In some ways, I feel like my labor started in July. That was the point at which I began having frequent contractions, sometimes every few minutes for a couple of hours. Much of my third trimester was spent trying to take it easy so that I wouldn’t go into labor too soon.
The baby dropped substantially when I was about 36 weeks pregnant, and at that point the contractions also got stronger. I began to have more noteworthy cervical pressure and thought I probably had a week or two to go. Passing 38 weeks was really discouraging for me, partly because Abby had been born at exactly 38 weeks and I had expected to go at least by then, and partly because the pressure on my hips and legs by that point was extreme. I also was really suffering with restless legs and involuntary trembling in my legs.
Within a few days of feeling like that, my mom decided to go ahead and come up. She had been planning to jump on a plane when I went into labor, as she did with Abigail’s birth, but I was exhausted and having trouble keeping up with Abby, so she came up to help. I was a little frantic and discouraged not to have the labor beginning, but immediately started to get more rest and knew that that would be important for the birth. The morning after she got there I started having a lot of false labor, which was to last for another five days.
On Tuesday, October 18th, my mom and I went out to breakfast. I had woken up with contractions but was unwilling to think much of them after all the preceding days. My mom commented that something seemed different about these, though, and I had a fair number of them while we ate. From there, we went to the yarn shop to poke around, and by then the contractions had gotten intense. I was having them every few minutes and needing to lean on the table and breathe a bit to get through them. I called Clay and told him I thought something might be happening, but that I wasn’t willing to fully believe it yet. We finished up at the yarn store and walked down the hall to a baby boutique, where suddenly the contractions were strong enough that I actually needed to squat or kneel through some of them. At that point, we called Clay and told him to come home and also called my sister and told her to head to the airport so that she could come take care of Abby.
The contractions at that point were two or three minutes apart. My mom called my midwife on the way home from the shopping center—about a two minute drive, but she didn’t want to wait. Paige jumped in the car and also called our second midwife to come over. We got home, arranged care for Abby for the next few hours until my sister could get there, and started filling the birth pool. We also called my chiropractor, who came over to the house to give me an adjustment. The midwives arrived shortly afterward.
And then everything just fizzled. I couldn’t believe it. I went from intense contractions every few minutes to a moderate contraction every twenty minutes. My sister arrived and whisked Abby out for the day, and I sat at home in total despair. By evening I was simply sobbing on the couch. I was so discouraged and uncomfortable.
Clay went up to the city to pick up Abby and my sister, Tracy, and my mom took me out for Indian food, hoping that eating something spicy would get things moving again. I started having stronger contractions in the restaurant. We came back home and I tucked Abby in, hoping on one hand that I’d labor while she slept and on the other hand thinking I’d need to actually feel the baby crown before I’d believe I was in labor. Clay came up to get some rest and I went downstairs to watch a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up DVD with my mom and Tracy. Toward the end of the DVD, I was having trouble concentrating, so I went upstairs to try to rest. The contractions by then were picking up in both frequency and intensity. Our house, meanwhile, had been totally prepared for the birth earlier in the day, so there was a HUGE, filled, heated birthing pool taking up half my livingroom.
I rested as much as I could but clearly wasn’t going to be able to sleep. By midnight I was willing to consider the possibility that I was in fact in labor, although I was managing fine at that point. Then at 12:30, my water broke. I leaped out of bed and kept calling (quietly, because Abby was asleep across the hall) for Clay, who was asleep with a pillow over his head. He finally heard me and jumped up. We got things cleaned up and I went to tell my mom and Tracy that my water had broken.
Within an hour, contractions were significant and I could no longer talk or move while they were happening. They were four or five minutes apart and lasting 60 – 90 seconds. We called Paige again and asked her to come over. I labored upstairs for a bit longer, but found myself needing to be able to vocalize a bit with the contractions, so we moved downstairs and I got in the tub.
The tub we rented had turned out to be ENORMOUS. Clay had taken one look at it when it first arrived and had promptly figured out a way to reinforce the floor boards underneath where it was going to go. The warm water was extremely helpful and relaxing. My sister went in search of a rubber ducky that she had seen earlier, and it bobbed around the tub for the remainder of my labor.
Paige arrived shortly after that and supported me for another hour or so before calling Nicole, our second midwife. By then I was having contractions every minute or two, and they were substantial. We also realized by then that the baby was lying on a nerve to my legs, and so every time I had a contraction, I had really intense stabbing pain down my legs. This was also probably the cause of the leg pain and restless legs in the two weeks before his birth. It took a lot of teamwork to help me manage the labor at that point. I was working hard at staying relaxed, but also moaning loudly through the contractions. Typically during a contraction I needed one person to stay by my head and talk to me a little while one other person worked on applying counter pressure to each of my legs.
