way too much interference on the doctors part. With my last two hospital births I literally had to threaten bodily harm to a few nurses and doctors if my wishes were not observed. I was threatened with bottles and unnecessary meds, with DSS and told that a stupid piece of paper from the American Pediatric Society gives the doc more rights to my baby than me. I was treated like dirt for attempting a homebirth with my last child. needless to say I decided that this time I would do whatever i had to in order to have a homebirth. My child deserved and needed it. I ordered my homebirth kit and did my research and read stories and watched videos and prepared my self in every way possible. I would have a homebirth come hell or high water.
I did not go to a doctor the entire time I was pregnant this time, for various reasons.
October 27th I had to have a wisdom tooth extracted, oh so much fun. For the next week after that I had prodromal labor. It made me realize that I did NOT have everything i needed. I ordered my homebirth kit on November 2nd. i had been kind of stressing over if we had the money to get it yet and where to get it from. Within a few hours of ordering the kit my prodromal labor got worse. I was having contractions that wrapped around from my back to my stomach and downwards. Whoa! I had to keep telling my body to wait atleast until my birth kit got here. Well my birth kit arrived on the fifth and THEN my prodromal labor stopped. Next I bought a blood pressure monitor on craig’s list and got the baby mattress. I was still having BHs and lower back pain with the cervical twinges that are so much fun. I still needed a fetal doppler, this was a very stressing thing to me. I felt the need to have it because with my last child I almost had to have a section due my baby's heartrate dropping badly and not recovering after each contraction. I looked and looked but couldn't find one to rent or buy that I wouldn't have to sell a kidney or two for. After a particularly upsetting conversation with a midwife who didn't have one either and made me feel like absolute crap for wanting an unassisted homebirth, I found a website that rents fetal dopplers for $25 a month and that includes two way shipping. I ordered it on November 9th and it was shipped November 10th. I was so relieved... that i started having serious prodromal labor, I swear I thought I would have my baby that night. True to form after it arrived on the 12th my prodromal labor all but stopped
The cervical pains increased and so did the pelvic pressure but nothing else was really going on. Up to this point we had been thinking that I was due around the middle of December. By now though, I was really doubting that I would make it past the end of November.
The 12th is on a Thursday. On Saturday I woke up having a crampy backache and crampiness in my abdomen. I had lots of BHs and a few very mild contractions, along with the nice sharp cervical stabbing pains. I stayed busy the entire day cleaning, raking the yard playing with my 18 mo old outside. Nothing had changed by dinner time so I decided to relax. I watched a movie with my kids and things really slowed down. By the time I went to bed the pains were barely there. I woke up on Sunday and at first was fine, but as the morning went on my back was hurting more and more, so again I decided to be as active as possible as long as possible. I noticed that he was so low now that I could not bend over with out literally spreading my legs and even then it was terribly uncomfortable. I knew it would be soon now. I ended up accidentally falling asleep for about two hours, when I woke up my pains were still there but not as intense. That night I checked my cervix and was a about a 5 and 60% effaced with a soft and low cervix. Wow! I thought. I was now farther progressed than I had been a few hours into real labor with my previous three kids. My husband is still thinking that I am not gonna have a baby anytime soon...
