Coming Home to Birth

Several people have asked to hear the story of our homebirth.

Those who know me know that I have wanted a home birth for years. My mother had five out of her nine children born at home. I was eight years old when she had her first home birth so as far as I was concerned home was just the place people always had babies. :) I always assumed that I would have home births too. But when I was pregnant with Turtle I soon learned my husband thought differently. I went so far as to interview a home birth midwife during that first pregnancy, but never could get D. to agree to even consider home birth as a possibility.

So, I gave up my wishes, acknowledging that maybe it'd be a good idea to have a hospital birth with the first baby, just to see how things would go for me. But even after a completely average natural delivery with Turtle coupled with being very badly treated by my caregiver and harassed about my wishes for my and my baby's treament, D. refused to agree to a home birth once again when we found out I was pregnant with Rosebud. (I wrote this frustrated rant about how much I still wanted one on this blog two years ago. :)

Rosebud's birth went alot better as far as my care. The midwife who delivered her was very kind and very comforting. But it was still a hospital birth. I have very frustrated memories of the experience. It wasn't personalized care. It wasn't sympathetic care. Once again, despite the lovely midwife, I felt like a cog in the wheel of how hospitals work, restricted by their requirements and expectations. I spent my entire stay there just wanting to leave, to be home, to be left alone.

In May 2008, when we moved away from my beloved home and into the house we live in now, one silver lining I found to all the gray clouds was that at least if I had another baby while we lived here I could use a group of home birth midwives nearby that also delivered babies in a birthing center above their offices. D. was okay with the idea of a birth center and at least I could get personalized care, deliver in a home-like setting, with women who have been commited to providing home birth/out-of-hospital services to women for 23 years.

But, after being categorized as a "birth center birth" for my entire pregnancy with Baby Sunshine, at my 34 week appointment I changed my mind. It was seeming more and more pointless to me to choose the birth center. There was no difference in the care provided other than that going to the birth center required getting in the car and driving. As one of the midwives said, regarding the care a woman would have access to: "The only difference between a birth center birth and a home birth is who is paying the mortgage."
And I wanted to be at home. I wanted it for me and I wanted it for Sunshine. I've done my research. I've watched The Business of Being Born, read Ina May's Guide to Childbirth and The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth and even parts of the Millbank Report. I have spoken to home birth midwifes, doulas, birth assistants and women who had had home births. I was present at the birth of my youngest brother, born at home when I was nineteen. I have had two healthy babies, with two uncomplicated labors and deliveries. I have the confidence that comes from that knowledge and that experience. I knew that a normal, natural birth was something that was a very likely occurance for me. And most of all, I felt that it was time. Right now. For this baby. I needed it and something instinctual told me she needed it too. Up till this point I had chosen hospital births out of deference to my husbands desires and respect for his fears, making that sacrifice so that he would be comfortable and so we would be at peace together. And now I felt that it was time for him to have respect for my desires and support me in this need. And I told him so.

Under great duress :) and after much hashing and re-hashing of the issue, he finally agreed. Or at least he agreed that there was nothing he could do about it if I was determined to deliver at home -- short of hauling me bodily out of the door. :)

So this is how it happened.

On New Year's Eve we went to a party at D.'s uncle's home. I was having Braxton Hicks every hour or so -- but I'd been having those for a week or more. We didn't make it to the 2010 countdown, because by 11:30pm I was just too uncomfortable and tired and we left.

I crawled into bed (so tired and regretting going anywhere) at 12:30am on New Year's Day. Half an hour later a really hard contraction woke me up with a start and I knew it was for real. I felt kind of shocked and vaguely unprepared somehow, since I wasn't due for two more weeks.

Leaving my tired husband sleeping, I went out to the couch and labored in the glow of the Christmas tree. As tired as I already was, I was so grateful and peaceful when I thought of how I wouldn't have to be going anywhere today. ;) At 3am I called the midwives' number to give them notice that I was in labor. My contractions were still 10-15 min apart then, but by 5am I had woken my sleeping husband and by 7 am I had called my birth assistant and the midwife on duty and asked for them to come. I didn't really think that I was very far along (Turtle's labor was about 18 hrs and Rosebud's was over 48 hrs) but I knew they wouldn't mind coming if I felt I needed them.

At this point I started having this need for the girls to be out of the house. :) I had arranged for my in-laws to come and get them when I went into labor. I didn't want them to get scared by seeing me in pain and I didn't feel like I could relax and have the baby till I knew they were taken care of. I remember that it seemed to me that D. was taking his sweet time about calling his mom and waking the girls when I had this urgency that they be gone NOW. :) I don't think he believed that I was as far along as I was beginning to think I was.

