Lucas’s Birth Story
Tuesday, June 20, 2004
This is the story how I remember it a couple of days later. I know it may not be perfect and when I watch the video later I am sure I will realize that some things are out of order…but this is how it was for me…
I slept in the spare room with my sons, Cassidy (almost 5 years old) and Malcolm (2 years and 3 months old) that the night before. I was having mild contractions as I woke up to go to the washroom numerous times, but nothing strong or regular. In fact, I had been having these irregular contractions on and off for a couple of weeks and was getting used to ignoring them. I woke that morning, my due date, still having these mild irregular contractions. I told my husband, Jason, but we decided he should go to work and drop off Cassidy at 9am at his day camp nearby at Whonnock Lake. I said I might go grocery shopping with Malcolm, but I would be in touch with him if anything changed and if this was really the beginning of labour I would need him to leave work early to pick up Cassidy after camp at 11:30pm.
After Jason and Cassidy left, I called my Mom in Toronto to try and distract myself and see if the contractions would go away. We chatted for a while, and I noted to her that I was still having the contractions but they were mild and I was easily able to talk through them. My Mom thought I was in labour and should definitely not go grocery shopping, so we kept talking on the phone. By about 9:30am, we were still talking, but the contractions were becoming more regular about 5 minutes apart for about 30 seconds. Then around 9:45am, I had a really big contraction that caught my breath and lasted much longer than the others. My Mom insisted I get off the phone to call Jason at work to tell him to come home. I agreed.
I spoke to Jason just as he was arriving at the office and explained that the contractions were getting more regular and this definitely seemed ‘real’. I said he should do what he had to at the office then pick up Cassidy after camp and come home. I told him I would call if things changed. Malcolm was hanging out with me, playing with his toys and being an angel. I called my friend Diana, again trying to distract myself, after so many days of on and off contractions it just didn’t seem real to me yet, especially since my births with the two boys had been so intense and obvious right from the start with no prelabour.
I spoke with my friend for maybe 20 minutes and still the contractions were there and getting a little closer together. I said goodbye to her and decided to call Jason again, now it was around 10:30am. He was on another phone call, so I spoke with our office assistant, Niki, and said that I was definitely in labour and would she tell him that I wouldn’t even mind if he came home sooner (I don’t think I was very insistent at this point). Apparently, she passed him a note while he was on the phone and knowing I have fast births, he decided to come home immediately. After calling the office, I paged my midwife. Jason called and let me know he was on his way home and would pick-up Cass early. I felt relieved and realized I was holding back, waiting for them to get there. He wanted to stay on the phone with me but I said I wanted to wait for our midwife to call and then I would call him back. She called a few minutes later and I explained that I was having regular contractions about 4 minutes apart but I was still able to talk through them. I said it would definitely be today and wanted to let her know. She said she would cancel her clinic and we agreed I would call back when Jay got home. I called Jason back and he was speeding home. As we talked, the contractions were getting stronger. By 11:00am as he was picking up Cassidy at camp, the contractions were strong enough that I was having to vocalize to get through them and found myself stopping to grab onto to something as I puttered around the house with Malcolm getting things ready. I moved the birth pool into the bedroom, put some birthing sheets on the bed and made up some cups of juice for the kids in the fridge. Just before Jason got home I was sitting with Malcolm in the living room and I realized this was it, and I felt all emotional and started crying, Malcolm turned to me and said in the most soothing voice “Don’t cry mommy, Daddy get Duck-dee [Malcom’s name for Cassidy] and he come right back!” I remember laughing through my tears.
Jason arrived home around 11:15am. There were a few minutes of chaos, because the kids were excited and we weren’t sure what to do first. The sensations were getting pretty strong now, so I said to Jay it was most important to me that we fill the tub upstairs. We all went upstairs and began filling the tub and Jason was setting up the video camera on the dresser (I was SO impressed later to discover that thank goodness he had stopped on his way to work to pick up some extra video tapes for recording because we had only had one and that wouldn’t have been enough
). The kids were jumping all around and being a little crazy, it was hard for me and Jason right then. I tried to talk Cassidy into watching a movie so we could just get things ready but he wanted to be there so bad and he wanted to take pictures (like he had at his brother Malcolm’s and cousin Marcus’s births). We tried to let him stay but it was just too hard and after a little while we explained we just needed him to go for a little while and then we promised he could come back when we were ready, he reluctantly agreed and went downstairs. Meanwhile, the tub was full enough that I was able to get in…that was much better for me! My body felt supported through the intense sensations and the heat relaxed my aching back. We were blessed with a cool overcast morning since it had been clear sunny and hot for many days.
