BirthWise Maternity Care, LC

Gentle Births Happen at Home    

Birth of Jessica

The morning of Friday, May 27th arrived.  Today, I was 41 weeks, or one week “overdue”, in my pregnancy.  Both of my other girls were born on the sixth day past my due date, so I had hoped that by mow I would have had this baby.  I had been sick with a cold most of the week, so in that way, it was good that I hadn’t gone into labor.  I wanted to be feeling well for the occasion.

 

As is the case with going beyond the “due date”, I was getting a lot of phone calls and my only conversations with people were discussions of whether I’d had the baby yet or how I was feeling or when did I think I would have the baby(?).  It was getting a bit old and depressing, as you can only imagine.  I had been hoping to go into labor at night (one of the disadvantages of having a homebirth is that the neighbors are all “watching” for unusual activity at the house), so every night for the past week, I had gone to bed wondering if tonight would be the night.  I wasn’t sleeping well and each morning, I had a mixture of emotions ranging from gladness that I had another day to get stuff done to discouragement that I’d have to face another day of the same conversations.

 

So, Friday was here.  There was a lot of work to do in our garden, so I went out there.  While I was out, a couple neighbors asked the same old questions.  Amber had gone to her friend’s across the street and when asked by the neighbor whether I’d had the baby, she announced that I had had it the night before and that it was a girl.  My neighbor was surprised to see me out in the garden a few minutes after learning this from Amber and more surprised to see that I was still pregnant!  After a few minutes in the garden, I was too overwhelmed and went back into the house feeling discouraged.

 

I lay down on my bed and cried a little bit in my discouragement.  While resting, I picked up a book called “Saving Dinner” that I had just bought and while thumbing through it, I found a crock-pot recipe and a simple coleslaw recipe that I wanted to try.  I got up feeling much more energized and set to work in the kitchen.  I put dinner in the crock-pot and made the coleslaw for lunch.

 

At noon, when Emma arrived home from school, I had a contraction that was noticeably stronger than the others I’d been having over the past couple weeks.  By 12:20 or so, after having a third contraction of similar intensity (each about 10 minutes apart), I started wondering if this meant something.  I finished feeding the kids lunch and at about 12:40, they called their friend, Sophie, and went over to her house.  I immediately set to work straightening up the house—I vacuumed the whole house, including the basement, I cleaned mirrors and washed doors, etc.

 

The contractions continued to be about 10-13 minutes apart and though I could walk through them, I found they were more comfortable if I stopped vacuuming (or whatever I was doing) and relaxed through them.  At about 1:40pm I called my husband, Mike, to tell him what was going on.  He left work around two and arrived home at about 2:30 pm.  After I called him, the contractions seemed to slow down a bit.  When he arrived home, he could tell that I didn’t need immediate attention, so he went outside to “weed-whack” some weeds in our yard.  I stayed inside and got on the computer to reconcile our credit card statement and wrap up other details.  I found that sitting on the exercise (birth) ball at the computer was not a comfortable way to have contractions.

 

At some point early in the afternoon, my friend, Star, who had my girls called to ask whether it was okay to take the girls to the park.  I told her that would be great.

 

At about 3:00 pm my sister called and I told her what was going on.  I would have to stop talking every once in a while during a contraction.  She was going to come up and help during the birth either with the kids or by massaging me if I needed her to (she is a massage therapist).  After talking to her, I thought she’d probably get here by 5”00pm  during our conversation, I realized that the contractions were picking up again and were now about 6 minutes apart.

 

Probably at around 3”30 pm, I went outside to be with Mike.  He continued weed-whacking and then did some weeding by hand.  Every once in a while, I’d walk over to him and lean on him during a contraction.  My hopes of having an unnoticed nighttime labor were obviously not happening.  This was the Friday that marked the beginning of Memorial Day weekend and the neighborhood seemed alive with people arriving home from school or work.  Mike’s mother walked over from across the street to chat for a few minutes.   We weren’t ready to tell anyone that we thought I was in labor.  Thankfully, the contractions seemed to slow down for a few minutes while she was here (though see said later she suspected I might be in labor).  During this time, I was having pretty strong contraction (though I could still stand through them) every six minutes with a milder contraction coming about three minutes after each strong one.

 

Sometime between four and four-thirty, we went into the house.  I still had some laundry I wanted to fold and we decided to do a little bit of videotaping of the house and yard on the day (hopefully) that our baby would be born.  At around 4:30 pm, I had three strong contractions three minutes apart.  We called our midwife just after that.  Mike announced that the contractions were coming three minutes apart (he didn’t tell her I had only had three of them three minutes apart).  She said she’d drop her kids off at the sitter and come right up.

 

Shortly after that, Star and the girls arrived home.  We told Star that I thought I was in labor and since we’d already arranged to have her helping with the girls during the birth, we asked her to stick around and help get supper finished up and help occupy the girls.  The house was suddenly alive with little girls—our two, plus Sophie (Star’s 4-year old) and Sadie, the four-year old from across the street.  I was in the family room talking a bit with Star, pausing occasionally to get through a contraction.  Mike was outside finishing up our videotaping of the yard on this fine day in May.  During this half hour between our phone call to the midwife and 5pm, my contractions slowed down a bit.  I was going to have Mike call her back and explain that there were only three contractions that were three minutes apart and that this probably wasn’t active labor yet.

