On Tuesday, April 30, our sweet baby Ella was born. So many people have asked to hear her birth story, so I will try my best to remember everything and not leave out any fun details!
At my 37 and 38 week check-ups I was dilated about 2.5 cm and 40% effaced. This time (compared to when I was pregnant with Lucy) I was less anxious about having an "early" baby. I learned my lesson last time and decided that this time I would have no expectations of being early and would patiently wait for whenever the time came. And I mostly did a good job. Overall I wasn't too uncomfortable at the end of the pregnancy. I had "miserable" periods that would come and go over the last several weeks (though I didn't actually feel miserable); for a while it was my back, another time it would be my hips, or my legs, or my belly. But overall I was okay. So I waited.
The morning of April 30 I woke up around 6 am with contractions that were definitely contractions. With each of my other births (except Rhett's) I woke up with strong contractions and the babies were born within a few hours. I was expecting this baby to follow suit, so when I felt those strong contractions in the morning I thought I should probably hurry and get a few things done. The contractions weren't very close together or lasting very long yet, so I did things like tidy up, make bread (since we were out), and start a crock pot of chili for dinner. I don't remember all that I did, just that I was trying to be as productive as possible since I figured the baby would make her arrival that day.
Well, those contractions eventually petered out until I figured there wouldn't be a baby that day after all. No big deal. I didn't feel disappointed or frustrated, just ready to get out of the house. The kids had been cooped up all day, so about 2:00 I decided to forego Lucy's nap and take the kids to the park so we could all get a change of scenery and some fresh air. My friend Misha met us there with her kids and they all ran around for a while and had a great time. While at the park I had some more contractions, but some of them were just hard tightening that didn't hurt at all. I wouldn't equate them with Braxton Hicks because they felt much harder, but I didn't feel "in labor."
After getting home an hour or two later I started thinking about making some cornbread to round out our dinner. While I was mustering the motivation to do it, a couple of ambulances arrived in front of our elderly neighbors' house. It's not an unheard-of sight at their house, so I didn't think much of it at first. The wife has had paramedics come help her in the past, but there hadn't been anything too serious that I knew of. After a little while I could tell something more was up. Another neighbor was over there, as were the missionaries from our church. One of the Elders came to our house to see if Paul was home. He told me that they had gone to the neighbors' home for a dinner appointment but no one answered. They could tell someone was home, though. Then the wife opened the door and saw them there. She said her husband was on the floor of the bathroom and wasn't responding. She had called the paramedics and come to open the door for them when she found the Elders outside. The Elder told me it seemed like our neighbor had had a stroke or something but he wasn't sure. The ambulance took the husband to the hospital. I told the missionaries to come to our house for dinner (thank goodness for a crock pot of chili ready to go!), called Paul to come home sooner, and called the neighbors' home teacher (we happen to live in a little concentration of LDS families in our neighborhood). Then I made some cornbread. :)
During all of this, and all during the time the missionaries were at our house, I didn't have any contractions. The missionaries left around 7:15 or 7:30 pm. We cleaned up and got the kids ready for bed. The kids get in bed around 8:30 usually. This night it might have been closer to 9. I just know that as we were tucking them in I had another contraction. The stop-and-close-my-eyes-and-take-deep-breaths kind. Benjamin wanted to know what was wrong, and Paul told him something I don't exactly remember about me getting ready to have a baby and how it sometimes hurts. (I don't really remember.)
At 9:20 pm I installed a contraction timer app on the iPad, not having the patience to look at a clock or write anything down. During the next 30 minutes the contrations were between 35 seconds and a minute long, and 2-5 minutes apart. And they weren't fun. (Are they ever?)
Over the course of the pregnancy, and especially as my due date approached, I did a lot of reading about childbirth, particularly the unmedicated kind. We had planned to birth this baby at home nearly from the beginning (more on that later), and I knew I would want an arsenal of tecniques at my disposal for dealing with the pain. Right up until that night I felt pretty confident. The things I had read made sense and I felt like I could birth this child like a champ! After all, I birthed Lucy naturally and it hadn't been as bad as I had always imagined natural childbirth to be. But.... when those contraction started getting longer and closer my brain kind of shut down. The only "technique" I could remember was to "relax." Not so easy! I tried to remember each time to breathe slowly, and I would tell myself, sometimes out loud, "relax, relax, relax...." But it hurt. Paul was helping to get things ready in our bedroom, but when a contraction would start he would start the timer and come running to where I was so I could hug and lean on him until it was over.