Despite the noteworthy pain and the chaos of the contractions, it was an incredibly peaceful atmosphere. I had brought out my candle for Leah and the little figurine I’d bought of an angel holding a baby, and I had the candle lit next to the angel. The lights were very dim and mostly I could just see the candle burning. I also had my string of beads that some of my nearest and dearest friends had sent to remind me of their good thoughts and energies during the birth. I help the beads during contractions, which reminded me to keep my hands gentle and loose and reminded me of the incredible power of women.
I hit transition at about four in the morning. My cervix was never checked because the baby’s heart tones were perfect and it was very clear that the labor was progressing rapidly. I got out of the tub occasionally, but the contractions were much, MUCH more intense and painful when I wasn’t in the water, so mostly I labored there. I had bought a homeopathic birth kit and we used that a bit to help with nausea and back pain and panic. Unlike my labor with Abby, none of those three things ever got the better of me. The atmosphere remained incredibly peaceful even when I got to the point of really crying out with some of the contractions. I was stuck in transition for about three hours, which was very difficult. Because of the nerve pain, the contractions were really tough at that point, and they were coming one on top of the other.
At some point, Paige made the comment that babies are often born when the sun comes up. I hadn’t perceived the labor as taking all that long, so I was surprised to open my eyes and see that the sky was beginning to lighten just a little bit. I asked Clay to get in the tub with me to help put counter pressure on my back. A little later, Tracy got in as well and was helping with my legs. Clay eventually got overheated and got out of the tub, but Tracy remained in the water with me for the rest of the labor.
Shortly after seven in the morning, it became obvious that I needed to push. I struggled at that point with feeling some panic. At Abby’s birth, the pain had stopped when it was time to push. Pushing was hard with her, but satisfying. With this birth, the pain was still wildly intense during each contraction. My legs were on fire, but the nerves that would have allowed me to really feel to push were compressed, so I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I was gasping about the pain, and Paige got right down next to me and told me that if I pushed past it, the baby would move off those nerves.
I spent about ten minutes giving short and rather ineffectual pushes, but they were all I could manage. Then his head finally moved down to where I could actually feel it, and suddenly I was able to really push. Paige had just implored me to really work hard to push, because she was afraid I would tire out with the repeated short pushing. But she said later that her comments then had been totally unnecessary, because once he moved down, things moved very, very quickly. I don’t think anyone quite expected that he would be born so immediately, but after pushing only about five times, I said firmly, “He’s right here!”
Everyone swung into action. Clay was behind me outside the tub, helping to hold me up under the shoulders. Tracy was just sitting next to me and reassuring me. Paige came over and stood beside Clay, reaching into the water from beside me.
A moment before that, Abby woke up. My mom darted up the stairs to get her, but she didn’t want to come down. She asked for a few minutes to be alone in her room, so my mom was able to hurry back downstairs for the birth.
Just a moment after announcing that he was crowning, Ethan’s head was out. The cord was wrapped very tightly around his neck and couldn’t be lifted over his head, which I didn’t realize at the time. Paige wasn’t worried because she had been checking his heart tones consistently, and they’d been perfect the whole time. I gave one more gentle push and he was born into the water. My instinct was to lift him right up, but Paige said that she needed to untangle his cord first. She somersaulted him under the water to unwrap the cord, and then I lifted him up out of the water onto my chest. He immediately opened his eyes and looked straight up at me. I heard everyone start to cry, but Ethan just gazed around very peacefully, and I was grinning. The sky was beautifully pink, just as Paige had suggested. Leah’s candle was still burning.
We stayed in the water together for a little bit, and my mom went back upstairs to bring Abby down. She seemed very sobered and taken aback by the whole scene, but she reached in the water to touch her baby brother. After Ethan’s cord stopped pulsing, we got out of the tub. Clay cut the cord and then Abby held Ethan while I delivered the placenta. I then stretched out on the couch and the midwives attended to me while the rest of my family attended to the baby. Ethan by then was sucking his thumb, as he would continue to do for most of the first 45 minutes. At that point, we nursed for the first time. I put him on my left side so that his ear would be next to my heartbeat.
Birthing at home was an incredibly powerful and amazing way to have a baby. I don’t think I could adequately describe the peace of the whole environment or the degree to which being lovingly attended on my own familiar turf made my labor easier and faster. I felt empowered and in control the whole time. I was truly responsible for this birth. Even having been in a birth center the first time (and thus free from the usual chaos and interruption that happens in hospitals), I had underestimated the potential for homebirth to be as gentle and powerful as it was. I’d never have a baby any other way now. I will always be proud of how I brought my son to the light at his birth, and will be confident that he came into the world in the safest, calmest manner possible. I’m so blessed to have had this experience.
