“Birth is not only about making babies. It’s about making mothers; strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and believe in their inner strength.”
What does a contraction feel like? I wonder if he will come early? What will my birth story be? These are all questions I asked myself throughout the 38 weeks I was pregnant, and I think it’s probably safe to say I am not alone in that.
Before we get into the intensity that birth is, I want to take a trip down conception memory lane. I always told Sean that I didn’t want to stress about getting pregnant; mind you as the words escaped my lips, I felt completely naïve. Three months after our kick ass wedding in Puerto Vallarta, and 6 days before leaving for our honeymoon, we figured what the heck we’re married now; lets ya know… take a little risk!
August 23rd, young wild and free, we boarded the plane to Southeast Asia, where we would spend nearly three weeks in Bali and the place that our lives would unfold in a way we never expected.
After finding out we were having a babe up until the day I gave birth, a lot of prep, research and work happened. I will save that for another day.
Here is where my birth story begins…
April 24: I lost my first bit of mucus plug.
April 26: More mucus plug
May 2: More mucus plug
May 3: A LOT of mucus plug and a little lower back cramping
May 4:
6am Monday morning my body woke me up like an alarm clock. “We’re 10 days early… this can’t be it right?” Indeed it was, and the next 13 hours were going to be a wild ride.
Although I was pretty sure I was in labor, I wasn’t entirely confident that’s what was going on with my body. I didn’t want to jump the gun by waking Sean up and telling him it was go time; instead I ran a warm bath. This is the last time I would be comfortable until 3 weeks postpartum. As I sat in the bath, I soaked up the sensations I was feeling and thought about the possibility of meeting my baby in the next day or so; excitement and fear ran through me simultaneously. Oddly enough, I had scheduled an in-home massage for 10am that morning. My midwife and doula both encouraged me to keep the appointment to try and use this time to relax into labor and allow the time to pass. At this point, my support team wasn’t sure whether or not labor would last or if we still had a few days/weeks until baby would make his Earthside appearance.
These first few hours of labor were quite weird and confusing; one minute I would be totally fine and the next I was in an uncomfortable (but manageable) kind of pain. Around 1pm, things really started to kick into high gear. I went from bouncing on my birth ball and holding a conversation to crawling in the shower, forcing out the words “call Amanda” (our doula). Sean had been timing my contractions for the last twoish hours and I was officially 3-1-1 (3 minutes apart, 1 minute long, for 1 hour). Our doula determined it was too late to meet at our house and that we should head to the Birth Center. Sean notified our Midwife, loaded the bags, wrapped my wet, naked body in a robe and headed for SABC. Arriving at the Birth Center around 2:30pm I was greeted with a dimly lit room and a warm bath. From here the story gets blurry for me.
Before I got in the bath, Midwife Heather did a vaginal exam to see how far dilated and effaced I was. With the level of pain I was experiencing, I was at least 6-7cm right? WRONG, 4cm; God help my mental strength. Surely the bath would make me feel better and give me the break and boost I needed to get in a positive headspace; Wrong again. As much as I wanted the bath to be “my place” it wasn’t. I attempted a few contractions in the bath before I was pleading for the shower. I wasn’t handling my contractions well and everyone in the room knew it. To the shower I went and stayed for quite some time, resisting every single contraction that came on. I was hurting, I was exhausted, I was throwing up, I felt like I was done… If only.
Midwife Heather knew I was in too much pain for this stage of labor. On the second check she confirmed our baby was sunny side up (anterior position). In addition to there being a ton of pressure on my bag of waters, I was only 5cm dilated which meant I hadn’t made much progress. She proposed breaking my water but wanted me to really take some time to think on it before making any decisions. I knew once my water had been broken, the clock starts ticking and my chances of a potential hospital transfer get put on the table. After a little time, Sean and I decided I needed something to change if I was going to make it any further without medication and additional medical intervention.