We called the midwife to come at 9:55 pm. She asked me some questions to assess my labor, then said she'd be at our house in about an hour. When she told me that, I felt like she really didn't understand where I was in my labor, even though I had told her how fast it went with Lucy. But I didn't argue. Paul had similar thoughts, but I think we both decided to trust the professional. Paul filled the bathtub for me, something I had been eager to try since I never used a warm bath in any of my other labors and I had heard/read that it helped with labor pain a lot. I don't know that it helped a lot with me, but I think it must have helped some. At the very least, the thought of being out of the tub seemed worse than laboring in the tub. Paul would sit by me and hold my hand through contrations while I complained about how hard it was and how much it hurt.
As the next hour passed (and the water cooled) I could feel myself getting tired. It was definitely getting late, but each contraction was also wearing me out and I felt more exhaused after each one. Around 10:30 I was really wishing Winni (my midwife) would come. I had been expecting her to be around during my hard labor. I figured she would be able to help me find positions that would be more comfortable (if you can be comfortable in labor), and just be another support in general. At the very least I wanted her there so she could tell me how far I had progressed. The more exhaused I got the more I worried that labor would drag on forever, even though a tiny corner of my mind knew from previous experience that it wouldn't.
The next parts are a little blurry. I was hurting and wanting it to be over. I had a brief fleeting thought about the hosptial with it's nice anesthesiologist... If I had been in the hospital I don't know that I would have had the willpower to resist an offer of pain relief, so it's good I wasn't there! I was starting to feel sick and kept telilng Paul that I felt like throwing up. I remembered reading that nausea is a sign of transition, but I was still feeling like labor would never end and that knowledge didn't encourage me much. About 11:00 I knew I wanted to get out of the tub. The water was kind of cold and I wanted to change positions, but I wasn't sure what to try. I also wanted to be out and dressed before Winni came. I turned onto my hands and knees in the tub and stayed like that through a couple mroe contrations. I could feel that something was changing. (Here, perhaps, is where the TMI starts.)
As I was on hands and knees in the tub, the nature of the contrations changed and I thought I felt some fluid push out of my body. I got out of the tub as quickly as I could and dressed in a nightgown. I climbed on my bed. The idea of lying down in a traditional birthing position seemed miserable, so I went to hands and knees again. Soon after I was in bed Paul thought he heard Winni coming in the door. Going to check, he instead found Rhett on the couch. Knowing he got out of bed because he needed the bathroom, Paul helped Rhett do what he needed to do and got him back to bed. He came back to our room as I finished a contraction. This was a few minutes after 11 pm. I wasn't paying attention to what Paul was doing because I hurt so much and my body was sort of on auto pilot. My brain finally made the connection that the change in what I was feeling was my body pushing. I couldn't stop it, and I didn't try to help it. It didn't feel good, but it was also a welcome feeling. I knew the baby would be out soon!
Just after Paul came back there was another push and my water broke (splash!). This was the first time my water broke on its own. I must have seemed panicked to Paul because he tried to be reassuring, telling me the water had broken and it was all okay. (He was seriously so calm this whole time.) Immediately after the water broke there was another strong push. I was reaching down between my legs to feel what was happening. I felt her head emerge for a second, then it was suddenly out! Paul said, "Her head's out; you're doing great." A second and another push later, the rest of her came out into Paul's waiting hands. Paul thinks that it was probably 10 seconds from the time my water broke to the time the baby was out.
I couldn't see Paul or the baby from where I was. I heard her cry, and I think I glanced back to look and told Paul to wrap her up in a towel. Paul says that he waited a moment after she was out for her to cry (she came out very clean all over, and there was nothing to suction out of her mouth or nose), then held her close to him before I told him to wrap her in a towel. It took me a minute to catch my breath and figure out how to turn over. The cord felt pretty short. Once we got that all figured out and I sat back Paul gave her to me.
