my home birth story
tldr: i finally had my baby! i had a planned unmedicated home birth and it could not have gone any better.
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On Thursday, July 9, I wake up at my usual 5:00am to pee. As I’m attempting to roll out of bed, the liquid keeps pouring out of me. I know I’m not peeing myself, but I can’t wrap my head around anything else happening. I make it the bathroom, a trail of liquid following behind me, and sit down. There is a clear puddle at my feet.
“Babe?!” I yell. My husband jumps out of bed in a sleepy haze, stumbling into the hallway and asking me what, what’s going on? I tell him I think my water just broke. He disappears without another word. I anxiously await his return. He comes back with a handout from the midwife and points to the section about times we should call her immediately. Water breaking is one of them.
Irrationally, I think, right now? At 5:00am?! I can’t possible wake her up and bother her with this, nothing is even happening otherwise. It feels so anticlimactic. I make the call and she’s calm despite the obvious interruption to her sleep. She tells me to keep her updated on any signs of labor progressing, to get back in bed, pop a Benadryl, and get as much rest as I possibly can. Labor for a first time mom can be a lengthy and exhausting experience.
The adrenaline pumping through me at this point is keeping me from sleep. Despite taking Unisom and Benadryl and laying in bed for over an hour, sleep does not come. My heart is pounding. The time was finally here to have this baby. I wasn’t going to be pregnant anymore, hallelujah! Unfortunately, that also meant I had to endure childbirth.
I text my boss, my three supervisees, and my therapist that my water had broken and I wasn’t going to be at work or therapy any time soon. I text a few friends.
Around 8:00am, we take a slow and careful walk around the neighborhood. As we near home, a little old lady leaves us in the dust. She glances back at us, clearly surprised, sees my extremely pregnant belly, and says, “Oh! You must be due soon! That’s why you’re walking so slow!” I tell her, “Any day now!” Little does she know!
By 10:00am, there are still no signs of labor progressing. I was on a 24 hour clock to get labor started, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do a home birth like we planned, as its outside the midwife’s licensure. My midwife calls at this point to check in and see how I’m doing. I think I’ve felt one or two tiny contractions, but I’m not sure until hindsight. She suggests trying some natural induction methods or I can wait it to see if my body does things naturally. I’m dying to get things going and get this baby out of me, so I try the methods. First up, a castor oil smoothie.
My husband was already out running last minute errands, so I text him the ingredients for the smoothie. Around noon, he makes it for me and I have to chug it within a 40 minute window. Thankfully, it mostly tastes like peanut butter and goes down easy enough.
By 4:00pm, nothing has changed. I’m feeling a little defeated, as there are still no signs of labor progressing. My midwife comes by the house and performs a cervical sweep. I was only 1cm dilated. She does another, more thorough sweep to try and help labor start. She recommends a second castor oil smoothie, which I chug once more, and then walks me through another natural induction method. I would use my breast pump to ‘pump’ for five minutes, rest for ten minutes, and then take a shot of cotton root bark tincture (this tasted like liquor). I was to repeat this cycle for two hours straight.
My midwife went home and I did the pump sequence. By the time it was all said and done, it was about 7:00pm. I suddenly started to feel contractions and they were definitely more painful than I was expecting. We call the midwife to let her know — she says that’s great, I’m going to sleep! I think to myself, shouldn’t you be getting ready? Again, in hindsight, most first time moms have contractions and labor for many hours; she was trying to prepare for a potentially multi-day event.
At first, I feel like I’m tolerating and handling the contractions okay. I was utilizing a few yoga positions and my husband was pressing on my lower back for relief. But very quickly, that was not enough. I feel immensely nauseous the last time he presses on my back and I push him off. I keep trying to tell myself “you can fucking do this!!” over and over again. I worry I’m not handling early labor well and I’m in for a hellish experience. I worry I made a mistake wanting an unmedicated home birth. I worry I was being too naive about the pain of it all. I try to focus on breathing.
Making my way to the bed, the nausea does not go away. I end up throwing up just about everything I had eaten all day. At this point, my husband calls the doula and asks her to come now. She lives an hour away, but I feel like another hour of this pain without her support is going to demoralize me further. I focus on breathing.
My husband starts timing my contractions on an app. I can tell he’s panicking, but he’s staying calm and verbally supportive. He sends screenshots to the midwife and doula, as the app notifies him I’m in active labor. The doula says she will assess once she gets to our house, not feeling particularly convinced I’ve progressed that far in so little time. Fair enough, since most first time moms think they’re labor and then aren’t!
Once she arrives, they both watch the app - eagle eyed and quiet. Sometimes the contractions don’t even end, they just keep going. I’m miserable. The doula attaches a TENs unit to my lower back and hands me a birth comb. I grip the birth comb for dear life, a lifejacket in a tsunami of pain and discomfort.
