This beautiful story was written by a past client who birthed her so-called “over-due” baby at home on a beautiful snowy night. We are finally getting around to posting it and hope you enjoy!
Birthing my son was the single most empowering experience of my entire life. It was brought me greater confidence, courage, and joy. My philosophy from the start has been “What would a woman in a cave do?” and it has served me well throughout my pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. As a scientist I did lots of research, prenatal classes and workshops, read books and articles, listened to podcasts and online conferences, and just generally over-loaded myself with information. Luckily my base philosophy of minimalism and nature was there to keep me grounded.
I discovered I was pregnant while studying for my Biological Sciences Research PhD in Tasmania, Australia. It was a particularly difficult and disappointing time in my PhD journey, and after 10 years of marriage my husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for 5 months, getting pregnant felt like a miracle. I was very excited when I missed my cycle, and over the moon when I got the blood tests back from the doctor 8 weeks later confirming. It was a harrowing time between, like waiting to exhale. I had been tracking my cycles and ovulation, so I was sure when I had gotten pregnant, but at 5 weeks my blood test had a pregnancy hormone level of only 100, so the doctor had me wait two weeks for another blood test, and my home-pregnancy tests didn’t start going positive until the 6 weeks mark. I watched them get darker and darker with each passing day as I used them all up, my excitement growing, and when that second blood test came back with high hormone levels, indicating a good implantation and healthy pregnancy, I cheered.
I felt amazing for about 8 weeks, stronger, more energized, and healthier that I had every felt before. Like I had a ball of fire inside me, and I could feel it glowing and warming and permeating every part of me. I was so happy. I got set-up with the community midwife, began my monthly checks, and started refusing sonograms and doppler. When the doctor said “So you expect us to just take your word for it when your last period was for calculating your due date?” I said “Yes, of course!”.
Over the next two months I got a little nauseous, I had to eat small portions constantly for a while to keep on top of it. I kept fruit and crackers by the side of my bed so I could eat before getting up. I only threw up about four times, twice in one afternoon back to back because I ate a dried fruit bar. Some days all I could eat was bread and cheese, and avocado. I started craving salty French fries and cheap burgers with pickles (no cheese, no lettuce, no tomato), and I HATE pickles. I salted everything, and could no stand onions, garlic, or black pepper on anything. I was very tired in the evenings, sometimes I was in bed by 7pm, but I woke up early and couldn’t stay in bed. Except for a two terrible weeks, one when I had a bought of hemorrhoids that got so bad they kept me home on the couch and in bed for a whole week with my legs up, and later a week of pressure headaches I couldn’t take anything for, my first trimester was easy, and I was well. As for my PhD, things were still up in the air, I was fighting to stay, but I was considering quitting.
In my second trimester we travelled back home to Vancouver, Canada for a vacation to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary, a family reunion, to officially announce the pregnancy and show off my bump, and to find a birthing support team. The 15 hour flights were no joke, and compression socks were a huge help. It was a very hot summer for Vancouver (2018), so I enjoyed many happy hours swimming and soaking in the glacier fed river near my family home. The dramas of my PhD were also put to rest with a very positive outcome for me, and I was awarded three research grants, but finding a birthing team was more of a challenge. I was rejected by all four midwife teams on the North Shore because of my refusal of elective ultrasounds. My entire pregnancy I had a midwife use doppler once in the second trimester, and then only at the end when I was birthing. All those midwives decided I was too “risky” for them to do a homebirth with me because I was over 35, having my first baby, at home, without sonagrams. I thought I was being the risk averse one! Through referrals and recommendations I found the Strathcona Midwifery Collective, famous in the midwifery community for supporting woman’s informed choice and supporting unconventional birthing, and they were happy to take me as a client, and recommended a Doula they work with most often, and who they thought would be a good fit, Jessica Austin, from Birth Takes a Village. My husband and I decided to hire a doula because he was so nervous about the whole having a baby experience.
The next few months went by in a flash with so much work to do. We all became proficient at using a fetoscope, even me. I purchased mine on Amazon and used it every day. I wasn’t as active as I planned, or as good at avoiding sugar, and I started snoring and using my husband as a body pillow, and everything else went well, and I was able to do everything I needed to. We travelled back to Vancouver before my 32 week mark, this time with a wonderful layover in Hawaii where I snoozed on the beach and snorkeled, feeling weightless and wonderful.
