So here I am, pregnant with my third child. All of my children are almost exactly 8 years apart..NOT PLANNED! I would have liked to have them closer but it just didn’t happen for me. My first son was a C-section without a trial of labor (more on that in another blog post), my daughter was a 3-day, marathon, prodromal VBAC in a birth center (yet another post). My second son and third child was a water birth at home and here is his story…
This was my most intentional birth. I had been a doula for six years at this point. I had been in most every local hospital and birth center and realized that I really did not want to be bothered with anyone’s protocol and I just wanted to be able to completely trust my own instincts and birth the way I wanted. If I could have had my choice, I would have birthed without labor support-but I didn’t want to do that to my husband. So I carefully chose who I wanted in my space during my birthing process. They were all people that I knew and trusted to honor my birth wishes.
I was officially a week and a day past my “due date”, I was impatient to see my son, but my other children all went past the 41 week mark so I was not surprised. I had done a self-check (all women should know how to check themselves!) the day before and was pretty sure that I was a few cm dilated as I could fit a few fingers in my cervix. I had gotten up around 3 AM as had become my habit and I went into our prayer room to pray and ask for guidance on things. The middle of the night is one of my favorite times to commune with God. I asked God for patience in waiting for my son whose body I was just CRAVING to hold. I asked him if I had a long wait until I could see my baby and then I opened my Quran randomly and read the following passage…
“Verily, the knowledge of the Hour is with Allah (alone). It is He who sends down rain, and He who knows what is in the wombs. Nor does anyone know what it is that he will earn on the morrow, nor does anyone know in what land he is to die. Verily, with Allah is full knowledge and He is acquainted (with all things).” 32:34
Well, I figured this was God’s way of telling me that I had to be patient and wait a little longer so I resigned myself that I wasn’t going to worry and I was just going to wait. One of the problems with being a birth worker, is that sometimes you know too much. I had been randomly thinking of all the ways I knew to bring on labor but also quickly remembered that even “natural” induction has it’s consequences. I was determined to wait until my baby let me know that he was ready…
As I got the rest of my family up for morning prayers, I realized that I felt a little “juicier” than usual and chalked it up to my body gearing up for birth at some point in the future. As we were waiting on my eldest son (as always!) I felt a small gush and thought that I had some discharge. So I went into the bathroom, cleaned up and re-did my abolutions for prayers. We finally we able to begin prayer! I was sitting in a chair in our prayer room and as I was bending over, I felt a another larger gush. I froze. My thoughts began to race…Did I pee on myself? Was that more discharge? Now I have to make abolution all over again…. I have to wait on everyone else to finish…etc. etc.
My husband finished up prayer and my kids left to room. As my husband turned to leave I told him, “Uh, I don’t know if my water broke or if I peed on myself…” I stood up and there was a large round wet spot on the chair’s cushion. I leaned over and smelled it and it smelled like nothing. I told my husband that I was pretty sure my water broke and I was going to check in the bathroom. As I stood and walked to the bathroom, I felt a HUGE gush of water that streamed down my legs and I hobbled down into the bathroom. (I swear I hate that feeling more than actual contractions!)
So as I’m cleaning, I smell that amniotic fluid smell that I am REALLY familiar with and knew that my surges would begin soon. I started mentally bracing myself because I knew that when your water breaks early, that your contractions are more intense, but usually your labor is shorter because there is no cushion between your cervix and the baby’s head. Then I had to tell myself to get out of my own head and to just go with the flow. Mentally, I had prepared myself for a looong labor. My daughter’s was 3 days long and I told myself that this one was probably going to be half that time… HAH!
So I text my team and decide that I need to eat and get some rest before things start to kick in. My husband in the time it has taken me to clean up and change has gotten completely dressed (down to his shoes), started breakfast and was double-checking the birth tub set-up in the living room. (My husband is an eagle scout, he really can’t help himself…) I told him to chill out, there were no surges yet and I wanted my daughter to stay home from school because we had already decided that she was going to be present during labor and birth.