My husband really was wonderful throughout this time-- making the bed with plastic and old sheets, waking the girls, getting them dressed and packing the things they'd need. Something very different about this labor was how busy he was readying our house and the girls. This meant that he wasn't really with me at all till the second stage, he wasn't able to be beside me holding my hand or rubbing my back during the contractions like in my other labors. But I was okay with that, prepared for that, knowing that he was caring for everything and I didn't have to move or do anything -- my job was to just be and get the baby out. :)

Finally :), Grammy came and took the girls at 7:45am. I was able to say good morning to them, give them kisses and tell them the special news that the baby was coming soon. Looking back I think that I was almost in transition at this point, so I think that the only way I was able to be calm and not show pain around the girls was through sheer will power and just knowing that I had to shield them from worrying about me.

M. & P. -- my midwife and my birth assistant -- arrived a little after 8am. They were so calm and unhurried. I was so reassured by the knowledge that they were moving confidently around the next room preparing and anticipating. They listened to the baby's heartbeat once upon arrival --(I was so glad it was just a few seconds with the Doppler, not 15 minutes of that torturous restrictive strap that I hate at the hospital!) and then pretty much hung back and waited to see what I wanted. I appreciated this so much. I especially loved how they didn't have this need to check my dilation either. After a little while they asked if I wanted to know how far along I was and though I said yes, I knew that if I had said no they would have been completely fine with that too. M. checked then looked at me with a smile and said "you're done! You're a 10." It was only 8:45. I couldn't believe it.

Something else that I really appreciated was that when I told M. that I really hated this part (the pushing) she shrugged and said, "No problem, you can just wait a little more until you are ready." There was no rush, no yelling at me to push, no time schedule. They were relaxed, respectful, and just really gentle with me. My water still hadn't broken at this point and neither of them made any move to break it artificially they just calmly waited for everything to happen the way it was going to anyway.

Sunshine was born at 9:21am. I will never forget how it felt to have her immediately placed on my stomach -- warm and wet, squirming and bubbling. I missed this with my other girls. They were held up for me to see, then taken away to be suctioned, warmed, weighed and wrapped before they were given back to me to nurse. But Sunshine wasn't removed from my stomach for close to an hour, and only then to be in Daddy's arms. She stayed naked on my skin as they sucked out her nose and mouth, as her cord was cut (a full 15 minutes later), as the placenta was delivered. They didn't bother about weighing or measuring or Apgar scores or even diapering. She actually did her first little pee all over me. :) It wasn't till a whole hour and a half later that she was taken away from both of us to be weighed and diapered. I'm so happy to think of those first 90 minutes of her life outside of me that only her Daddy and her Mommy held her, that she was never laid on a warming table, never taken by gloved hands away to a corner of the room to be manipulated.

It was then that things got more complicated. For two hours after delivery I bled and bled and kept bleeding. P. and M. were trying everything -- uterine massage, Sunshine's nursing, 2 or 3 different homeopathic remedies, Pitocin, Methergin. I didn't register this, but D. insists that they were very close to bringing up a hospital transfer for excessive blood loss. I do remember looking at the picture of Jesus over my bed and just begging him to make it stop. I was asking Our Lady too, in honor of her feast day, in honor of the fact that she had delivered a Baby once too, to help me. With all the massage, the cramping (Methergin made my afterbirth pains almost worse than the labor!), the shots, the stitches that I needed I hadn't been able to just rest and be done and hold my baby in peace. My blood pressure was getting high and my body was starting to shake from the stress and the adrenalin.

Finally, at 11:30, M. performed a "manual clot evacuation" -- what she later termed a "pearl" of wisdom taught her by a older midwife from whom she learned. It was about 30 seconds of pure torture, followed by sweet success. The bleeding slowed and I finally, finally got to rest and hold Sunshine once again.

We had done it!

I am so grateful to Our Lady for all her help and blessing upon us. I am so happy with how things went. I was so comfortable in my own surroundings. I was immensely blessed by the warmth, competence and care from M. and P. who treated me so considerately and won my undying affection. I am also so thankful for my dear husband who held me during the delivery, grasped my hand through all the awful procedures after the birth, acted as host birth-room prepp-er and food-delivery man. He really rose to the occasion -- despite his own wishes -- and gave me the ungrudging support and love that I needed during this home birth that I wanted so much.

I know that this isn't a particularly exciting or noteworthy story, maybe not even one very worthy of sharing. It's just part of our story -- Sunshine's and mine. We've been through alot together, us two. I'm so glad to have been granted this quiet, gentle, happy birth at home. Not only was it a homecoming for Sunshine, but it was "home-coming" for me too. These days I notice that the place our little one is the most contented (other than in our arms) is in our room on our bed -- even just laying there by herself. It makes me smile. Of course she loves it. Our room was the very first place outside of mommy that she ever knew. And that feels right to me.