Well Monday comes and goes and I am not really having that much prodromal labor, nothing like the weekend. Tuesday I start to have doubts that I am in the any day now range. I just keep telling myself to relax and it will happen when it is supposed to. Wednesday I go on with our normal HS schedule and and just irritable and stressed and sooo done being pregnant, nothing is going on labor-wise. My hubby got home early that day and I had some errands to run, so I had him watch the kids and by the time I was at the end of our road I was having nice mild contractions, I just needed to relax and have some me time. I got back home and fixed a quick dinner and then decided I would take a hot bath to help with back pain. I was in the bath tub for about ten minutes and got back out because I found part of the amniotic membranes floating in the water, sorry if tmi. Anyways at that point I am sure that I am leaking fluid, but now worry that I will end up at the hospital like last time. I tell my husband who goes “ uh, really? Sooo what does that mean?”. I tell him that the baby will be here soon hopefully, he still isn’t convinced that I am in early labor, ugh. On Thursday my husband didn't go into work at 7 like usual, I think because he was waiting for material to show up at the job site. I had been cleaning, as in the house was spotless, and trying to help my 8 year old with her math homeschool. I was getting very frustrated with her and myself ,to the point of being in tears, my husband pulled me to the side and told me to calm down that the baby didn’t need the stress. I was already very aggravated because I felt that my husband was spending too much time on his computer game and not helping out with house chores and such, so this was not helpful. So needless to say i was NOT relaxed, but oh my god my back was hurting and my abdomen was cramping pretty decently. My husband left for work at about 10 am and my back just kept getting worse. I had looked at my house enough, my 18 month old was being a pain( I do love her very much but wow she is a very tiring child), and my five year old was on a crack high and was very hyper. I decided to go for a walk down our dirt road to check the mail. Made it there and back …very slowly, I had to waddle, his head was so low and my back hurt so bad. We got back at around lunchtime, it was a 10-15 minute walk. By now my back hurts so bad I can hardly concentrate on anything else, but the kids are hungry so... I walk around the kitchen trying to concentrate long enough to figure out what to fix them for lunch. I had one nice powerful and painful contraction and Ethan did this ninja move that also hurt and I had a gush. Oh boy I sprinted to the bathroom to check, yep, he broke my first bag of water all the way. I call my husband and tell him no rush, that my first bag of water is broken but to continue work and I will call him if I need him. He told his boss he wouldn’t be there on Friday. It’s about time he got the point. I tell the kids we are gonna take it easy today and not do HS. The cheers resounded off the walls.
Unfortunately now the backache persists but I have no contractions, ugh, sometimes I wish I could trade my body in for one that works like it is supposed to. Well my hubby gets home and we go about like normal. I take a hot bath after kids go to bed and do the garlic clove treatment for gbs, just in case. Go to bed at about 10 I guess. I really didn’t think labor would progress, I even packed my husbands lunch for work the next day.
3:00 am I realize, damn, I’m wet. Ugh. My daughter has at some point climbed into bed with us I figure she has peed on me and/ or I have leaked some more. I spend about 30 minutes convincing myself to get my lazy but up and change. Then the baby moves, I have a slight contraction and whoosh. I realize no, I did not LEAK a LITTLE bit. He broke my second bag of water. Then the next thought to hit me is “ oh no I don’t want to get this on the carpet, that I just cleaned a few weeks back. ” So I literally hop up out of bed and skip to the bathroom. Still got part of the carpet wet though, darn. At this point my husband wakes up (and I use this term lightly where he is concerned) and goes “huuh? whatcha doing?” I tell him my other bag of water broke and I am gonna get a shower, to which his relpy is “ umm ? Good, snore, snore, snore” I am out of the shower by quarter after four. I had checked myself and was actually close to being a four again, go figure that one?? I go and lie on the couch because he and my daughter are snoring so badly I can’t hear myself breath. My contractions really started at bout 4:30am and were about ten minutes apart and lasting about 45 seconds. I slept until about 6:30am.
I wake up because I can no longer lie down during contractions. My kids get up I tell them today that we need to do HS to make up for yesterday and that we will go about our day as normal. That didn’t happen with in an hour contractions pick up from every 10 minutes to every 5 minutes still lasting about 45 seconds but now getting stronger. I start needing to breathe through them a little at the peak.
I still am worrying that labor will not progress enough and will end up at the hospital. I had told my husband and kids that I felt like he wouldn’t make an appearance until night time.
By 8:00 I am having to stop and sway or lean during contractions and breathe through them. I just say over and over “ down and open, down and open” and picture my baby moving down with the contractions and my cervix opening up. Pretty much all labor is in my back. I have my husband do counter pressure to help during the contractions. At around 9 / 9:30 I call my two doulas and tell them what is going on and one tells me to do the cat and the cow and the moon yoga pose to help with the back pain and to try to move the baby into a better position. So I get a chux pad and a blanket and get on the floor of our den and do that until about eleven. During this time my kids are playing and doing the normal kid things. My oldest daughter Angel, comes over during the contractions and does the counter pressure on my back while I sway and breathe and chant. I am talking on the phone with a friend until eleven when I get to the point that I need to focus really hard during the contractions. I decide that I want to get in our Jacuzzi tub.
