Katya Alejandra-Gianni’s birth story…
On Wednesday, October 20th, my midwife Mary Helen came for our regular prenatal visit. I was 39 weeks pregnant and everything was fine. Except my blood pressure. It was borderline high. The week before it had been borderline (140/82) and this week was even higher. She took my blood pressure three times and each time was different. 155/92 was the highest. 130/78 the lowest. So I was ordered to be on basically bedrest. I could take care of Gabriella (3 years old) but I wasn’t to leave the house. This was exactly what had happened with Gabriella and I was determined to have a home waterbirth this time.
That evening, I decided to take measures into my own hands! I did nipple stimulation of one breast for 5 minutes for 3 hours. Later, Will and I made love. About an hour after that, the Braxton-Hicks contractions I’d been having frequently changed and produced more pressure. I didn’t sleep much that night; maybe two hours. At one point I timed the BH and they were about 5 minutes apart. They weren’t even really uncomfortable, I just couldn’t sleep through them.
On October 21st, when Will woke up to leave for work at 6 am, I asked him to take the car. (He usually rides his bike when it’s nice.) I told him what had been happening and said I’d call if things changed or intensified.
Blythe (my best friend) called wondering whether I wanted her to pick up Gabriella to take to babysitting co-op and I said yes. About 8:30 am, I called Mary Helen to let her know what was up. She said to call her back around noon or sooner if things changed. Blythe picked up Gabriella. I talked to my mom who lives 2.5 hours away and warned her today might be the day. My in-laws were scheduled to come over to help out with house and yard work. They showed up around 10:30. I didn’t get up when they came in because I was having a contraction. My mother-in-law asked if I was joking when I said I was in labor. I laughed and said, “No, I am serious. But it’s the kind of labor that could go on for a week. It’s very early labor.”
So that morning I putzed around the house. Mostly sat on the birth ball and wrote out thank-you cards for shower gifts. At about 11, I started timing the contractions and they were over a minute long less than 5 minutes apart. I called Mom and told her to get on the road. I called Mary Helen around 11:30 and told her I was having to really pay attention during contractions and how far apart they were. She said I was too cheerful for this to be anything but early labor. She said she wouldn’t come yet unless I wanted her to. I told her no and we agreed I’d call back around 1 pm. She said I couldn’t be too serious yet because I hadn’t even called Will home. Will has lunch at noon so I called him then and told him to come home. Turns out the schedule was different that day and he was proctoring a test. His students all cheered in the background when he answered his cell phone. That was sweet!
Will got home about 12:30 pm. Gabriella and Blythe came home around 1pm. We were all in the playroom and Gabriella was playing playdough with Blythe while I would get on my hands and knees and vocalize through the contractions. Will had arrived just in time because I was to the point where I needed some help to get through the squeezes. Unlike my last labor, this time all the pressure and discomfort was in my back. I hardly felt anything in front. When I would feel where the baby was between contractions, I could only feel small body parts so I was pretty sure the baby was posterior. Oh, joy! The back labor I had heard so much about. At about 12:45 pm I had asked Will to page Mary Helen because I was sure this was it. Especially since he had timed some contractions 2 minutes apart and 90 seconds long. I was dying to get in the birth tub but didn’t know if I was far enough along to do so. We paged and paged Mary Helen and left a message on her home answering machine but no response. It turns out we were calling the wrong number! Luckily I wasn’t panicking and really was feeling it would be all right to just do this alone. (Not quite alone since Blythe was there and she is a L & D nurse). My mom arrived around 2 and took over playing with Gabriella. Blythe started taking pictures. Mary Helen got her home message around 2:15 and called right back. She said she’d get on the road and said I shouldn’t get in the birth tub until 3 pm so that she would be closer to us if things sped up. By this time I was DESPERATE to get in that water. I kept asking how much longer until I could get in.