After a few minutes Paul called Winni to report. She was a few minutes away. He told her the baby was born. She seemed surprised. :) I tried getting the baby to nurse before Winni arrived.
Winni pulled up and Paul met her at the door about 11:20. She got the baby and I all checked out, clamped the cord, etc. Paul cut it (the first time he's done that). She did some inital clean-up and helped Paul start some laundry. She got me all stiched and cleaned up and dressed, then we got the messy sheet off the bed (a clean one was already underneath the mattress cover). Sometime during the time Winni was here Benjamin got up to use the bathroom and Lucy cried out in her sleep a little, but none of the kids ever really woke up during the whole (probably noisy) labor or afterward.
When it was time to weigh the baby Paul and I agreed that she was probably smaller than Lucy had been. I didn't feel that big at the end of my pregnancy and the baby didn't look as fat as Lucy had. Winni guessed that she was 9 lbs. 4 oz. The scale said differently! (If you can't see it, the scale reads 10 lbs. 4.5 oz., which rounds up to 10 lb. 5 oz.)
I remember being all shaky during this time and slowly coming out of that "labor fog" I had been in. That was the hardest thing I have ever done. I say that without any exaggeration. Physically, and in some ways mentally, that was the hardest thing I have ever done. In the minutes and hours following the birth, as I thought about it all, I wasn't sure I ever wanted to do it again! It really is a miracle, and definitly a gift I think, that as time goes by we "forget" some of those hard things about birth. I definitely remember how hard it was, and how much it hurt, but it's not such that I can still physically feel it as I remember. And now as I look back on it all, including the pain, I can say that I would definitely birth at home again. Knowing what I know, having read and studied lots of information about birth in and out of hospital, and now having four different birth experiences to compare, I would definitely choose it again.
After I was all settled, Winni left us alone while she did her paperwork, then let herself out of the house. Paul and I took some pictures of our new baby then went to sleep
.
The next morning the boys woke up around the normal time and played Legos out in the living room. Paul told them we had a surprise for them and they had to wash their hands and sit on the couch. I don't know if they had any idea what it was, but Benjamin may have suspected.
I came out first and I could see Benjamin's eyes dart to my deflated belly, but I think he wasn't 100% sure. Paul came out with the baby and we introduced the boys to their new sister. Benjamin was all smiles, and Rhett was Rhett. :) He didn't know quite what to do or how to react.
Lucy got up a few minutes later and was immediately delighted with the baby. The kids found toys to share with her and took turns holding her.
We sent Benjamin off to school with the exciting news of his new baby sister, then spent the morning relaxing at home!
About the home birth...
(Please forgive anything that sounds preachy here. I have really come to understand and believe that every woman's birth choices and experience are unique to her, and what is right for someone is not necessarily right for another. I'm not trying to knock anyone else's viewpoint or experience. I have now had both in- and out-of-hospital, medicated and unmedicated births. Those experiences, and those of working with various OBs and now a midwife, have now given me a larger picture of birth than I ever expected to have.)
So many people have reacted with surprise and amazement that we had the baby at home, on purpose, and that Paul caught her (not on purpose). But to me, after all the months of planning on it and studying about it, it doesn't seem like a big deal at all. (Paul was totally prepared to do the catching. In fact, several weeks before this he asked Winni for some info on what to do just in case it did happen too fast for her to arrive. We didn't actually think it would happen, but Paul wanted to be prepared just in case. What's funny to me is that months ago, after I read a book about a midwife's experiences in which she talked about fathers catching the babies when they were born, I asked Paul if he'd be interested in doing that when ours was born. He said no! He'd rather the midwife just did it and he'd watch.)
When I talked to my older sister after Ella was born she said she was surprised to find out I did it at home (we hadn't told anybody except some local friends and my mom) because she didn't think I was "into that sort of thing." And you know, if you had talked to me about birthing at home 7 years ago, or even 5 years ago, or maybe even 2 years ago, I probably would have thought you were crazy. I had the picture, as I think many do, that home birth was something that only a certain kind of person did: the kind of person who was into being all-natural, one-with-the-earth, anti-medicine, etc. Hippy stuff. Crazy stuff! What if something went wrong! What if you couldn't get your baby to a hospital on time! So many bad things could happen and it just wasn't worth the risk, was it?