Oh my god, that hot water felt soooooo good. And it helped with the back pain. I had an easy contraction when I first got in and then the next one took my breath away. I tried to read in between contractions AND time them and eventually just gave up on reading. I did more of the yoga poses and then eventually ended up on my knees leaning over the edge of the tub, pushing through the contractions gently . My contractions start getting more intense and closer together, like about three minutes apart. Still not too much for me to handle. I get my husband started on getting things ready for the actual birthing and after he’s out. He has the kids cleaning up a little bit. They come in and check on me every so often. At about 12 I feel my garlic clove coming out. I reach up there to go ahead and take it out and wowwy I can feel the sac of water and his head just inside and my cervix is completely effaced. I figured I was about a 7 but had been nauseated for about 15 to 20 minutes now so looking back I was about an eight and already in transition. I told my husband that I thought he would be here around 3 or 4 pm instead of nighttime. I called my doulas, who couldn’t get there until around 1pm to let know the progress. I gave them the same window of time I had my husband, 3 or 4 pm I thought.
The contractions started getting very intense, I started wondering if I would be able to handle having contractions this intense for the next 3-4 hours. At this point I am doing hard blowing and more pushing through contractions and moaning. My husband is rushing around trying to get everything ready and coming in to check on me when he hears a contraction.
The contractions continue to grow in intensity, but are still about two minutes apart. I start feeling the need to push a lot harder during them. My husband is walking into the bedroom to put something on our dresser when a contraction hits. I feel the need to REALLY push, I stretch out real wuick and then pull everything in and PUUUSH and at the same time I made this like primal noise like HUUUUUAAAAHHHH, REALLY LOUDLY. He comes running in and asks what is going on, I tell him the baby is coming NOW! Another contraction comes and I push again, ugh I can feel so much pressure everywhere down there. It hurts and feels so good at the same time. I am squatting in the tub and my husband realizes this and tells me to lay back that there isn’t room for me to push him out like that. I ignore him and continue to listen to my body and feel the progress it is making even between contractions. I have another contraction and push with everything I have. The baby’s head is crowning now, my husband says “there’s the head! There’s the head! Come on push, he’s almost out” I tell him I have to wait for the contraction, or I feel like I will tear. Our kids weren’t in the bathroom for that part so I call them into the bathroom, they come in see his head and ask what that is. I push again and his head pops out and there is oh so much relief! He is facing the right and at an angle. My husband checks for the cord around his neck and tells me that Ethan is sleeping. Everything is fine. When the next contraction hits I push like there is no tomorrow and his shoulders slip out, grudgingly. Again there is so much relief I could almost cry. My husband catches him as I continue to push the rest of him out without the contraction, and places him on my stomach. His cord is shorter than the rest of our kids’ were but not so short as to be a problem, it was also a lot thicker than theirs too so I guess he didn’t need as much length?? I as my daughter to check the time and she says 12:38, it had been about a minute since I pushed him out so we called it at 12:37 pm. I check to make sure everything is ok with him and rub him a little bit, he opens his eyes for a minute and then goes back to sleep. One of the doulas call me to let me know she is on her way and my husbands tells her “ umm, she just had him actually just had him, sorry” and proceeds to fill her in. For the next thirty minutes he makes this whimpering noise, like he is having a bad dream or something. After about fifteen minutes I pushed the placenta out. Oh my god that is one of the ugliest things, ick! I had some clots/membranes? that were attached to it and my uterus that didn’t want to come out, so after the cord stopped pulsing I had my husband cut it and take Ethan, so I could work on that problem, our other doula calls and I tell her about this problem and she is telling different things to try. The first doula gets there at about 1pm (with a delicious lasagna dinner by the way) and helps weigh him ( 6lbs, 15 oz and 19.5” long) and measure his head which was 14 freaking inches around, sheesh. Then we try different things to help with the clots/membranes, eventually I decide that I will just try to nurse Ethan and see if that does it, I had tried earlier when he was still attached but he was sleepy and not at all interested. I stood up with a bowl underneath me holding the placenta and everything came out. I got in bed and nursed him, and found myself wishing for the labor contractions again instead of the excruciating after birth pains, dear god those things seriously hurt worse than the labor contractions! He nursed for about 25-30 minutes and then was just very alert and looking around. My other doula arrived a little while later and they both hung out for a while and looked at the baby. That was my wonderful homebirth, it was everything I had hoped for and more. Thank you for reading my really long birth story.