The baby dropped substantially when I was about 36 weeks pregnant, and at that point the contractions also got stronger. I began to have more noteworthy cervical pressure and thought I probably had a week or two to go. Passing 38 weeks was really discouraging for me, partly because Abby had been born at exactly 38 weeks and I had expected to go at least by then, and partly because the pressure on my hips and legs by that point was extreme. I also was really suffering with restless legs and involuntary trembling in my legs.
Within a few days of feeling like that, my mom decided to go ahead and come up. She had been planning to jump on a plane when I went into labor, as she did with Abigail’s birth, but I was exhausted and having trouble keeping up with Abby, so she came up to help. I was a little frantic and discouraged not to have the labor beginning, but immediately started to get more rest and knew that that would be important for the birth. The morning after she got there I started having a lot of false labor, which was to last for another five days.
On Tuesday, October 18th, my mom and I went out to breakfast. I had woken up with contractions but was unwilling to think much of them after all the preceding days. My mom commented that something seemed different about these, though, and I had a fair number of them while we ate. From there, we went to the yarn shop to poke around, and by then the contractions had gotten intense. I was having them every few minutes and needing to lean on the table and breathe a bit to get through them. I called Clay and told him I thought something might be happening, but that I wasn’t willing to fully believe it yet. We finished up at the yarn store and walked down the hall to a baby boutique, where suddenly the contractions were strong enough that I actually needed to squat or kneel through some of them. At that point, we called Clay and told him to come home and also called my sister and told her to head to the airport so that she could come take care of Abby.
The contractions at that point were two or three minutes apart. My mom called my midwife on the way home from the shopping center—about a two minute drive, but she didn’t want to wait. Paige jumped in the car and also called our second midwife to come over. We got home, arranged care for Abby for the next few hours until my sister could get there, and started filling the birth pool. We also called my chiropractor, who came over to the house to give me an adjustment. The midwives arrived shortly afterward.
And then everything just fizzled. I couldn’t believe it. I went from intense contractions every few minutes to a moderate contraction every twenty minutes. My sister arrived and whisked Abby out for the day, and I sat at home in total despair. By evening I was simply sobbing on the couch. I was so discouraged and uncomfortable.
Clay went up to the city to pick up Abby and my sister, Tracy, and my mom took me out for Indian food, hoping that eating something spicy would get things moving again. I started having stronger contractions in the restaurant. We came back home and I tucked Abby in, hoping on one hand that I’d labor while she slept and on the other hand thinking I’d need to actually feel the baby crown before I’d believe I was in labor. Clay came up to get some rest and I went downstairs to watch a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up DVD with my mom and Tracy. Toward the end of the DVD, I was having trouble concentrating, so I went upstairs to try to rest. The contractions by then were picking up in both frequency and intensity. Our house, meanwhile, had been totally prepared for the birth earlier in the day, so there was a HUGE, filled, heated birthing pool taking up half my livingroom.
I rested as much as I could but clearly wasn’t going to be able to sleep. By midnight I was willing to consider the possibility that I was in fact in labor, although I was managing fine at that point. Then at 12:30, my water broke. I leaped out of bed and kept calling (quietly, because Abby was asleep across the hall) for Clay, who was asleep with a pillow over his head. He finally heard me and jumped up. We got things cleaned up and I went to tell my mom and Tracy that my water had broken.
Within an hour, contractions were significant and I could no longer talk or move while they were happening. They were four or five minutes apart and lasting 60 – 90 seconds. We called Paige again and asked her to come over. I labored upstairs for a bit longer, but found myself needing to be able to vocalize a bit with the contractions, so we moved downstairs and I got in the tub.
The tub we rented had turned out to be ENORMOUS. Clay had taken one look at it when it first arrived and had promptly figured out a way to reinforce the floor boards underneath where it was going to go. The warm water was extremely helpful and relaxing. My sister went in search of a rubber ducky that she had seen earlier, and it bobbed around the tub for the remainder of my labor.
Paige arrived shortly after that and supported me for another hour or so before calling Nicole, our second midwife. By then I was having contractions every minute or two, and they were substantial. We also realized by then that the baby was lying on a nerve to my legs, and so every time I had a contraction, I had really intense stabbing pain down my legs. This was also probably the cause of the leg pain and restless legs in the two weeks before his birth. It took a lot of teamwork to help me manage the labor at that point. I was working hard at staying relaxed, but also moaning loudly through the contractions. Typically during a contraction I needed one person to stay by my head and talk to me a little while one other person worked on applying counter pressure to each of my legs.