Finally 12 hours later, it seemed, it was 3 o’clock. I got in the tub and it felt pretty good. The contractions slowed down some though and that made me think I was much less dilated than I had imagined. My goal had been to avoid getting any vaginal exams. But now I started thinking I needed to know if I was only 2 or 3 centimeters dilated so that I could psych myself up for 10 more hours of this.
Mary Helen arrived about 3:30 and I asked her to check me. I had to pee also so I got out of the tub and went to the toilet. On the toilet I had 3 back to back tough contractions. And then my water broke. It was clear, so no meconium to worry about. And it was so convenient to have it break on the toilet! By the time I finally hobbled into the bed to be checked, it was about 4:15 pm. I told Mary Helen that if I was more than 7 I just wanted to be told I was 7 plus. I didn’t want to know if I was complete because I would feel the pressure to push before my body told me to. She checked me and said: “Hello, baby!” as soon as she checked me so I figured I was pretty far along. Then she said I was 7 plus. That was so encouraging to me. I got back in the tub and kept going through the contractions. Will was becoming an expert at counter pressure on my back. At one point he helped me through a contraction and while I was in the contraction I thought it was Blythe because it felt so practiced and perfect!
Mary Helen and her assistant Anne started getting all the birth kit stuff out, in a quick manner. In hindsight, this should have given me a clue that I was 10 centimeters dilated, but I was thinking about other things. I didn’t want Gabriella to miss the birth so they called her up with my mom soon after I said: “Here comes the baby.” Gabriella took one look at me in the tub and started crying. She was inconsolable. I invited her into the pool with me, tried to kiss her and hold on to her but then a contraction came and I couldn’t deal with her. She went downstairs crying with my mom. Mom brought her up one more time before the baby came out but Gabriella wasn’t able to handle it.
From about noon on, I had been making a vocalization with my contractions. It was like an “ooooh” sound as low in pitch as I could make it. Sometimes it would get higher and I’d try consciously to bring it down. But it wasn’t a scary sound, I don’t think. I had been making the same noise when I was down in the playroom with Gabriella and she hadn’t minded a bit. Everyone says I seemed very calm. I didn’t believe I was in such hard labor myself just because I felt I was handling it pretty well.
Then, my body gave a push. I had nothing to do with it, it was totally involuntary. At this point, instead of being on my hands and knees leaning my face up against the side of the birth tub, I had switched to leaning my back against the side of the pool and Will was sitting on a child’s chair outside of the pool holding me up. My legs and body were floating out in front of me. In the pictures, you can see that his hands were right over my breasts holding me up but it was very comfortable. Mary Helen directed me to sink into the push and Anne said to curl over it, so I did those things. But I still was wanting to just let my body do all the work, not add any force to it myself. After a few pushes, Mary Helen said the baby’s heart rate wasn’t recovering after contractions so I was going to have to add some force to it. So I did. Oh my Goddess! That was painful. I put my hand down to my vagina and could feel a head up inside me a ways. In another push or two the baby’s head was crowning. That was excruciating. Then Mary Helen said I needed to push because she was worried about the heart rate so I pushed and screamed bloody murder. I am not kidding, it was a murder movie scream. I think I screamed twice like that and in response I could hear my darling Gabriella downstairs becoming even more hysterical. Finally, Mary Helen said: “Grab your baby!” so I reached down and pulled her out of me. It was 5:01 pm.
It was amazing. She was purple but obviously breathing. Calm as could be. Pretty soon she pinked up. Mary Helen and Anne covered her with warm blankets and put a hat on. I had her in the water except for her face. At this point, we didn’t know the sex. Gabriella was going to be the one to tell us the baby’s gender. I called for Mom to bring her up because I was dying to know. I could feel something that could have been testicles and a penis, turns out it was swollen labia and the cord. Gabriella was unable to calm down enough to tell us anything so I looked and it was my girl! I said: “It’s Katya!” I had thought it was a girl and so had Gabriella! She seemed chubbier than Gabriella, seemed to have fatter cheeks and body. She was beautiful.