It gets a little blurry for me now… I know I asked Jason to call our midwife again at some point, which he did. He told me he wasn’t able to get a hold of her because she was at another birth and she would call us. I think she called us back at some point? And said the other mom was in transition and she would come when she could. Jason said she asked how far apart the contractions were and he said around 2minutes and she kind of said “oh”. He felt at this point they both knew she would not be there in time. He could have asked for another backup and she could have offered but in an unspoken conversation they did not choose to. Jason seemed totally calm to me and I to him as I continued to labour.
I was feeling hot and got out of the tub to cool down on the bed, but it was hard to deal with the sensations out of the water. I was vocalizing a lot now and starting to feel overwhelmed by the pain at points, but I was still having short breaks. I was aware of the kids coming in and out of the room. I got back in the tub and asked Jason to add some cold water. He did and I put the hose right over my back as I knelt on all fours. The shock of the cold water felt good through these long and intense contractions. I remember telling Jason I felt like I just couldn’t do it anymore, it hurt too much. I remember him saying I was awesome and so strong and I could do anything. I knew I was in transition even though I couldn’t speak those words to him. I began to feel a little urge to push towards the end of the contractions and I told him. He calmly said it was okay, we could do it and if I wanted to push I should… I instinctively knew he was right. I don’t think either of us ever felt scared or even concerned we were alone at that point…it just seemed right. (Neither of us even considered calling 911 as we had been instructed many months earlier during a midwife appointment should this situation arise). The next thing I knew I naturally moved into a squat in the tub and started pushing. I remember telling Cassidy to turn the cold water off (the tub was now a perfect temperature for baby to be born into ).My waters broke with that first push and I looked down and noted aloud what had happened and that the water was clear: good. I told Jason to come over right away to catch his baby! I reached down to feel the head, then I pushed again and felt his head come out! There was a small pause and Cass and Malcolm were beside the tub watching and Jason was telling them to look: the babies head was in the pool. With a few more pushes his body slipped into Jason’s hands and he gently placed our baby on my belly. We started rubbing him vigorously, he was thickly coated with vernix but his colour and response seemed good. Jason quickly noticed we had another boy J. Our baby boy started to cry a little and I could feel him awaken to world with our touch. I felt so strong and present (whereas I had felt drained and withdrawn in the first minutes after my other ‘assisted’ births). I instinctively sucked out his nose gently with my mouth, but his passages were clear. I could feel Jason’s energy being especially effective so I told him to keep rubbing until he let out a good cry and we felt confident he was breathing well on his own. Jason and I looked at each other…we had done it! I felt so connected to him and our family.
I got out of the tub and moved to the bed nearby with baby still attached to me via the cord. Still feeling very calm, we talked about what was important next, concentrating on keeping our new son warm and birthing the placenta, while watching my blood loss. I put baby to my breast and cuddled him skin to skin. I could feel my uterus still contracting and after about 40 minutes and a little pushing effort the placenta was born. Jason placed it in a pot beside me and we quickly checked that my blood loss still seemed minimal and that I appeared to have no tears. All was well .
My midwife arrived not long after this at about 1:30pm. She walked in beaming at us, saying she knew we had wanted to deliver our own baby . She checked us out quickly, and it was clear we were all doing well. She said it was the easiest birth of her career… We opened the blankets to examine our son and cut the cord, only to discover to our amazement that he had a true knot in his umbilical cord (a rare and potentially dangerous occurrence)! She said they wouldn’t have done anything differently even if they had been there but he was lucky that his cord was long and the knot never got pulled to tight in utero or during the birth. Cassidy and Malcolm held the cord as Jason cut it. We weighed our beautiful boy: 8lb 9.5oz, our biggest newborn yet! We watched the parts of the video with our midwife so we could fill in the forms and know the times of each stage and his birth. Figuring I had started active labour around 9:30am I pushed from 12:38am and he was born at 12:41am. She assigned him apgars of 8 and 9 and said she was impressed with how well we had communicated and how we had done everything right. She left not too long after, with big hugs and congratulations for all of us!
I rested blissfully in bed, with our new son, who we soon decided to name, Lucas Harold. Lucas was the name his brothers liked best and Harold is a family name, after Jason’s mother’s father and my father’s father.
It was such an amazing beautiful perfect birth! While we had strongly considered and researched unassisted childbirth, we had decided it would be too hard with our two older children present and no extra help nearby…funny how things turn out: exactly as they are meant to be . Welcome my precious son!
Written with love by Jen :tandem on July 22, 2004.