Despite the noteworthy pain and the chaos of the contractions, it was an incredibly peaceful atmosphere. I had brought out my candle for Leah and the little figurine I’d bought of an angel holding a baby, and I had the candle lit next to the angel. The lights were very dim and mostly I could just see the candle burning. I also had my string of beads that some of my nearest and dearest friends had sent to remind me of their good thoughts and energies during the birth. I help the beads during contractions, which reminded me to keep my hands gentle and loose and reminded me of the incredible power of women.
I hit transition at about four in the morning. My cervix was never checked because the baby’s heart tones were perfect and it was very clear that the labor was progressing rapidly. I got out of the tub occasionally, but the contractions were much, MUCH more intense and painful when I wasn’t in the water, so mostly I labored there. I had bought a homeopathic birth kit and we used that a bit to help with nausea and back pain and panic. Unlike my labor with Abby, none of those three things ever got the better of me. The atmosphere remained incredibly peaceful even when I got to the point of really crying out with some of the contractions. I was stuck in transition for about three hours, which was very difficult. Because of the nerve pain, the contractions were really tough at that point, and they were coming one on top of the other.
At some point, Paige made the comment that babies are often born when the sun comes up. I hadn’t perceived the labor as taking all that long, so I was surprised to open my eyes and see that the sky was beginning to lighten just a little bit. I asked Clay to get in the tub with me to help put counter pressure on my back. A little later, Tracy got in as well and was helping with my legs. Clay eventually got overheated and got out of the tub, but Tracy remained in the water with me for the rest of the labor.
Shortly after seven in the morning, it became obvious that I needed to push. I struggled at that point with feeling some panic. At Abby’s birth, the pain had stopped when it was time to push. Pushing was hard with her, but satisfying. With this birth, the pain was still wildly intense during each contraction. My legs were on fire, but the nerves that would have allowed me to really feel to push were compressed, so I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I was gasping about the pain, and Paige got right down next to me and told me that if I pushed past it, the baby would move off those nerves.
I spent about ten minutes giving short and rather ineffectual pushes, but they were all I could manage. Then his head finally moved down to where I could actually feel it, and suddenly I was able to really push. Paige had just implored me to really work hard to push, because she was afraid I would tire out with the repeated short pushing. But she said later that her comments then had been totally unnecessary, because once he moved down, things moved very, very quickly. I don’t think anyone quite expected that he would be born so immediately, but after pushing only about five times, I said firmly, “He’s right here!”
Everyone swung into action. Clay was behind me outside the tub, helping to hold me up under the shoulders. Tracy was just sitting next to me and reassuring me. Paige came over and stood beside Clay, reaching into the water from beside me.
A moment before that, Abby woke up. My mom darted up the stairs to get her, but she didn’t want to come down. She asked for a few minutes to be alone in her room, so my mom was able to hurry back downstairs for the birth.
Just a moment after announcing that he was crowning, Ethan’s head was out. The cord was wrapped very tightly around his neck and couldn’t be lifted over his head, which I didn’t realize at the time. Paige wasn’t worried because she had been checking his heart tones consistently, and they’d been perfect the whole time. I gave one more gentle push and he was born into the water. My instinct was to lift him right up, but Paige said that she needed to untangle his cord first. She somersaulted him under the water to unwrap the cord, and then I lifted him up out of the water onto my chest. He immediately opened his eyes and looked straight up at me. I heard everyone start to cry, but Ethan just gazed around very peacefully, and I was grinning. The sky was beautifully pink, just as Paige had suggested. Leah’s candle was still burning.
We stayed in the water together for a little bit, and my mom went back upstairs to bring Abby down. She seemed very sobered and taken aback by the whole scene, but she reached in the water to touch her baby brother. After Ethan’s cord stopped pulsing, we got out of the tub. Clay cut the cord and then Abby held Ethan while I delivered the placenta. I then stretched out on the couch and the midwives attended to me while the rest of my family attended to the baby. Ethan by then was sucking his thumb, as he would continue to do for most of the first 45 minutes. At that point, we nursed for the first time. I put him on my left side so that his ear would be next to my heartbeat.
Birthing at home was an incredibly powerful and amazing way to have a baby. I don’t think I could adequately describe the peace of the whole environment or the degree to which being lovingly attended on my own familiar turf made my labor easier and faster. I felt empowered and in control the whole time. I was truly responsible for this birth. Even having been in a birth center the first time (and thus free from the usual chaos and interruption that happens in hospitals), I had underestimated the potential for homebirth to be as gentle and powerful as it was. I’d never have a baby any other way now. I will always be proud of how I brought my son to the light at his birth, and will be confident that he came into the world in the safest, calmest manner possible. I’m so blessed to have had this experience.
