Birth story as written by a Birth Takes a Village Client, and Wise Woman Way of Birth Doula herself!
I look over the records.
That bottom section for Comments – ‘if not normal’.
And under it, in Midwife’s script,
“Unattended Home Birth.”
Diary Entry:
Thought I was in labour on Saturday – then again on Monday night.
Gotta just go with it.
Woke up at 4 and didn’t feel the kick-kick-punch – got worried; couldn’t sleep.
Ate til I felt movement, slow and lazy.
Not its usual self – losing space? Conserving energy?
Thirty-nine weeks tomorrow; moon waning.
Tiger, will you be a true new moon baby?
We’ll go with your flow.
My second full-term babe.
My first true mystery.
Knowing so much more than my first time around, I opted for early NIPT testing, and declined all ultrasounds. The tiger even swam violently away from the doppler at our first check-up, so we decided to use the fetoscope for the rest of the pregnancy.
Blessed and thankful to be able to combine science and wisdom, and decide what worked for our family. No paparazzi in our world; just our language; our dreams; our hearts and the networks functioning from them.
I felt a bit silly, a bit disappointed with myself to find I had more anxiety with this pregnancy, despite being so well-informed. And then I was reminded that worry is part of the work of pregnancy – this web of unknowns. The shadow side of life, flip-side of death. Magic. I had some fear when I turned down the 20 week scan – such new tech but already taken as gospel. But, strangely, when I got off the phone after cancelling, two eagles circled outside my window, then another, then another; their children, still juveniles, without white head or tail.
The family of four we were going for.
Alright. We’re all fine, then.
I was ready. I was stoked! My first birth was long, in water. Babe had been looking up and cocked to one side – acynclitic, brow-presentation – now known as the ‘Unicorn’ Home Birth. Hours of pushing. I felt invincible afterwards. The sensations were so intense, the duration so exhausting. Colours and visions, symbols I read about after the fact. I had caressed the face of the creator. I was waiting for that again, excited for hormones to send me back to space, back to “labourland”. I knew that second labours were generally much faster, but I didn’t want to bank on it. My strategy was to mentally prepare for it to be more gruelling than the first; if it was similar or easier, good. Gravy.
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Now, to the “due date” – a wee bit after what the midwives called forty weeks, but the date I gravitated toward, the day I had called nine months earlier. People around me were having their second babies, and they kept coming early. But the full moon had come and gone so if I was going to have two full moon babes (Tiger’s sibling had been a full-mooner), I’d be going to 42 weeks. Hey – it hadn’t happened yet – and I was ready to go there.
I went to a friend’s farm and hung out with the horses.
In my pelvis, a tickle; like a balloon blowing up halfway and deflating.
Something happening. I thought back to a friend’s second babe; the braxton-hicks contractions went on for a week. We kept petting the horsies, the toddler and I. I wasn’t convinced at all.
Later that afternoon, I told the husband I felt a bit unusual, but he should take our kid to swimming lessons.
“I’ve been asked to meet up for a beer afterwards…” he says.
Sure, why not?
Some spotting. A little mucus plug? A little cramping.
Then I started working on my massive sewing pile.
Years’ worth of sewing. Wait – what am I doing?
This was enough of a red flag that I texted my doula, Jessica.
Legs a little numb.
“I’ll make sure I’m in the area”, she says.
It’s about 4:00pm.
Some bright red blood.
Interesting.
Sewing continues, and for some reason, I throw on Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade as my background music.
The family returns and husband makes some easy pasta thingy.
I’m not contributing to the household.
It’s 7:00pm,
Contracting.
But eating. I can’t be THAT far along if I’m eating.
The world seems pretty normal..
Not going inward at all.
I request a doula visit. It’s 8pm and our kiddo is going to bed.
Jessica and I talk til 8:30. I’m talking through contractions.
The mood is light.
“Would you like me to set up the birth pool?” she asks.
“Ya know…” I ponder, “the husband will want something to do –
And I don’t want to be a watched pot.
Hang out at your friends’ place and we’ll call you. I’m going to try to have a shower.”
Jessica leaves. I send a text to the husband (still downstairs putting our oldest to bed) summarizing my chat with the doula and outlining his tasks with perfect spelling and grammar.
So OF COURSE I’m nowhere near birthing.
I go to the bathroom not only to try to have a shower, but in the hopes of making some bowel room too. I mean, that’s what you do, right? You poop and puke and eventually a baby comes out. Or, at least, that’s what happened last time.