Ethan Alexander Bell, born November 20, 2009 aat 12:37 pm
weighing 6lbs 15oz and measuring 19.5" with a 14" head
Ethan Alexander Bell's Wonderful Homebirth Story. (Really long)
Just to give you a bit of background, I have three other kids. ALL three born in the hospital, with pitocin, IVs out the wazoo and way too much interference on the doctors part. With my last two hospital births I literally had to threaten bodily harm to a few nurses and doctors if my wishes were not observed. I was threatened with bottles and unnecessary meds, with DSS and told that a stupid piece of paper from the American Pediatric Society gives the doc more rights to my baby than me. I was treated like dirt for attempting a homebirth with my last child. needless to say I decided that this time I would do whatever i had to in order to have a homebirth. My child deserved and needed it. I ordered my homebirth kit and did my research and read stories and watched videos and prepared my self in every way possible. I would have a homebirth come hell or high water.
I did not go to a doctor the entire time I was pregnant this time, for various reasons.
October 27th I had to have a wisdom tooth extracted, oh so much fun. For the next week after that I had prodromal labor. It made me realize that I did NOT have everything i needed. I ordered my homebirth kit on November 2nd. i had been kind of stressing over if we had the money to get it yet and where to get it from. Within a few hours of ordering the kit my prodromal labor got worse. I was having contractions that wrapped around from my back to my stomach and downwards. Whoa! I had to keep telling my body to wait atleast until my birth kit got here. Well my birth kit arrived on the fifth and THEN my prodromal labor stopped. Next I bought a blood pressure monitor on craig’s list and got the baby mattress. I was still having BHs and lower back pain with the cervical twinges that are so much fun. I still needed a fetal doppler, this was a very stressing thing to me. I felt the need to have it because with my last child I almost had to have a section due my baby's heartrate dropping badly and not recovering after each contraction. I looked and looked but couldn't find one to rent or buy that I wouldn't have to sell a kidney or two for. After a particularly upsetting conversation with a midwife who didn't have one either and made me feel like absolute crap for wanting an unassisted homebirth, I found a website that rents fetal dopplers for $25 a month and that includes two way shipping. I ordered it on November 9th and it was shipped November 10th. I was so relieved... that i started having serious prodromal labor, I swear I thought I would have my baby that night. True to form after it arrived on the 12th my prodromal labor all but stopped
The cervical pains increased and so did the pelvic pressure but nothing else was really going on. Up to this point we had been thinking that I was due around the middle of December. By now though, I was really doubting that I would make it past the end of November.The 12th is on a Thursday. On Saturday I woke up having a crampy backache and crampiness in my abdomen. I had lots of BHs and a few very mild contractions, along with the nice sharp cervical stabbing pains. I stayed busy the entire day cleaning, raking the yard playing with my 18 mo old outside. Nothing had changed by dinner time so I decided to relax. I watched a movie with my kids and things really slowed down. By the time I went to bed the pains were barely there. I woke up on Sunday and at first was fine, but as the morning went on my back was hurting more and more, so again I decided to be as active as possible as long as possible. I noticed that he was so low now that I could not bend over with out literally spreading my legs and even then it was terribly uncomfortable. I knew it would be soon now. I ended up accidentally falling asleep for about two hours, when I woke up my pains were still there but not as intense. That night I checked my cervix and was a about a 5 and 60% effaced with a soft and low cervix. Wow! I thought. I was now farther progressed than I had been a few hours into real labor with my previous three kids. My husband is still thinking that I am not gonna have a baby anytime soon...