I got out of the tub to deliver the placenta into the gorgeous placenta bowl that my friends had given me at my Mother Blessing. Katya latched right on to my breast and didn’t come off for about an hour and a half. Mary Helen said I had a first degree tear (right over scar tissue) that wouldn’t need stitches unless I wanted them. Remembering how painful the injections for numbing were for stitching the last time, I opted to not get any stitches. I made my way back to the bedroom, and Will and I sat on the bed with our newest daughter. My mom brought Gabriella up to bring me some more pillows and Gabriella’s face just lit up when she saw me in bed with the baby. She came right over and kissed the baby and was just absolutely happy. I was relieved that she seemed to have no after-effects of the trauma of seeing me in labor in the tub.
Mary Helen and Anne went about cleaning up and getting some dinner, I guess. They left us alone in our little bedroom to make phone calls and bond with Katya. We called them up so that Katya could be weighed and measured about an hour and a half after she was born. She weighed 6 lbs 12 oz, 8 oz more than her sister. She measured 19.5 inches long. An inch and a quarter shorter than her sister, so I guess she is chubbier than Gabriella!
We examined the placenta which was really neat and then Mary Helen started packing up to go home. My brother Tedd had gone to pick up Thai food for us so we went downstairs to eat. It was yummy. Tom Kah Kai with chicken. My mother-in-law finished baking the birthday cake that I had started that morning. We all ate chocolate birthday cake and vanilla ice cream after Gabriella (who was in her most natural naked state) and Tedd serenaded us with Happy Birthday and blew out the candles.
It was the most perfect birth I could have imagined. And aside from the tearing and Gabriella not being able to participate, it was exactly the birth I had asked for. It was very private, I wasn’t told to do anything, I was in my own home, I was in the birth tub, I was able to deliver my own baby, labor lasted about 6 hours. It was wonderful! It is so empowering and I feel so blessed.
rachael
life partner to will
mama to gabriella 9/01
and katya 10/04
On Wednesday, October 20th, my midwife Mary Helen came for our regular prenatal visit. I was 39 weeks pregnant and everything was fine. Except my blood pressure. It was borderline high. The week before it had been borderline (140/82) and this week was even higher. She took my blood pressure three times and each time was different. 155/92 was the highest. 130/78 the lowest. So I was ordered to be on basically bedrest. I could take care of Gabriella (3 years old) but I wasn’t to leave the house. This was exactly what had happened with Gabriella and I was determined to have a home waterbirth this time.
That evening, I decided to take measures into my own hands! I did nipple stimulation of one breast for 5 minutes for 3 hours. Later, Will and I made love. About an hour after that, the Braxton-Hicks contractions I’d been having frequently changed and produced more pressure. I didn’t sleep much that night; maybe two hours. At one point I timed the BH and they were about 5 minutes apart. They weren’t even really uncomfortable, I just couldn’t sleep through them.
On October 21st, when Will woke up to leave for work at 6 am, I asked him to take the car. (He usually rides his bike when it’s nice.) I told him what had been happening and said I’d call if things changed or intensified.
Blythe (my best friend) called wondering whether I wanted her to pick up Gabriella to take to babysitting co-op and I said yes. About 8:30 am, I called Mary Helen to let her know what was up. She said to call her back around noon or sooner if things changed. Blythe picked up Gabriella. I talked to my mom who lives 2.5 hours away and warned her today might be the day. My in-laws were scheduled to come over to help out with house and yard work. They showed up around 10:30. I didn’t get up when they came in because I was having a contraction. My mother-in-law asked if I was joking when I said I was in labor. I laughed and said, “No, I am serious. But it’s the kind of labor that could go on for a week. It’s very early labor.”