Tuesday, June 20, 2004
This is the story how I remember it a couple of days later. I know it may not be perfect and when I watch the video later I am sure I will realize that some things are out of order…but this is how it was for me…
I slept in the spare room with my sons, Cassidy (almost 5 years old) and Malcolm (2 years and 3 months old) that the night before. I was having mild contractions as I woke up to go to the washroom numerous times, but nothing strong or regular. In fact, I had been having these irregular contractions on and off for a couple of weeks and was getting used to ignoring them. I woke that morning, my due date, still having these mild irregular contractions. I told my husband, Jason, but we decided he should go to work and drop off Cassidy at 9am at his day camp nearby at Whonnock Lake. I said I might go grocery shopping with Malcolm, but I would be in touch with him if anything changed and if this was really the beginning of labour I would need him to leave work early to pick up Cassidy after camp at 11:30pm.
After Jason and Cassidy left, I called my Mom in Toronto to try and distract myself and see if the contractions would go away. We chatted for a while, and I noted to her that I was still having the contractions but they were mild and I was easily able to talk through them. My Mom thought I was in labour and should definitely not go grocery shopping, so we kept talking on the phone. By about 9:30am, we were still talking, but the contractions were becoming more regular about 5 minutes apart for about 30 seconds. Then around 9:45am, I had a really big contraction that caught my breath and lasted much longer than the others. My Mom insisted I get off the phone to call Jason at work to tell him to come home. I agreed.
I spoke to Jason just as he was arriving at the office and explained that the contractions were getting more regular and this definitely seemed ‘real’. I said he should do what he had to at the office then pick up Cassidy after camp and come home. I told him I would call if things changed. Malcolm was hanging out with me, playing with his toys and being an angel. I called my friend Diana, again trying to distract myself, after so many days of on and off contractions it just didn’t seem real to me yet, especially since my births with the two boys had been so intense and obvious right from the start with no prelabour.
I spoke with my friend for maybe 20 minutes and still the contractions were there and getting a little closer together. I said goodbye to her and decided to call Jason again, now it was around 10:30am. He was on another phone call, so I spoke with our office assistant, Niki, and said that I was definitely in labour and would she tell him that I wouldn’t even mind if he came home sooner (I don’t think I was very insistent at this point). Apparently, she passed him a note while he was on the phone and knowing I have fast births, he decided to come home immediately. After calling the office, I paged my midwife. Jason called and let me know he was on his way home and would pick-up Cass early. I felt relieved and realized I was holding back, waiting for them to get there. He wanted to stay on the phone with me but I said I wanted to wait for our midwife to call and then I would call him back. She called a few minutes later and I explained that I was having regular contractions about 4 minutes apart but I was still able to talk through them. I said it would definitely be today and wanted to let her know. She said she would cancel her clinic and we agreed I would call back when Jay got home. I called Jason back and he was speeding home. As we talked, the contractions were getting stronger. By 11:00am as he was picking up Cassidy at camp, the contractions were strong enough that I was having to vocalize to get through them and found myself stopping to grab onto to something as I puttered around the house with Malcolm getting things ready. I moved the birth pool into the bedroom, put some birthing sheets on the bed and made up some cups of juice for the kids in the fridge. Just before Jason got home I was sitting with Malcolm in the living room and I realized this was it, and I felt all emotional and started crying, Malcolm turned to me and said in the most soothing voice “Don’t cry mommy, Daddy get Duck-dee [Malcom’s name for Cassidy] and he come right back!” I remember laughing through my tears.
Jason arrived home around 11:15am. There were a few minutes of chaos, because the kids were excited and we weren’t sure what to do first. The sensations were getting pretty strong now, so I said to Jay it was most important to me that we fill the tub upstairs. We all went upstairs and began filling the tub and Jason was setting up the video camera on the dresser (I was SO impressed later to discover that thank goodness he had stopped on his way to work to pick up some extra video tapes for recording because we had only had one and that wouldn’t have been enough
). The kids were jumping all around and being a little crazy, it was hard for me and Jason right then. I tried to talk Cassidy into watching a movie so we could just get things ready but he wanted to be there so bad and he wanted to take pictures (like he had at his brother Malcolm’s and cousin Marcus’s births). We tried to let him stay but it was just too hard and after a little while we explained we just needed him to go for a little while and then we promised he could come back when we were ready, he reluctantly agreed and went downstairs. Meanwhile, the tub was full enough that I was able to get in…that was much better for me! My body felt supported through the intense sensations and the heat relaxed my aching back. We were blessed with a cool overcast morning since it had been clear sunny and hot for many days.It gets a little blurry for me now… I know I asked Jason to call our midwife again at some point, which he did. He told me he wasn’t able to get a hold of her because she was at another birth and she would call us. I think she called us back at some point? And said the other mom was in transition and she would come when she could. Jason said she asked how far apart the contractions were and he said around 2minutes and she kind of said “oh”. He felt at this point they both knew she would not be there in time. He could have asked for another backup and she could have offered but in an unspoken conversation they did not choose to. Jason seemed totally calm to me and I to him as I continued to labour.