I proceeded to make sure that I ate a big bowl of oatmeal with lots of honey and then waited… My sister came by to check on me around 12, contractions had slowly started but they were still 15-20 minutes apart and fairly mild. I told her to go about her business and I would let her know if things picked up… I tried to take a few short naps but I was too excited and kept getting up to do one thing or another…
Things began to pick up around 1 and by 2:30 when my sister called to check on me I was in the shower and yelling at my husband to leave the room while he was talking on the phone. She knew it was time to come and check on me. The shower made the surges bearable-but they were really picking up (darn early water break!). My hubby brought me one of my birth balls and it felt good to sit in the tub with the water falling on my belly. Then I started to worry about our birth tub. My husband had stopped filling it up because I wanted to get in the shower and he was filling it from the shower head. I also didn’t want to use up all of our hot water and then have to wait for the tub so I got out…
I decided to use my other birth ball in the living room while my husband finished filling up the tub. Let me take a pause from this story to talk about this amazing tub… It was huge, it was spacious (I’m not a tiny woman by any means), I had great freedom of movement and I LOVED those handles when it was time to push. The only thing I didn’t like was the little seat. My bottom was too big to sit comfortably, I imagine it would be nice if I was smaller though. Anyway, back to the story… so I am starting to vocalize with my surges and I am really surprised at how intense they are starting to feel but I still feel I have a long way to go. My sister gets here sometime after 3 and things start really picking up. I’m in hands and knees on the birth ball, my sister is massaging me and my husband is coordinating setting everything up. At some point my dad comes in to drop off my oldest son and I vaguely remember telling him to shutup and get out because he’s blathering on to my husband about a hammer and a drill. I felt bad about that…I’d never told my dad to shutup in my life. I think he was surprised as well…lol
After that, I really retreat into what I call my “birth space.” I am aware of everything going on but it’s almost as if I am in a slightly different reality where everything moves slower and looks a little hazy. Next thing I know it’s dark, I’m in the tub and the midwifery assistant has shown up. My midwife is on her way and her backup is on her way as well. The midwifery assistant asks me how I feel and I tell her “grunty and pushy”. I was scared that I was feeling like pushing way to early. I kept thinking that my labor was going to last longer.
My memory became like snapshots in time. My daughter is there… my husband is rubbing my back…I feel like punching something…voices are annoying…people talk waay too much…why is there such little space between my surges??? The water is my friend…but I have to poop so bad…I want the toilet but I don’t want to get out my comforting water cocoon…
I snap out my alternate reality enough to tell the midwifery assistant that I really have to poop and want to go to the bathroom. She assures me that I can poop in the water and they will just scoop it out for me. (insert record scratch here) I am NOT pooping in this water that I am sitting in. Now, I have seen and assured several women that pooping is normal during birth-but I knew that I wanted my poop in a toilet, not in my birth water. So I haul myself out the toilet and waddle my way to the bathroom. It felt so good sitting on that toilet. I felt that I could completely relax my bottom and whatever came out, the toilet could catch. At this point my surges are coming every few minutes and I am being held by my daughter, my husband and my sister as I feel like I am passing the largest poop of my life…but man it feel great!
The backup midwife is there at this point and tells me that she needs to check to make sure that she can’t see the baby’s head or I am going to have to move because my bathroom is too small for my to birth. Hah! I thought to myself, I have a long way to go, this baby is not coming anytime soon. I’m just going to chill on this toilet, keep my rhythm and keep plugging through. So with the next push, the midwife shined her flashlight and told me that she could see my baby’s head. WHAT??? Part of me thought she was just lying to me to get me out of the bathroom so I told them that I would move after the next contraction. So after two contractions when I STILL did not move (it was such a great position for me!). My sister was like LOOK, you HAVE to move! So I begrudgingly made my way back to the tub.
Once I got in the tub, within a few more surges I could feel my son on my perineum. My husband had gotten in the tub with me and was applying an amazing hip squeeze. My sister and daughter were in front of me holding my hands as I was squatting in the tub. The midwife and assistant were watching but very hands off (which I had requested) and I remember yelling “RING OF FIRE! CROWNING!” (I tend to talk in short, terse, directed phrases in labor.) I could feel my son’s head sitting on my perineum and I mentally gave myself all the self-talk about how he needs to stretch me out so I wouldn’t tear. But I couldn’t quite finish the thought because another surge was coming. I remember the great relief I felt as I yelled “HEAD!” I reached down and felt my son’s head still face down and his ears. I thought of how amazing it was that he was half out and half in, between worlds… I also felt between worlds at this time. I liken it to being on a bridge between the realm of this physical world and the realm of the spiritual world. You meet your baby on this bridge to usher them into this physical realm…and with that thought, I felt another surge coming, I brought my hand back up and grabbed the handle on the tub and with this push felt his shoulders and then the rest of his body slide out and into the pool. I promptly reached down and scooped him up onto my shoulders. Everyone was pretty quiet and I remember looking into his eyes and saying “There you are”, while I took a big, deep inhale of the top of his head. (more on the science of that later…read Carla Hartley’s writings on No Hatting, No Chatting, No Patting). Our son was here. Our family was complete.