A Natural Birth

I chose to have a natural childbirth with Samantha.  I'm still surprised at myself for making that choice, but so glad that I did.  My memories of the pregnancy and birth are all so positive.  Sometimes I want to have another child just to go through it all again. 

While I was pregnant, I wrote a note to friends and family explaining the general reasons for my choice of natural childbirth, and just a few days after Sam arrived, I wrote up my birth story.  Here are both essays, unedited to preserve every bit of emotion and confusion of the time.

 

Natural Childbirth

As many of you know, I have opted to have a natural childbirth at a birth center instead of a hospital.  If you know Adam and me at all, you're probably surprised at this, as are we! 

I am a firm believer in the value of modern, western medicine, and I certainly don't go looking for more pain than I need to experience in life.  However, after some good advice from friends and then a lot of research, I found that having a baby in a hospital has a lot of drawbacks.  Hospitals have timeframes for labor and delivery that promote the use of interventions to speed up the process, even when there is no medical reason for it.  Just like with government controls, one intervention leads to another, often leading to the ultimate intervention - a C-section.  Many of these seem to be completely unnecessary.  I suspect that hospitals also have liability concerns that encourage, not just the reduction of risk (a good thing), but the covering of backsides.  Mothers are treated as patients, and the birth process is a medical event.  The bad part about this is that you are a passive player in the whole event.  Sure, you still have to push at the end, but you're basically lying flat on your back (the worst possible position, by the way!) with tubes and wires all over you, catheterized, just waiting for things to happen.  With an epidural (very hard to avoid in a hospital), when the baby is born you may or may not feel the experience, and your baby will not be as alert as one born without any drugs. 

I want to have some control over my body, I want to *experience* the whole process, even if it does mean a lot of pain, and I don't want my baby doped up when she is born.  Luckily, there is a free-standing birth center just a few miles from here which three women I know have used and loved.  My baby will be delivered by certified nurse midwives.  They have a lot of the basic emergency capabilities that a hospital does, and for anything else the hospital is just 10 minutes away (no longer than it would take to get you from a delivery room to a surgical room for an emergency C-section anyway).  There are no drugs available at all.  The atmosphere is very homelike, and they have tubs for a water birth if I want that.  They leave you alone as much as possible, and they don't whisk your baby away from you shortly after she is born. 

The midwives are definitely a bit anti-medicine, and they offer a lot of hokey things like herbs and aromatherapy, but they don't push those things on you.  They very explicitly work to provide you with the experience that you are looking for.  I've had all my prenatal care there, and I trust their medical knowledge and advice.  I am actually looking forward to labor (and I'm only a little bit nervous).  Maybe I'm naïve, but it seems like the act of giving birth has the potential to be a fulfilling experience - a challenge with a great reward at the end!  I know that a lot of things can go wrong and that I may not have the "perfect" experience, but I am totally confident that I've made the right choice to at least allow for the possibility of a great experience.  I'll be sure to post my "birth story" here after our daughter is born.

 

My Birth Story

I woke up at 6am to find that my water had broken.  Luckily, I made it to the bathroom before any damage was done to the bed!  (Adam and I were never sure how that would work.)  It was very little fluid and I didn't feel any contractions, so I was not totally positive about it, but I think I was in a bit of denial.  Still, I said out loud, "Oh no!"  It was 2 weeks and one day early, and I was not ready!  My parents weren't here yet, I hadn't frozen a bunch of easy to heat meals, I had work to do today, I hadn't even finished packing my "hospital" bag, and darn it, I just didn't feel emotionally prepared for the baby, although I guess you never are anyway.

I woke up Adam who was nearly catatonic (we got to sleep about 2am that night) and I told him that I thought my water had broken.  With eyes barely open he said, "On the bed???"  I said, "No, it's ok," and he said, "Congratulations," and closed his eyes again.  I managed to laugh uproariously at that.  After getting Adam to truly awaken, we contacted the birth center.  Kip was on call for the Labor Day weekend and advised me to keep an eye on things and let her know if contractions started or anything else changed.  I told her I was going to try to go back to sleep.  At this point, it was still possible I was not going right into labor, but either way, I needed my rest and there was no urgency.  I even took a half a (doctor approved) Benadryl to help me relax and sleep.

The minute I got back into bed at 7am, the contractions started.  I let Adam sleep and decided to time them for a while as I lay there.  They were 6 minutes apart and about 30-40 seconds long, but I was not using a stopwatch, just my bedside clock.  Not very painful, but definitely there and fairly powerful.  At first I tensed against them, but then learned to relax through them, and I was happy to find that relaxation helped a lot.

At 8am I decided sleep was out and I took a shower.  By the time I got out, the contractions were stronger and closer together.  I still let Adam sleep, thinking he would need his energy for the marathon ahead.  I went downstairs and tried to time the contractions with a stopwatch, but I kept getting interrupted by needing to go to the bathroom, trying to eat, and being confused by when they started and ended.  It seemed like they were only 3-4 minutes apart now, but I thought that couldn't be right.  I called Kip to let her know I was definitely in labor, so she should be ready to come in to the birth center.  She is a half hour away, and I am just 5 minutes away.  I started thinking that it would be sooner rather than later, so I woke up Adam and told him to shower and get the bag together.  I figured he could help me time contractions when he came downstairs in a half hour or so.  It was about 9am at this point.