So that morning I putzed around the house. Mostly sat on the birth ball and wrote out thank-you cards for shower gifts. At about 11, I started timing the contractions and they were over a minute long less than 5 minutes apart. I called Mom and told her to get on the road. I called Mary Helen around 11:30 and told her I was having to really pay attention during contractions and how far apart they were. She said I was too cheerful for this to be anything but early labor. She said she wouldn’t come yet unless I wanted her to. I told her no and we agreed I’d call back around 1 pm. She said I couldn’t be too serious yet because I hadn’t even called Will home. Will has lunch at noon so I called him then and told him to come home. Turns out the schedule was different that day and he was proctoring a test. His students all cheered in the background when he answered his cell phone. That was sweet!
Will got home about 12:30 pm. Gabriella and Blythe came home around 1pm. We were all in the playroom and Gabriella was playing playdough with Blythe while I would get on my hands and knees and vocalize through the contractions. Will had arrived just in time because I was to the point where I needed some help to get through the squeezes. Unlike my last labor, this time all the pressure and discomfort was in my back. I hardly felt anything in front. When I would feel where the baby was between contractions, I could only feel small body parts so I was pretty sure the baby was posterior. Oh, joy! The back labor I had heard so much about. At about 12:45 pm I had asked Will to page Mary Helen because I was sure this was it. Especially since he had timed some contractions 2 minutes apart and 90 seconds long. I was dying to get in the birth tub but didn’t know if I was far enough along to do so. We paged and paged Mary Helen and left a message on her home answering machine but no response. It turns out we were calling the wrong number! Luckily I wasn’t panicking and really was feeling it would be all right to just do this alone. (Not quite alone since Blythe was there and she is a L & D nurse). My mom arrived around 2 and took over playing with Gabriella. Blythe started taking pictures. Mary Helen got her home message around 2:15 and called right back. She said she’d get on the road and said I shouldn’t get in the birth tub until 3 pm so that she would be closer to us if things sped up. By this time I was DESPERATE to get in that water. I kept asking how much longer until I could get in.
Finally 12 hours later, it seemed, it was 3 o’clock. I got in the tub and it felt pretty good. The contractions slowed down some though and that made me think I was much less dilated than I had imagined. My goal had been to avoid getting any vaginal exams. But now I started thinking I needed to know if I was only 2 or 3 centimeters dilated so that I could psych myself up for 10 more hours of this.
Mary Helen arrived about 3:30 and I asked her to check me. I had to pee also so I got out of the tub and went to the toilet. On the toilet I had 3 back to back tough contractions. And then my water broke. It was clear, so no meconium to worry about. And it was so convenient to have it break on the toilet! By the time I finally hobbled into the bed to be checked, it was about 4:15 pm. I told Mary Helen that if I was more than 7 I just wanted to be told I was 7 plus. I didn’t want to know if I was complete because I would feel the pressure to push before my body told me to. She checked me and said: “Hello, baby!” as soon as she checked me so I figured I was pretty far along. Then she said I was 7 plus. That was so encouraging to me. I got back in the tub and kept going through the contractions. Will was becoming an expert at counter pressure on my back. At one point he helped me through a contraction and while I was in the contraction I thought it was Blythe because it felt so practiced and perfect!
Mary Helen and her assistant Anne started getting all the birth kit stuff out, in a quick manner. In hindsight, this should have given me a clue that I was 10 centimeters dilated, but I was thinking about other things. I didn’t want Gabriella to miss the birth so they called her up with my mom soon after I said: “Here comes the baby.” Gabriella took one look at me in the tub and started crying. She was inconsolable. I invited her into the pool with me, tried to kiss her and hold on to her but then a contraction came and I couldn’t deal with her. She went downstairs crying with my mom. Mom brought her up one more time before the baby came out but Gabriella wasn’t able to handle it.
From about noon on, I had been making a vocalization with my contractions. It was like an “ooooh” sound as low in pitch as I could make it. Sometimes it would get higher and I’d try consciously to bring it down. But it wasn’t a scary sound, I don’t think. I had been making the same noise when I was down in the playroom with Gabriella and she hadn’t minded a bit. Everyone says I seemed very calm. I didn’t believe I was in such hard labor myself just because I felt I was handling it pretty well.
