Our Sweet Baby I.'s Homebirth Story!

At 12:45 am on November 24^th I woke up to a few contractions.  They felt different than what I had been feeling before.  I began to panic as it was 2 weeks until my due date and I really didn’t feel ready to go through labor.  R. had just gotten back from working straight for 24 hours and hadn’t slept in almost 2 days.  It wasn’t a good time.  Besides that, I had pretty much spent my entire pregnancy not wanting to have to go through labor.  Obviously this was an inevitable end and beginning that I needed to complete at some point, but I wasn’t ready for it to be that night. 

I went to the bathroom and after I peed and wiped the toilet paper was slightly pink tinged. Blood.  Darn this was happening.  I knew this was happening.  I called my midwife telling her I didn’t want to go through it, that I wasn’t ready.  I told her I wanted to go to the hospital and drug myself up and just not have to deal with the pain.   She said, take a bath and maybe they would stop.  I knew she was wrong, but I took her advice.  I got in the shower and had some more contractions there.  When I got out I got dressed and felt a gush and knew my water was leaking.  I called back my midwife and she said she thought she should come over.  My water usually doesn’t break until the very end of labor so having it happen this early on signaled to her that it might be quick.  Our apartment was in a bit of disarray so R. got busy straightening things up for our birth team to arrive.  I continued to have contractions, but they were pretty manageable.

When my midwife arrived I had surrendered to the process and journey ahead.  I had hoped this time I would be able to lean on the two rocks in my life, Jesus and R.  I hadn’t ever managed to keep my focus on them during labor before, but this time I really did.  R. put on some music for me that really kept me in prayer and I would pray to Jesus during each contraction and in between too.  I thought about how he had endured so much more than I ever would.  I was also hopeful and asked God if we could have the baby before the older kids woke up in the morning.  The assistants arrived shortly.  I alternated laboring on the bed, the exercise ball, and just standing.  One the assistants was a massage therapist so she helped relax my legs in between contractions as they were shaking badly.  This helped so much because spasming legs is not conducive to rest in between contractions.  I went back into the shower and labored there through a few contractions, but it was too hot and I wanted to get out.  Back to my room and the labor ball and then back to the bed.  Through the whole things I just kept praying for God to help me through and leaning on R. for support.  We were totally in sync.  My birth team monitored the baby and was very hands off.  They let me do my thing and followed my lead.

Eventually I started to feel I.’s head much lower and my body began to push.  At my request I was never checked for dilation.  I just wanted to go with the flow.  I pushed for what felt like a really, really long time.  My midwife told me later it was just light pushing for about 20 minutes and then really intense insanely hard pushing for about 20 minutes.  It hurt so much and I badly wanted breaks, but my body was just doing it and so I went with it had pushed with all I had.  Eventually I pushed I.’s head out, but his shoulders got a little bit stuck in the position I was in (on my side) so they flipped me on all fours.  I have never been in so much pain and I was worried he was stuck and wouldn’t come out.  In maybe only a minute more I pushed his shoulders out and the rest of him came.  What sweet relief!  He was born at 6:14 am about 20 minutes before our other 3 woke up and came in to greet their new brother and sing happy birthday!

We immediately noticed he was sort of chunky and sure enough he is the heaviest of all our four kids at 8 lbs 4 oz.  Surprising for being the earliest by far.  We are so in love and blessed to have him here.  Recovery is going well.  He nurses wonderfully.  I couldn’t be more happy that God chose a different plan for our family than the one I had planned for myself.