Well Monday comes and goes and I am not really having that much prodromal labor, nothing like the weekend. Tuesday I start to have doubts that I am in the any day now range. I just keep telling myself to relax and it will happen when it is supposed to. Wednesday I go on with our normal HS schedule and and just irritable and stressed and sooo done being pregnant, nothing is going on labor-wise. My hubby got home early that day and I had some errands to run, so I had him watch the kids and by the time I was at the end of our road I was having nice mild contractions, I just needed to relax and have some me time. I got back home and fixed a quick dinner and then decided I would take a hot bath to help with back pain. I was in the bath tub for about ten minutes and got back out because I found part of the amniotic membranes floating in the water, sorry if tmi. Anyways at that point I am sure that I am leaking fluid, but now worry that I will end up at the hospital like last time. I tell my husband who goes “ uh, really? Sooo what does that mean?”. I tell him that the baby will be here soon hopefully, he still isn’t convinced that I am in early labor, ugh. On Thursday my husband didn't go into work at 7 like usual, I think because he was waiting for material to show up at the job site. I had been cleaning, as in the house was spotless, and trying to help my 8 year old with her math homeschool. I was getting very frustrated with her and myself ,to the point of being in tears, my husband pulled me to the side and told me to calm down that the baby didn’t need the stress. I was already very aggravated because I felt that my husband was spending too much time on his computer game and not helping out with house chores and such, so this was not helpful. So needless to say i was NOT relaxed, but oh my god my back was hurting and my abdomen was cramping pretty decently. My husband left for work at about 10 am and my back just kept getting worse. I had looked at my house enough, my 18 month old was being a pain( I do love her very much but wow she is a very tiring child), and my five year old was on a crack high and was very hyper. I decided to go for a walk down our dirt road to check the mail. Made it there and back …very slowly, I had to waddle, his head was so low and my back hurt so bad. We got back at around lunchtime, it was a 10-15 minute walk. By now my back hurts so bad I can hardly concentrate on anything else, but the kids are hungry so... I walk around the kitchen trying to concentrate long enough to figure out what to fix them for lunch. I had one nice powerful and painful contraction and Ethan did this ninja move that also hurt and I had a gush. Oh boy I sprinted to the bathroom to check, yep, he broke my first bag of water all the way. I call my husband and tell him no rush, that my first bag of water is broken but to continue work and I will call him if I need him. He told his boss he wouldn’t be there on Friday. It’s about time he got the point. I tell the kids we are gonna take it easy today and not do HS. The cheers resounded off the walls.
Unfortunately now the backache persists but I have no contractions, ugh, sometimes I wish I could trade my body in for one that works like it is supposed to. Well my hubby gets home and we go about like normal. I take a hot bath after kids go to bed and do the garlic clove treatment for gbs, just in case. Go to bed at about 10 I guess. I really didn’t think labor would progress, I even packed my husbands lunch for work the next day.
3:00 am I realize, damn, I’m wet. Ugh. My daughter has at some point climbed into bed with us I figure she has peed on me and/ or I have leaked some more. I spend about 30 minutes convincing myself to get my lazy but up and change. Then the baby moves, I have a slight contraction and whoosh. I realize no, I did not LEAK a LITTLE bit. He broke my second bag of water. Then the next thought to hit me is “ oh no I don’t want to get this on the carpet, that I just cleaned a few weeks back. ” So I literally hop up out of bed and skip to the bathroom. Still got part of the carpet wet though, darn. At this point my husband wakes up (and I use this term lightly where he is concerned) and goes “huuh? whatcha doing?” I tell him my other bag of water broke and I am gonna get a shower, to which his relpy is “ umm ? Good, snore, snore, snore” I am out of the shower by quarter after four. I had checked myself and was actually close to being a four again, go figure that one?? I go and lie on the couch because he and my daughter are snoring so badly I can’t hear myself breath. My contractions really started at bout 4:30am and were about ten minutes apart and lasting about 45 seconds. I slept until about 6:30am.
I wake up because I can no longer lie down during contractions. My kids get up I tell them today that we need to do HS to make up for yesterday and that we will go about our day as normal. That didn’t happen with in an hour contractions pick up from every 10 minutes to every 5 minutes still lasting about 45 seconds but now getting stronger. I start needing to breathe through them a little at the peak.
I still am worrying that labor will not progress enough and will end up at the hospital. I had told my husband and kids that I felt like he wouldn’t make an appearance until night time.
By 8:00 I am having to stop and sway or lean during contractions and breathe through them. I just say over and over “ down and open, down and open” and picture my baby moving down with the contractions and my cervix opening up. Pretty much all labor is in my back. I have my husband do counter pressure to help during the contractions. At around 9 / 9:30 I call my two doulas and tell them what is going on and one tells me to do the cat and the cow and the moon yoga pose to help with the back pain and to try to move the baby into a better position. So I get a chux pad and a blanket and get on the floor of our den and do that until about eleven. During this time my kids are playing and doing the normal kid things. My oldest daughter Angel, comes over during the contractions and does the counter pressure on my back while I sway and breathe and chant. I am talking on the phone with a friend until eleven when I get to the point that I need to focus really hard during the contractions. I decide that I want to get in our Jacuzzi tub.