I turn the shower on, but can’t make it in. I’m floored by pain, gripping the side of the bathtub.
Then an excruciating stab on my left side puts me on all fours.
Oh, I see, labour, trying to get me down, are you?
I still don’t get it. I’m far too ‘conscious’.
I was in my alpha brain…but going down fast.
The husband comes in, having just put our kid to bed on another floor of the house.
He wonders if I should get in the tub.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to get out again. I need to get to the bed…and where’s my water bottle?”
I get into bed, water bottle in hand – and quickly realize that it’s hard for me to put the cap back on.
“Text Jess – I’m gonna need someone to feed me water through a straw soon.”
Finally, a sign that makes me realize I’m in a later stage of labour.
To ease my discomfort, I move to side-lying on my right side.
I instruct the husband to inflate the birth pool, and soon after he leaves the room, the heavy-duty, super-loud HUMMMMMMM of the mega-volt not-messing-around electric air inflator whirrs up; it’s the perfect muffle to the sudden mega-push that breaks my waters and moves the Tiger’s head right up to my perineum with IMMENSE pressure. (Oh, and also voids my bowels, quite prodigiously, at that).
WTF.
During that push I had screamed like I was being straight-up murdered. Thank you, ambient air pump noise, for helping me get it all out! It was so primal, delicious. Hilarious.
Noticing the open window, I muse about whether the neighbours heard that, and whether police services might have been dispatched.
Also, in that moment, I wonder…why am I still so freakin’ with it?
Where’s my cosmic trip to search for life’s ultimate truths?
Then again, my body has taken over enough that speaking is not easy for me.
The husband walks in, and basically sees that I have shit myself.
This was his major concern… so he grabs a towel and starts cleaning that up, bless him.
So birth is now coming fast and furious – I’m having some extreme hormone downloading,
adrenaline spikes – hours rolled into minutes, and so all I can really say is “baby…baby”.
He thinks, funny – she doesn’t usually call me baby.
Then he takes a closer look and exclaims, “Is that fucking HAIR???”
So yes, there was enough poking out of me that he correctly identified that we had yet another baby with a glorious full head of hair.
The husband, not having signed up for this, says “I’m paging the midwives”.
I’m too caught up to communicate my feelings, which, at the time, are… NO DON’T LEAVE I COULD KINDA USE YOU RIGHT NOW.
I can hear him outside the room leaving a message when another huge push takes me over. There’s a lot of pressure; this is it, I think, so I put my hand to my perineum to help prevent tearing. POP. Baby’s head is out. And yes more murderous screams which make it onto the midwives’ message (a message that our postpartum guests LOVE to hear). Husband’s yelling
into the phone “we have a head…we have a baby”.
It’s 9:15pm – forty-five minutes from when I sent my doula packing.
He hangs up and comes over – surveying his second born’s head sticking out of me.
“It’s blue” he says.
“That’s okay” I say. My doula brain takes over.
My god how many times have I come home from births saying “dad thought the baby was dead again…doesn’t matter how many times I tell them babies are blue!”
But I digress.
Husband: “I think it’s trying to say something! I think you need to push the rest of it out.”
“Has it turned?” I ask.
“What?”
Having not really expected an unassisted birth, I had not briefed him in the fetal mechanics of birth, which includes the very adept fetus rotating so as to most efficiently birth its shoulders.
So, I rephrase – “has its head rotated yet?”
“What? I think you need to push it out.”
Although I’m quite sure everything is actually going fine, I start scanning for any complications…
“Is there a cord around its neck?” (not that that’s a huge deal)…
”I don’t think so.”
I’m still not sure whether it was the stress of the husband or whether it was gonna happen anyway, but I went “inward” and summoned another contraction…it did feel like it met me on the astral plane…it was like, “oh, hello – I was almost there, but thanks for joining me”.
With it, the torso comes out. Hips still in. The Tiger performs one more twist and my body pushes the rest out. Ta-da!
That’s four pushes for you folks playing along at home…
(Later, dear husband would tell me that he, for a moment, thought that he was looking at my uterus – like it had come out of me. It was just a really vernix-covered, big, baby’s back. Wowzers)
So, the big post-baby question – is it breathing? Husband’s not sure.
It sputters, and I’m thinking, oh yeah – babe spent no time having its lungs squeezed in the birth canal – there may be some fluid to work out. He puts the Tiger on my chest. Instinct kicks in.