Then, my body gave a push. I had nothing to do with it, it was totally involuntary. At this point, instead of being on my hands and knees leaning my face up against the side of the birth tub, I had switched to leaning my back against the side of the pool and Will was sitting on a child’s chair outside of the pool holding me up. My legs and body were floating out in front of me. In the pictures, you can see that his hands were right over my breasts holding me up but it was very comfortable. Mary Helen directed me to sink into the push and Anne said to curl over it, so I did those things. But I still was wanting to just let my body do all the work, not add any force to it myself. After a few pushes, Mary Helen said the baby’s heart rate wasn’t recovering after contractions so I was going to have to add some force to it. So I did. Oh my Goddess! That was painful. I put my hand down to my vagina and could feel a head up inside me a ways. In another push or two the baby’s head was crowning. That was excruciating. Then Mary Helen said I needed to push because she was worried about the heart rate so I pushed and screamed bloody murder. I am not kidding, it was a murder movie scream. I think I screamed twice like that and in response I could hear my darling Gabriella downstairs becoming even more hysterical. Finally, Mary Helen said: “Grab your baby!” so I reached down and pulled her out of me. It was 5:01 pm.
It was amazing. She was purple but obviously breathing. Calm as could be. Pretty soon she pinked up. Mary Helen and Anne covered her with warm blankets and put a hat on. I had her in the water except for her face. At this point, we didn’t know the sex. Gabriella was going to be the one to tell us the baby’s gender. I called for Mom to bring her up because I was dying to know. I could feel something that could have been testicles and a penis, turns out it was swollen labia and the cord. Gabriella was unable to calm down enough to tell us anything so I looked and it was my girl! I said: “It’s Katya!” I had thought it was a girl and so had Gabriella! She seemed chubbier than Gabriella, seemed to have fatter cheeks and body. She was beautiful.
I got out of the tub to deliver the placenta into the gorgeous placenta bowl that my friends had given me at my Mother Blessing. Katya latched right on to my breast and didn’t come off for about an hour and a half. Mary Helen said I had a first degree tear (right over scar tissue) that wouldn’t need stitches unless I wanted them. Remembering how painful the injections for numbing were for stitching the last time, I opted to not get any stitches. I made my way back to the bedroom, and Will and I sat on the bed with our newest daughter. My mom brought Gabriella up to bring me some more pillows and Gabriella’s face just lit up when she saw me in bed with the baby. She came right over and kissed the baby and was just absolutely happy. I was relieved that she seemed to have no after-effects of the trauma of seeing me in labor in the tub.
Mary Helen and Anne went about cleaning up and getting some dinner, I guess. They left us alone in our little bedroom to make phone calls and bond with Katya. We called them up so that Katya could be weighed and measured about an hour and a half after she was born. She weighed 6 lbs 12 oz, 8 oz more than her sister. She measured 19.5 inches long. An inch and a quarter shorter than her sister, so I guess she is chubbier than Gabriella!
We examined the placenta which was really neat and then Mary Helen started packing up to go home. My brother Tedd had gone to pick up Thai food for us so we went downstairs to eat. It was yummy. Tom Kah Kai with chicken. My mother-in-law finished baking the birthday cake that I had started that morning. We all ate chocolate birthday cake and vanilla ice cream after Gabriella (who was in her most natural naked state) and Tedd serenaded us with Happy Birthday and blew out the candles.
It was the most perfect birth I could have imagined. And aside from the tearing and Gabriella not being able to participate, it was exactly the birth I had asked for. It was very private, I wasn’t told to do anything, I was in my own home, I was in the birth tub, I was able to deliver my own baby, labor lasted about 6 hours. It was wonderful! It is so empowering and I feel so blessed.
rachael
life partner to will
mama to gabriella 9/01
and katya 10/04