This is when everything started happening fast.  Contractions became very strong.  I tried lying on my side on the couch and that did not work for me at all - it hurt!  I had never managed to eat but that was out of the question now.  I went into our home office to try sitting on my "birthing ball" (just one of those inflatable exercise balls).  I didn't make it that far.  Just inside the office door, I fell to my hands and knees and started having serious contractions in rapid succession.  That position was the best, though.  I hardly left it for the next two hours.  I was able to relax and it hurt, but it was not a pain that bothered me.  It truly was like the pain of working muscles, as opposed to the pain of being injured.  But it took all of my focus and effort to get through it.  I knew I was definitely in active labor (and probably further than that, as I found out later).

When Adam came downstairs around 9:30 I told him to call Kip - we needed to go in asap.  (No, I did not say it that calmly!)  Adam says that as he came down the stairs he was thinking, "labor coach reporting for duty," but when he found me on the floor moaning, he knew his job would simply be to get us out of the house and to the birth center.  He did his job very well!  I'm not sure how or what he did, but we managed to leave around 10:25 or so with Kip expected at 10:30.  By this time, I was feeling the need to push and I had been scared to death that the baby would be born on my office floor.

The car ride sucked big time.  Kip was there when we arrived and when she saw me crammed in the front seat of the car somehow on my hands and knees, I heard her say, "that looks real!"  Adam told her to start filling the tub and apparently she already had, but I didn't hear that part - just that Adam knew what to do.  What a champ Adam is!  He did everything right.

I got in the birthing room and went right back on my hands and knees leaning over a birthing ball.  The other two midwives, Shelie and Sandra, arrived somewhere in there, but I missed it.  Kip started taking pictures and I'll love her to my dying day for that.  Adam and I certainly didn't have time to think about that! 

I had been feeling the urge to push for about at least a half hour as we were trying to get into the birth center, and I had been holding it back, which was difficult.  Now I had to change modes and allow my body to do its work and this was a challenge as well.  I told Kip (or whomever was listening) about this concern and focused on doing it.  By now the contractions really were one on top of the other.  No real breaks or rest at all.  I'm sure Kip knew we were in second stage labor (pushing time) by this point.  Someone had put towels between my sore knees and the hardwood floor and my legs were slipping apart so Adam wedged his knee next to mine to hold me in place.  He must have also been rubbing me or something, but I don't really remember that part.  I just know he was there and that's all that mattered to me.

When the tub was full, Kip told me if I wanted to have the baby in the water, I needed to get in now.  I did so only through sheer will power and the help of an experienced midwife who knows when to leave you alone and when to give you a push.  The tub felt great.  I highly recommend it!  I also was able to really relax and let my body push.  I don't think I ever had to consciously push - the contractions did all the work and I just had to let it happen.  I actually held back a bit because that baby was coming fast and the stretching hurt really bad - and this is the kind of pain that feels like an injury.  I knew slower would be better for that pain.  I think I cussed a bit at that point.

But eventually, her head popped out - what a relief - the worst was over!  And my practically constant contractions stopped.  As I'm waiting for a contraction to push out her body, I hear the midwives giggling as they look at my baby's face under the water peering up at them.  They called Adam over to look because she had her eyes open and was blowing bubbles and making faces and moving all around!  There was no rush to get her out of the water, as her oxygen was still provided by the umbilical cord, but I was ready to get her out and that contraction hadn't come yet and I kept asking if it was okay.  She was also squirming around inside me and it felt darned strange!  I joked that she didn't want to come out yet because she wanted to give me just a few more good kicks before she did.  I cracked myself up with that, and there is actually a picture of me laughing while my daughter is halfway in and halfway out of me.  That was probably the best moment of the whole labor process. 

A moment later, at 11:27am, I had my contraction and pushed out her body (this time I helped it along a bit).  I sat back and they put her on me and I can't say anything more than anyone else ever does about this moment:  it was unbelievable and awesome.  I just repeated over and over, "Oh my god," and "I can't believe it."  She was pink and covered in white vernix, and of course, the most beautiful baby ever born!  She cried quickly and opened her eyes.  I held her until the umbilical cord stopped pulsing and they cut it.  I continued to hold her until the placenta was born about 45 minutes later.  Then we got out of the tub and all three of us got into the bed and became a family.  We named her Samantha Miriam.  She weighed 6 pounds 4 ounces and was 18.25 inches long and was perfect and healthy.

I never had a vaginal exam.  I never knew about centimeters dilated or effacement or anything medical except that the baby's heartbeat was indicating no problems.  My entire labor was 4 ½ hours long, including the official pushing time of 45 minutes.  At about 1 hour, I was the birth center's fastest "door to delivery" first time mom ever.  The worst part was pushing the head out, and the next worst part was being afraid she would be born on my office floor and the hectic panic of getting to the birth center.  Everything else was, dare I say it, a great experience.  I am so proud of myself.