My path to home birth started just after I was pregnant with Ella. I was assessing my insurance coverage and found to my surprise that my plan, which previously had no maternity coverage, now covered prenatal care at 100%. But "delivery and associated hospital care" were not covered. We were already paying a lot for health insurance for the kids and I, with a catastrophic plan with a very high deductible. To increase my coverage would raise my rate very high, and I'd have to go through the trouble of subscribing the kids to their own plans and, having done that before, I didn't want to experience the headache again. I thought about how much it would cost over the course of the months to pay more for insurance that would cover the delivery, and then to also have to pay the bills that would roll in from the hospital and everyone else that provided any sort of service associated with the birth. It has always frustrated me to get those bills after babies are born and see a) how much the hospital charges you just to use a room for a couple of hours and b) how much you get charged for things you didn't know they were doing, they didn't ask you about beforehand, or you didn't really need or want. When Lucy was born I remember getting bills from the two pediatritians who came to see her the day she was born and the day we were discharged. Hundreds of dollars, and they were each there for no more than five minutes! Did I have an option to decline their visits? Probably not. Did they really need to do what they did for my baby to be healthy? Probably not! But I didn't think I had a choice. I greatly dislike paying money for things I don't want or need. I don't like feeling cheated. And I often felt cheated in my previous experiences with OBs and hospitals.
I have been blessed to have uncomplicated pregnancies. I've never required interventions. My babies have all been born healthy. (In retrospect, the "issues" that a couple of them had at birth, I think, were made out to be more than they were simply as a precaution on the doctor's or hospital's part. I know they want to cover their bases rather than risk sending an infant home who will turn out to actually be sick and then run the risk of litigation.) After Lucy was born I realized that, while hospital staff, nurses, doctors, etc., all do a lot (believe me, I know they do a lot!), I did the work of having the baby myself, and a lot of what they did was stuff we could do ourselves if we had to. The doctor hardly did anything when the baby was actually born. (Again, not knocking doctors and nurses here.) I just realized that I, for one, maybe didn't need all that "help," let alone the associated bills. Why did I need to go to the hospital at all when I was perfectly capable of having a baby without needles in my arm or back, or nurses and doctors telling what I could or couldn't do?
When I put all this together and started discussing it with Paul, he was more than a little skeptical. He's not generally into things that are unconventional and home birth, I'm guessing, was pretty high on the scale of "weird things." But we decided to consider it and at the very least find out what it would cost to have a baby at home. I e-mailed a friend from BYU who I knew was into "birth stuff" (hi, Liz!), and asked her what I should read and for her advice in general. I also called a friend of mine from church who had birthed both of her children at home and asked her if we could meet up and talk about home birth. She told me things I hadn't known before, like that a midwife brings with her things for emergencies, like equipment to resuccitate an infant, things for the mother in case of hemmorage, etc. She told me how things had gone with her girls' births. After she and I talked, I called the midwife she recommended (Winni) and talked to her on the phone about it. She said I was an excellent candidate for home birth given my previous healthy pregnancies and births. She and I met and talked some more, addressing questions and concerns that Paul had, and talking about the financial concerns we both had.
Even when I first had the thought pop into my head to try a home birth, the idea made sense. After talking about it with my friend and with a midwife, it still made a lot of sense. I had the feeling, as I have at other times in my life, that this "crazy" thing was something I would end up doing, and it would be okay. I knew I needed to learn a lot more to mentally prepare myself for what was ahead, but it felt like the right thing to do.
So I read a lot. And we watched a birth documentary (which I think helped Paul a lot). I started feeling very empowered about having a natural birth, and doing it at home. The more I studied from different sources, the more justified I felt in my feelings about my previous experiences with OBs and in hospitals.
There's not much more to it than that. As I said before, giving birth to Ella at home was the hardest thing I have ever done. But I would do it again.
If I left anything out or you have any questions, please ask! Thanks for reading this post at all!