 

But, first, I needed to go to the bathroom.  While I was in the bathroom, my water broke (conveniently on the toilet) and a more uncomfortable contraction followed.  I looked at the clock and it was 5:08 pm.  I had a feeling that the intensity was going to be different now, so I went into my room and lay down on my bed in a side-lying position hoping to be comfortable so that I could relax during the next contractions.  I had given my watch to Mike after we had come into the house earlier, because I no longer wanted to be concerned with timing the contractions.

 

These next contractions were definitely more intense.  I probably had about 5 or 6 of them there on the bed in the next 20 minutes or so.  Mike was busily answering the phone, filling our bathtub and shuffling Star and the girls our of the house during this time and would come back to me at regular intervals hoping to be there in time for a contraction.  It seemed the phone was ringing a lot—my brother called to get our address for his records (not knowing we were in labor) and right during a contractions when I really needed Mike our midwife called to tell us she was stuck in traffic on Trappers Loop and to find our if there was an alternate route to our house.

 

In the end, it was a good thing Mike took that call because if she had turned the other direction to avoid the traffic, she would have had to drive all the way around the reservoir and would have never made it in time.  The intersection of our neighborhood and the highway was under construction and they were paving it right at this time.  Of course, with it being Memorial Day weekend, traffic was much busier up here as people were heading to nearby campgrounds for the holiday.  It was backed up the entire two miles to Trappers Loop road where our midwife was sitting twenty cars back from the stop sign at a standstill.

 

At 5:30 pm, Mike had just sent Star and the girls with $20 to the local restaurant for dinner so that I wouldn’t be distracted by their presence.  He invited them to use our van, but Star opted not to incase we needed it and so they began walking the three blocks to her house to get her car.  When he told me he had sent them off, I was kind of bummed because I had a feeling they would miss the birth.  The girls wanted to see it ( I think) and Star had also prepared herself in the event she was here during the birth.  But I wasn’t of the mind to argue at this point.

 

At about that time, the intensity of these contractions was too much and I wanted to try getting in the  tub to see if the warm water would help.  We have a good-sized jetted tub in our bathroom (which Mike had just filled) and we also had a heated birth pool set up in our bedroom for the birth.  I thought about getting into the birth pool since it was right there, but Mike convinced me that I might find the jets useful in handling the contractions like I did during Amber’s birth.  As I changed out of my clothes and put on a sports bra, I remember noting that I was shaking as I stood there.

 

I got into the tub—oh the hot water felt nice and oh the contractions were very intense!  I had something like three of them and each time I tried a different position because I had yet to find a position that was going to work well for handling these contractions.  On about the fourth contraction, I turned sideways in the tub with my back to the edge and let Mike support my weight while I did my best to relax.  It was during this contraction while I was thinking in my mind “open” and trying to relax as much as possible that I felt a sort of lurch in my abdomen.  It kind of frightened me because I suspected that perhaps my body was starting to push that baby out.  I fact, I kind of tensed up a bit at the sensation.

 

It was right about this time that the midwife arrived.  I remember mike telling me she was here.  The next contraction was definitely a forceful pushing contraction andit was wither this one or the nest one that Mike announced to the midwife that the baby was crowning and to come quickly.  He reached down after this contraction and felt the baby’s head and announced he could feel the nose (something I had done when Amber was being born that had brought home to him the imminence of her birth).  I had a short break and then the next contraction came and pushed the rest of her body out. 

 

Mike lifted the baby out of the water.  The cord was long and was wrapped around her neck twice.  The midwife took care of that as we were lifting that baby to my chest.  The baby was born-what relief!  It was 5:50 on my watch (a few minutes earlier on the midwife’s watch).  Our plan was to let Emma discover the sex of the baby, but she wasn’t there, so we quickly covered the baby with a towel (without peeking!) and made a phone call to Star to bring the girls right away.  Star and the girls had just barely arrived at Star’s house—I think they were surprised at the news!

 

The girls arrived within just a few minutes.  The first thing Amber said was, “Can I hold her?”  (Is that because Amber knew it was a girl or because she doesn’t yet know the pronoun “he”?)  We removed the towel and Emma announced that is was a girl!  Then she said tentatively, “I think”. 

 

I stayed in the tub with an alert and quiet little baby (and she nursed a little bit) until I delivered the placenta and then we moved into my bedroom.  I don’t really remember the order of the rest of the evening, but we ate some dinner that Star fixed for us, we called family members to announce the birth, we talked about the labor, and I took a shower.

 

After about 1 1/2 hours, Amber got to cut the baby’s umbilical cord.  In addition to our family, Star and Mike’s mother were there during this time and we all got a little science lesson from the midwife.  We inspected the umbilical cord and the arteries and veins (two of one and one of the other, but I can’t remember which) that ran through it.  We took a good look at the placenta and asked the midwife what a healthy placenta versus an unhealthy placenta looks like.  We also looked at the membranes that had surrounded the baby while in my uterus.  I t was all very interesting.

 

Shortly after cutting the cord, we weighed and measured her and the midwife did the newborn exam.  Jessica didn’t like her leg being all stretched out to be measured and cried for the first time (besides some little squawks right after she was born).  She weighed 7 pounds, 14 ounces—the same birth weight as her two sisters AND her mother—and measured 22 inches long.  We didn’t even have time that night to think or talk much about a name for her since we hadn’t chosen one before the birth, so it was the next morning before we settled on Jessica.  We welcome her to our family and love her very much!