Oh my god, that hot water felt soooooo good. And it helped with the back pain. I had an easy contraction when I first got in and then the next one took my breath away. I tried to read in between contractions AND time them and eventually just gave up on reading. I did more of the yoga poses and then eventually ended up on my knees leaning over the edge of the tub, pushing through the contractions gently . My contractions start getting more intense and closer together, like about three minutes apart. Still not too much for me to handle. I get my husband started on getting things ready for the actual birthing and after he’s out. He has the kids cleaning up a little bit. They come in and check on me every so often. At about 12 I feel my garlic clove coming out. I reach up there to go ahead and take it out and wowwy I can feel the sac of water and his head just inside and my cervix is completely effaced. I figured I was about a 7 but had been nauseated for about 15 to 20 minutes now so looking back I was about an eight and already in transition. I told my husband that I thought he would be here around 3 or 4 pm instead of nighttime. I called my doulas, who couldn’t get there until around 1pm to let know the progress. I gave them the same window of time I had my husband, 3 or 4 pm I thought.
The contractions started getting very intense, I started wondering if I would be able to handle having contractions this intense for the next 3-4 hours. At this point I am doing hard blowing and more pushing through contractions and moaning. My husband is rushing around trying to get everything ready and coming in to check on me when he hears a contraction.
The contractions continue to grow in intensity, but are still about two minutes apart. I start feeling the need to push a lot harder during them. My husband is walking into the bedroom to put something on our dresser when a contraction hits. I feel the need to REALLY push, I stretch out real wuick and then pull everything in and PUUUSH and at the same time I made this like primal noise like HUUUUUAAAAHHHH, REALLY LOUDLY. He comes running in and asks what is going on, I tell him the baby is coming NOW! Another contraction comes and I push again, ugh I can feel so much pressure everywhere down there. It hurts and feels so good at the same time. I am squatting in the tub and my husband realizes this and tells me to lay back that there isn’t room for me to push him out like that. I ignore him and continue to listen to my body and feel the progress it is making even between contractions. I have another contraction and push with everything I have. The baby’s head is crowning now, my husband says “there’s the head! There’s the head! Come on push, he’s almost out” I tell him I have to wait for the contraction, or I feel like I will tear. Our kids weren’t in the bathroom for that part so I call them into the bathroom, they come in see his head and ask what that is. I push again and his head pops out and there is oh so much relief! He is facing the right and at an angle. My husband checks for the cord around his neck and tells me that Ethan is sleeping. Everything is fine. When the next contraction hits I push like there is no tomorrow and his shoulders slip out, grudgingly. Again there is so much relief I could almost cry. My husband catches him as I continue to push the rest of him out without the contraction, and places him on my stomach. His cord is shorter than the rest of our kids’ were but not so short as to be a problem, it was also a lot thicker than theirs too so I guess he didn’t need as much length?? I as my daughter to check the time and she says 12:38, it had been about a minute since I pushed him out so we called it at 12:37 pm. I check to make sure everything is ok with him and rub him a little bit, he opens his eyes for a minute and then goes back to sleep. One of the doulas call me to let me know she is on her way and my husbands tells her “ umm, she just had him actually just had him, sorry” and proceeds to fill her in. For the next thirty minutes he makes this whimpering noise, like he is having a bad dream or something. After about fifteen minutes I pushed the placenta out. Oh my god that is one of the ugliest things, ick! I had some clots/membranes? that were attached to it and my uterus that didn’t want to come out, so after the cord stopped pulsing I had my husband cut it and take Ethan, so I could work on that problem, our other doula calls and I tell her about this problem and she is telling different things to try. The first doula gets there at about 1pm (with a delicious lasagna dinner by the way) and helps weigh him ( 6lbs, 15 oz and 19.5” long) and measure his head which was 14 freaking inches around, sheesh. Then we try different things to help with the clots/membranes, eventually I decide that I will just try to nurse Ethan and see if that does it, I had tried earlier when he was still attached but he was sleepy and not at all interested. I stood up with a bowl underneath me holding the placenta and everything came out. I got in bed and nursed him, and found myself wishing for the labor contractions again instead of the excruciating after birth pains, dear god those things seriously hurt worse than the labor contractions! He nursed for about 25-30 minutes and then was just very alert and looking around. My other doula arrived a little while later and they both hung out for a while and looked at the baby. That was my wonderful homebirth, it was everything I had hoped for and more. Thank you for reading my really long birth story.
Ethan Alexander Bell, born November 20, 2009 aat 12:37 pm
weighing 6lbs 15oz and measuring 19.5" with a 14" head