After not even a half hour of both of them watching the app, the doula agrees it’s progressing quickly and calls our midwife. The midwife is immediately on her way.
She arrives at our house around 12:45am. She immediately wants to perform another cervical check, but my very painful contractions continue to interrupt. I beg her to pull back as I keep rolling back onto my side, gripping the birth comb and moaning. When she is finally able to check, she says my cervix looks a lot different than before. I am terrified she will tell me I’m only 4cm dilated. I try to focus on breathing. She says I am 8cm dilated. I am so relieved I could cry. The pain isn’t for nothing, things are happening.
My midwife calls her assistant midwife, who also lives about an hour away, because it’s almost time. She is running around our house trying to gather her implements and set up what she needs. My husband notices and asks her if he can help. She hands him the birth tub and tells him to get it set up, since I’m progressing very fast. The doula stays with me. I continue to moan, rotating the birth comb this way and that in my hands for any crumb of relief. You can fucking do this, I keep saying to myself.
I’ve been laying on the couch for what feels like hours, feeling as if I’m barely making it through the contractions. I feel the sudden and strong urge to push, but no one is ready for me. I try to hold it in. My doula tells the midwife I’m ‘making the noises.’ No one is ready for me to do this!
At some point, they all walk me to the bedroom. There are pads lining the mattress and the floor everywhere. I lay on my back and she explains how I’ll push: wait for a contraction, push three times, and aim where I feel her hand. I start pushing and it feels like nothing is happening. It’s so hard not to feel like I’m doing this wrong, which seems ridiculous to even FEEL.
The midwife is periodically checking baby’s heart rate throughout this. Later my husband will tell me her and the assistant midwife would make eye contact every time she read out the numbers, because they were concerned it could’ve become unsafe to continue at home.
She then asks me to curl up, as if I’m doing crunches, and then grab my legs by hooking my hands behind my knees and pushing. Fuck you, I think to myself. I can barely do anything but breathe and push and you want me to do gymnastics? My husband and doula both grab my legs and hold them up for me as I attempt to push through a few contractions.
Pushing is honestly slow going. Much slower than I anticipated. The contractions are much more spread out at this point, so I’m essentially just waiting around and trying to enjoy the not contraction until they happen again. The midwives agree a new position might be better to help get baby moving, so I move onto the floor in a squatting position.
We finally start to get somewhere and the midwife is cheering me on: this baby wants to be born, you’re going to meet your baby! I keep reminding myself I can fucking do this. I keep reminding myself that the baby is also working hard to be born. I push as hard as I can.
There’s progress and baby’s head is finally visible. The pain is obviously so much more intense the longer this goes on. My legs feel like jelly from squatting and in my head I’m begging to move to the birthing tub for any relief. Warm water, what a balm!
The midwife is finally pleased with baby’s heart rate and the progression of his birth, so she says we can finally make the transition to the tub. I am so relieved. I start to walk back towards the living room and I grab onto my husband for help as I waddle. He turns around and wraps his arms around me, thinking we are having a moment. I shove him off of me and say, “What are you fucking doing?! Move!” (this is my only outburst during my entire labor and our favorite part of this story).
I make it into the tub and immediately feel better. The water feels lovely on my sore body. The doula tells my husband he can get in with me if he wants. He wastes no time ripping his shirt off and jumping in with me.
I start pushing some more and the midwife and my husband are making eye contact. She’s basically letting him know to get ready to catch the baby sooner than later. They both keep telling me they can see his head and his hair, but nothing else. My vagina feels like it’s on fire and I worry I’m not pushing him out fast enough.
Up to this point, I had been trying to push three times per contraction. My last two contractions, I manage to push four times. The second fourth push, the baby shoots out of me. The midwives, the doula, and my husband all exclaim, oh my god! No one catches him. Later, I will find out this is called the ‘fetal ejection reflex’ and isn’t super common with first time moms.
The midwife and my husband grab him together and lift him onto my chest. We keep saying oh my god. I can’t believe he’s actually real. I’m finally not pregnant anymore. My husband and I sing to him. He is here and healthy and doing just fine.
Unfortunately, I don’t get to enjoy skin to skin time in the tub for a while like we had planned, since the water is cold and baby is colder. He gets taken out and wrapped in blankets and I stand up to follow him. The midwives stop me and let me know I have to deliver the placenta still, so with another hearty push, out it goes while I’m still standing.
We’re all back in the bedroom and baby is being checked out and weighed and measured. They say he has a very expressive face for a newborn. My midwife takes a look to see if I have any tears. I end up with a second degree tear in my perineum - any worse and I would’ve required a hospital transfer. She stitches me up. Six total, both internal and external.
On Friday, July 10, at 3:00am, in the comfort of my own home, my baby is born. I fucking did it.