Back home in Vancouver, at my mom’s house we get serious about preparing for baby to come, and we had a wonderful to months to do it. Christmas and New Years came and went. My due date was the 15th of January, and it came, and went. As the days and weeks passed I had people from all parts of my life, and all levels of acquaintanceship go out of their way to contact me to share horror stories, to warn me, and to petition me to get an induction or C-section. It was awful! I did my hypnobabies positive affirmations daily, read the blog posts on wisewomanwayofbirthing.com, and because very practised at ignoring what people were saying and remaining calm. I knew what I was doing, and my choices felt right. I didn’t want to hurry anything. Baby was ok, I was ok, and I was taking my birthing preparation herbs every day. My worst fear was that something would go wrong and I would HAVE to go to the hospital, but I had every confidence and hope that everything would go right and I would birth naturally at home without any issues, and without any snow outside.
On Friday, February 8th, I got a massage at home in the evening, and later during dinner I felt something give and I stood up quickly and felt amniotic fluid trickle down my legs. Something was happening finally! I got to put towels down everywhere I went for the next 24 hours, and every time I laughed, couched, or God forbid sneezed, I lost some fluid. So I drank lots of fluids and waited. My midwives were happy to hear something was happening.
Saturday, February 9th, I relaxed, did normal things, my sister-in-law gave me an acupuncture treatment at home, and a foot massage, and by evening I was having consistent pressure waves every 8-10 minutes. Then came my poor husband’s sleepless night as I continued to have them all night.
Sunday, February 10th, I was 44+0 weeks, and I was up by 8:00am feeling energized, and I left Paul to sleep for a couple more hours. Turns out he had been up every 10 minutes all night recording my waves, poor thing! Around the same time it started to snow. I made breakfast in bed for him, between pressure waves, which were now 5 minutes apart. I updated the team and my mom, and puttered around until midday when waves became 2-3 minutes apart, and I knew I’d be meeting my baby very soon and I was feeling excited that my birthing time was finally happening!
As the day progressed the snow was coming down heavier. Jessica and her trainee Talia came over early afternoon and started getting things ready and settling in. It was nice to not monitor my waves anymore. I relaxed, wrote in my journal, and I started feeling pushy about an hour later. It all came on quite gradually, and built in intensity steadily. At the time it felt like it took forever, but in reality it all happened quite quickly.
Hanging off of the bathroom sink so I could squat deeply when my pressure waves peaked helped, also hanging off of my husband, the window sill, the change table, or the counter. Counter-pressure on my pelvis helped, and I did lots of moaning, but the thing that felt the best was biting, and I almost left a mark on poor Paul on his chest, and again on his arm near the end. He had to jump back, and I held back. The sensations were very powerful and intense with stretching and deep discomfort in my pelvis, I was surprised how much, but I trusted the process and had faith everything was going just as it should and would be fine, and I would be holding my baby very soon. I wish I had been able to relax in the pool sooner, or had gotten in the shower, but I was a bit nervous about slowing things down, I wanted it to be over as soon as possible.
At about 4:45pm I wanted everyone to leave, I was so uncomfortable that I thought having less clothes on might feel better, or hurry things along. I was feeling rather desperate just then. I told my mom to go upstairs and I took Paul with me to the bathroom and bedroom to be on our own for a while. My pressure waves were so long and so close together that I could barely get a breath in or a sip of water, let alone rest. I really wanted to lie down on the bed, but it was too intense and uncomfortable to lie down. One long wave would build up, peak, and then gradually release, then I would have about 10 seconds before the next one started. I was pretty mad then that my pool wasn’t ready yet.
I remember thinking to myself, “This is incredibly hard!” “I can’t believe women everywhere have experienced this, over and over again, through all of time!” “Wow, women are superheroes!” “I don’t want to do this again!”. The last one was more of an immediate reaction. I was saying to myself, “I know I have to birth this baby right now, I’m just so glad I don’t have to birth another one right away after it, because this is really hard!”. I remember the sensation of baby’s head sliding into my pelvis, I was hanging from the windowsill next to my bed, and the snow was coming down heavily outside. It was an amazing feeling.
I kept asking about the pool and begging for the pool, and it felt like it took an eternity for it to be set up, even though I know it was maybe 30 minutes, and Paul helped me get in while it was still mostly empty. In hindsight that was a bad idea, an empty inflatable pool is NOT a comfortable place to experience intense birthing pressure waves.
