Birth story - Patricia and baby Julian

*Trigger warning* - lower heart rate, talk of induction, use of the word contractions, short cord and oxygen.

My 1st birth was at a hospital where I was given pitocin for lack of progress and an unwelcome episiotomy at the end. I knew I wanted a different experience this time around so started doing some research. After watching, ‘The Business of Being Born,’ taking the PBC course, and reading Ina May Gaskin’s ‘Guide to Childbirth’ I began my journey to having a home birth. I found a midwife I really liked and, surprisingly, my OB was supportive.

Pregnancy

I had a healthy and uneventful pregnancy. Some exhaustion at the beginning and carpel tunnel and swelling at the end. I continued seeing my OB throughout my pregnancy because I am technically high risk due to being epileptic (seizure free for almost 6 years ) and had extra testing/monitoring done. At my OB appointment at 40+1 I saw a different OB than usual. She said baby’s heart rate was low and wanted me to stay for some monitoring which I agreed to. While monitoring me she suggested I schedule for an induction saying that there’s no benefit to being pregnant any longer and that if baby’s heart rate is a little lower than usual we should just get baby out. At that point I started texting my midwife and sent her the monitoring sheet that showed baby’s heartbeat. The OB I saw that day went to show the paper to my regular OB. During that time my midwife texted me back that she thought everything was fine and to call her after. The OB then returned and stated that my regular OB thinks things are fine and I could leave. After that my midwife and I decided that if I was still pregnant the following Monday I’d get a sweep.

Labor

Surprise surprise I was still pregnant so went on with the sweep. My midwife was confident it would work and that we’d have a baby soon. She had me do some spinning babies circuits when I got home to get baby in optimal position. I ate and took a nap with my son however I woke up mid nap (around 2:15pm) with contractions and timed them using the Freya app. They were ten minutes apart till my son woke up from his nap. Once my son was up the contractions slowed down and lessened in intensity. My parents are visiting from the mainland to help with my toddler. They took him out since it seemed that things were slowing down with him around. Once he was occupied elsewhere things ramped up again. I kept in contact with my midwife during this since she was confident the sweep would work. She got to my house at around 8:30pm and got things set up. I was up breathing and swaying through my contractions and laughing with my husband in between them at this point. Once the pool was filled I got in and it was such a relief! In fact, too much of a relief.

My contractions stayed the same while in the water. We decided to get out of the water and sit on the toilet for some contractions and then walk around. My contractions got a whole lot stronger and I found that the up breathing wasn’t enough for me. I switched to visualizing my body relaxing into the contractions and that helped. One of the midwives also applied pressure on my back as I leaned on my husband through contractions. I labored outside on the lanai under the stars for some time which was nice. The cool air and beautiful sky brought me back to green when things we’re getting more intense and I started to moan which eventually turned more like mooing. Once my body started to push I got back into the pool. After a few contractions my midwife asked me to switch to the birthing stool. I did without asking questions because I trust her. Later she told me that she thought the cord may be short after monitoring the baby and wanted to be able to give me oxygen if baby needed. Turns out the cord was short and because there was a gap in between the head coming out and my next contraction I was given oxygen for baby and nipple stimulation to get the next contraction going. I gave birth to the rest of him at 2:38am.

We had skin to skin on my belly at first and once the cord went white and was cut I got to put him on my chest. I delivered the placenta on the stool then moved to my bed where we had our first nursing session. I had one superficial tear, no stitches.

My son had woken up from the commotion. He would not go back to sleep and insisted he read the baby a bedtime story before the baby went to sleep. Apparently my mom tried to get him to go back to sleep by saying the baby was going to sleep too. She didn’t get the reaction she was hoping for

I’m so happy I took the PBC course. The knowledge and skills I learned were vital in choosing the best place to give birth, really knowing how I wanted things to go down this time around and advocating for it, and working through labor.