Midwife Heather showed me the tiny finger condom with a needle on the top, and my first thought was, “okay, okay that doesn’t look so bad”. Then came pain and warm water everywhere. My memory is foggy on where all I went and what all I did after this. While the pain didn’t subside, I DID make a lot of progress. Baby was dropping down and I entered transition (unknowingly). I kept looking at the clock from the shower asking “How much longer?” “Am I getting close?” No one could give me any answers and at this point I started to give up. I looked at Sean and Midwife Heather and told them over and over for probably an hour that I couldn’t do it any longer. Everything I had learned in my birth classes and research wasn’t panning out. My mind seemed to refuse my efforts of focus and breath; it took me straight to resistance and fear as each contraction began. Heather told me she needed me to do five hard things, five times each. Reluctantly, I agreed and got out of the shower, onto the bed and snuggled the peanut ball to attempt to get our baby in a more ideal position. I got through all of 2 contractions into the first hard thing before I made a very slow mad dash for the shower again. That peanut ball felt like the death of me, but it worked! Baby was in position. At around 5:00pm I asked everyone to leave the room so I could have a minute with Sean. I had never been so scared or felt so defeated when I looked into Sean’s eyes crying and told him, “I really can’t do this babe.” Sean replied, “You can and you will.” He then reminded me of all the reasons I chose an out of hospital, unmedicated birth to begin with.
Tears run down my face as I write this part of my story because I was so sure I didn’t have it in me, and Sean had not a shadow of a doubt that I did. Every part of my being believes these few minutes with him was what allowed me to finish what I started.
We called the team back in. I decided to move to the toilet and get to work. Still in pain, we ran into another minor problem… a cervical lip. Thank God for Heather, she worked her magic with arnica oil, got my cervix out of the way and minutes later I was moving to the bed where I would soon have my baby. The funny thing about this part of labor was how I asked Heather if I was going to start pushing soon, she responded, “You’ve already been pushing. Do you want to feel your baby?” I reached down, and just a couple inches away from the outside world, I felt my baby’s head. I pushed for a little over an hour; 12 minutes from crowing to in my arms. It felt like my vagina was on fire and going to split in half, literally. Oddly enough the last hour and half was the least painful part of my labor and I never questioned or wondered if I would be able to have this baby at the Birth Center without medication.
Finally, at 7:00pm on May 4, 2020, baby Clark was born.
While I wish that were where my story ended, it doesn’t. I delivered the placenta and began hemorrhaging. Immediately the Midwives were on it, hooking me up to an IV, giving me medication and examining my uterus. All of that just felt like noise as I was holding my messy little boy. We did skin to skin, drained the cord and all felt as it should until Midwife Heather told me there were blood clots stuck in my Uterus and they had to come out. She explicitly warned me this was going to really, really suck. Sean took our baby to the corner of the room, I held onto my doula’s hand, bit into a towel and experienced the worst pain of my entire life. It was all over. I was stable and stitched up within a few hours and at 1:00am we put our little, six hours old chili pepper in the car and took him home.
The one thing that has stood the test of time is birth is a journey of the unknown. There were so many things I was sure would happen, so many things that happened that I never considered. I thought I’d use all my training, that it would all look so rosy, and that I would breathe in and out one contraction at a time. There were even people that I thought would be there, and weren’t because they couldn’t. I truly understand now that birth isn’t supposed to look or feel a certain way, birth is its own world and we’re really just along for the life changing experience that it is meant to be.
The further away I have gotten from my birth experience the more beautiful it has become. I am so grateful for each and every moment of that day. I feel like everything I wanted out of my birth was honored; that the people in the room were truly in my corner, supporting me, loving me and believing in me even when I couldn’t. I realize now that in those excruciating moments of pain, my body was telling me exactly what it needed; it was truly pain for a purpose. Lastly, I have this newfound confidence in myself that I would never have had otherwise.
While covid-19 played a big role during my pregnancy and birth, and I never want to forget those pieces of my story, I don’t want the constant reminder of those difficult times taking over the beauty of my experience. It’s the one piece that I hope becomes a faint memory.
I realize that not every mother has the desire nor is every mother’s body given the chance to birth vaginally and without medication. I feel a mass amount of gratitude that the stars aligned for my body and my baby.
Birth is such a personal thing, and every story carries its own unique beauty; this is mine.