Like a mantra I chanted to myself “Release”, “Open”, and “Stretch” whenever I felt the intensity of the pressure waves grow to discomfort level, while Paul said “Peace” and “Relax” in my ear. At the time it was annoying when anyone said anything, except when Jessica reminded me to breathe instead of pushing during some of the waves. That was very helpful, and she seemed to know just when to say it. I reminded myself that “this couldn’t go on forever”, and it was likely to be over quite soon so just “hang on and ride it out”. “My body was made to do this, I can do this.”
At some point my midwife Carolyn joined us and began monitoring the baby’s heart-rate. She never did get a chance to check my blood pressure that had been textbook perfect the entire pregnancy. I spent the last part kneeling or half kneeling a the side of the pool facing Paul. The water was wonderfully warm, but floating felt terrible. I needed to be anchored during pressure waves, and I wish the sides of the pool at been sturdier, same with the bottom. The softness of the rubber pool wasn’t very supportive and cut off the circulation to my feet when I was on my knees for long.
I kept checking and eventually I could feel the top of baby’s head. It was soft, downy, squishy, and wrinkly. When baby was crowning I applied counterpressure, sometimes half kneeling with one leg up, and both hands applying counterpressure. It’s hard to relax in that position, with a baby crowing, and I felt a slight internal perineal tear before I realized I needed to slow down and breathe more. I tried to make it as slow as possible to allow ample time for stretching. As I adjusted position between waves my midwife Andrea asked to check my blood pressure, and I answered with a resounding no because I had a baby in my birth canal crowning! I expected baby’s head to be born with one wave, and then the rest with the next, but with one more pressure wave baby was born and shot out of me really fast. All of a sudden baby was between my knees on the bottom of the pool. I lifted baby out of the water, turned baby face down on my arm to slip the chord from around his neck, and then gathered my baby to my breast. Someone had a receiving blanket ready to put over us, and helped me turn over so I could lay baby on my chest. I was so relieved and peaceful feeling. Eventually I looked and saw that we had a baby boy! Paul said “Are you sure?” “Look again!”. He was really expecting a girl. I laughed and said, “Yes, I’m sure, see for yourself!”.
We stayed in the pool for about 45 minutes and waited for baby to latch on naturally, which he did like a champion. After my placenta was born the midwife clamped the chord and had me cut it. There was no way Paul was having anything to do with that, he is very squeamish. When I got out of the pool Paul had to take his shirt off and hold his naked baby boy on his chest, feeling terrified the whole time, and was relieved to hand him back to me once I was settled on the couch. He then went and took a shower and was so glad he didn’t need to clean out the birthing pool. By the middle of the next day he was totally in love with his baby boy, and has not stopped telling everyone that I am now his hero.
Our beautiful Rune KaMaluhia Hansen was perfect, born just after 7pm on Sunday, February 10th, 2019, weighing 6.9 pounds (3.16 kg), 20 inches (50 cm) long, with no complications at all, with a completely natural home waterbirth. I had only three very minor spots that were overstretched from when he crowned, not even real tears, so I had no need for stitches. He was born covered in vernix and lanugo, so no signs of being at all overdue. My midwives agreed that he looked to be about 39 weeks, making my dates off by about 5 weeks. I guess I must have skipped my last period, which explains why my home pregnancy tests took so long to be positive and why my hormone levels were so low in my first blood test. I must have just gotten pregnant within a few days, rather than the 5 weeks I thought.
My husband was a champion support, so wonderful, and my whole team was completely supportive and helped me achieve ALL my birthing wishes of a natural, peaceful, gentle, intuitive, and non-interference birth, and we are both so happy with our little boy and the whole experience!
Our postpartum transition was equally gentle and smooth, and Rune was back up to his birth weight on day 4 with on-demand breast-feeding and bed-sharing, and has been a champion eater ever since, always well above the weight curve for his age. True to his name he is a peaceful boy; happy, balanced and serene. He started testing solids and sitting up at five months, crawling at 6 months, and is almost 11 months old now. I’m back in Tasmania doing my PhD and taking a baby along with me when I do fieldwork. He loves books, cats, birds, doors, playing piano and peekaboo, snuggles, nursing, biting, dancing, jumping, and eating everything. He is a delight and I am loving being a mom.
The experience of giving birth and becoming a mother has the most empowering experience of my life. I feel like I can do absolutely anything, and if there is anything I can’t do it’s not worth me doing. The “cave woman” philosophy continues to serve me well, and whenever I feel overwhelmed in the moment I hold my baby close, say “I love you” aloud, and then ask for help from whomever is nearest, because no smart cave woman lived alone with a baby!
All images by Talia Kleinplatz, Birth Takes a Village Doula and Photographer