I was feeling hot and got out of the tub to cool down on the bed, but it was hard to deal with the sensations out of the water. I was vocalizing a lot now and starting to feel overwhelmed by the pain at points, but I was still having short breaks. I was aware of the kids coming in and out of the room. I got back in the tub and asked Jason to add some cold water. He did and I put the hose right over my back as I knelt on all fours. The shock of the cold water felt good through these long and intense contractions. I remember telling Jason I felt like I just couldn’t do it anymore, it hurt too much. I remember him saying I was awesome and so strong and I could do anything. I knew I was in transition even though I couldn’t speak those words to him. I began to feel a little urge to push towards the end of the contractions and I told him. He calmly said it was okay, we could do it and if I wanted to push I should… I instinctively knew he was right. I don’t think either of us ever felt scared or even concerned we were alone at that point…it just seemed right. (Neither of us even considered calling 911 as we had been instructed many months earlier during a midwife appointment should this situation arise). The next thing I knew I naturally moved into a squat in the tub and started pushing. I remember telling Cassidy to turn the cold water off (the tub was now a perfect temperature for baby to be born into
).My waters broke with that first push and I looked down and noted aloud what had happened and that the water was clear: good. I told Jason to come over right away to catch his baby! I reached down to feel the head, then I pushed again and felt his head come out! There was a small pause and Cass and Malcolm were beside the tub watching and Jason was telling them to look: the babies head was in the pool. With a few more pushes his body slipped into Jason’s hands and he gently placed our baby on my belly. We started rubbing him vigorously, he was thickly coated with vernix but his colour and response seemed good. Jason quickly noticed we had another boy J. Our baby boy started to cry a little and I could feel him awaken to world with our touch. I felt so strong and present (whereas I had felt drained and withdrawn in the first minutes after my other ‘assisted’ births). I instinctively sucked out his nose gently with my mouth, but his passages were clear. I could feel Jason’s energy being especially effective so I told him to keep rubbing until he let out a good cry and we felt confident he was breathing well on his own. Jason and I looked at each other…we had done it! I felt so connected to him and our family. I got out of the tub and moved to the bed nearby with baby still attached to me via the cord. Still feeling very calm, we talked about what was important next, concentrating on keeping our new son warm and birthing the placenta, while watching my blood loss. I put baby to my breast and cuddled him skin to skin. I could feel my uterus still contracting and after about 40 minutes and a little pushing effort the placenta was born. Jason placed it in a pot beside me and we quickly checked that my blood loss still seemed minimal and that I appeared to have no tears. All was well
.My midwife arrived not long after this at about 1:30pm. She walked in beaming at us, saying she knew we had wanted to deliver our own baby
. She checked us out quickly, and it was clear we were all doing well. She said it was the easiest birth of her career… We opened the blankets to examine our son and cut the cord, only to discover to our amazement that he had a true knot in his umbilical cord (a rare and potentially dangerous occurrence)! She said they wouldn’t have done anything differently even if they had been there but he was lucky that his cord was long and the knot never got pulled to tight in utero or during the birth. Cassidy and Malcolm held the cord as Jason cut it. We weighed our beautiful boy: 8lb 9.5oz, our biggest newborn yet! We watched the parts of the video with our midwife so we could fill in the forms and know the times of each stage and his birth. Figuring I had started active labour around 9:30am I pushed from 12:38am and he was born at 12:41am. She assigned him apgars of 8 and 9 and said she was impressed with how well we had communicated and how we had done everything right. She left not too long after, with big hugs and congratulations for all of us!I rested blissfully in bed, with our new son, who we soon decided to name, Lucas Harold. Lucas was the name his brothers liked best and Harold is a family name, after Jason’s mother’s father and my father’s father.
It was such an amazing beautiful perfect birth! While we had strongly considered and researched unassisted childbirth, we had decided it would be too hard with our two older children present and no extra help nearby…funny how things turn out: exactly as they are meant to be
. Welcome my precious son! Written with love by Jen :tandem on July 22, 2004.
:
(tears of joy, 
to everyone for posting their congratulations! I hope my story inspires others to believe in themselves 
:
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