I gently rub; connect; let the baby do what it needs to do. Soon, all is well.
My heart, my breast – it’s home again.
Cord attached, pulsing, helping it switch over to this whole terrestrial breathing thing.
These next few minutes are a blur.
Jess shows up and the husband steps out for some air.
The only reason I know this is because the midwife was easily able to find our place, what with
a dude who definitely looked like he just caught a baby standing outside.
I wish I could remember these moments better, hanging out with this new life.
All I know was that forty minutes felt like a flash.
I’m asked if I needed anything.
I feel it’s time for dad to have some newborn skin to skin time.
He gets in bed beside me – after all, that umbilical cord is attached to a baby, and still attached to a placenta, and that placenta has yet to be birthed. So we have to be pretty close. I would like a glass of red wine.
I feel like a Viking Queen demanding my mead, and drink in that fashion.
So the love hormones have effectively hotboxed the bedroom, and the victory drink has been tasted…next comes the talk that I should probably put some effort into birthing the placenta.
So I try to push – it feels huge, daunting. Harder than the birth.
No progress. And very annoying to have to think about.
Then the husband pipes up: “well she birthed efficiently enough with you not here, so how about you all leave again?”
After some small protest, the midwives move to the ensuite bathroom, and it comes out almost immediately, in one push. It feels massive.
I’m so grateful for the husband in the moments – the way he stepped in to make sure I was given the space I needed. I think back to doula training I took where the partner was referred to as “the perfect intimate advocate”. So very true!
Wow, this bed is a mess.
With the placenta birthed, the Tiger is now physically separated from me – placenta goes in a pot (the very same one his sibling’s floated around in at the unicorn water birth) baby goes on dad, and I announce that I would like a shower. I’m all for maintaining the hormonal aspects of birth, but this bed I’ve been on is covered in blood, amniotic fluid, and feces. And to a lesser extent, so am I.Perhaps time for a re-set. I go to the bathroom and shake. I shake SO hard.
That was a serious fetal ejection.
The Tiger’s safe in dad’s arms and my nervous system is coming back and grounding.
I re-connect with my body. Coming back to earth. I feel so light.
The midwives inspect and I agree to a stitch for a tiny tear on the “fourchette”.
Then the scale comes out, I’m asked to guess Tiger’s weight.
Bigger than my eight-pounder, so I’m going with nine.
“Ten pounds, three ounces” the newer midwife beams, “my biggest babe at this practice so far!”
Our cat sits proudly between the baby and placenta, and we prep the area for the umbilical cord burning – but not before snapping a pic of the true knot in the cord. A knot which the Tiger probably made weeks back when there was still space for such crazy flips, protected from tightening by Wharton’s Jelly, and brilliant design.
It’s about 1am before the birth high wears off enough to consider sleep.
Jessica and the midwife have stripped and re-made the bed. The mattress protector was tested, and held strong! A pristine bed to lay back down on.
And now, to sleep the gorgeous sleep of mama and babe; teaching Tiger how to breathe, how to feed, and the warmth of human touch – all of new life’s necessities.
Tiger smiles – and hasn’t stopped since. I marvel at the wisdom of the ancients embodied in these children of light. New life, brought in with love, is the ultimate expression of optimism.
Over the next few days, life will return to its mundane tasks, with the 24/7 task of infant care piled on top. But not without some transcendent moments of bliss. My first postpartum was, like many, awash with this extraordinary newness, as well as a somewhat terrifying, hyper-alert
sense of responsibility. This time around, I found moments where I felt bathed in the elementary particles of bonding. The husband was home and working hard to keep house, the neighbours brought food and didn’t linger. A friend even came over and did some acupuncture to ease my post-labour pains! With all of that beautiful support, I was left to do the most important work, and relaxed enough to receive the pure spiritual simplicity of love between baby and birther.
The husband and I still sit back sometimes and start de-briefing on that night. We pull the memory out as one would an after-dinner treat from the freezer.
“You manifested that” he says.
It wasn’t the story either of us thought we’d be telling, but there it is – the story of The Tiger.
Thanks for sharing your story, Tiger’s family! If you are a past client of Birth Takes a Village and want to submit your story or photos to be shared, please email us at birthtakesavillage@gmail.com. We are happy to share anything you are! ~ Jessica, Talia & Meena at Birth Takes A Village