Unexpectedly Unassisted Homebirth

When I got pregnant with my third child, I thought I knew what I was doing. With my first two children, I had healthy, uncomplicated pregnancies, and easy deliveries. They were both born in the local hospital, and I received an epidural as well as Pitocin during labor. I was lucky enough to have the perfect epidural, with just the right amount of numbness, while still leaving room for control over my body. I had no side effects from any of the medications, and my babies were the pictures of good health.

So why did I start looking more seriously at homebirth, just a few weeks into my pregnancy? I'd read about homebirth before (some of my favorite birth stories online were accidental homebirths), and I'd loved the book Baby Catcher by Peggy Vincent. I had just met a woman who had a successful homebirth and was planning another. Homebirth was definitely on my mind, but why did I feel so drawn to it then? I couldn't explain the feeling that, while the hospital had worked out fine for my first two, this baby needed to be birthed at home.

Not one to make a decision lightly, I began researching. I would never consider any birth choices that would put me or my child at risk, so I was quite pleased to find a plethora of evidence showing that homebirth is, in many cases, as safe as or safer than hospital birth. I broached the subject with my husband and, to my surprise, he agreed to go along with my plans. Satisfied with the safety of homebirth, I nonetheless kept researching. I wanted to know what all my options were. I read a myriad of books and websites about pain management techniques, homebirth supplies, and emergency childbirth procedures. I read about optimal fetal positioning and herbal remedies to keep myself healthy. I strove to only eat foods that would nourish my body and my baby. After some thought, I decided to purchase the Hypnobabies home study course, and began practicing as early as my fifth month of pregnancy. In short, I felt like I was preparing for a marathon, and I took this work seriously.

Being that we had two children already, we had to do some work to prepare them as well. My boys were four and almost-three at the time of the birth, and they were eager to participate as much as possible. They loved coming with my to my midwife appointments. We read books about birth and babies-their favorite by far was Welcome With Love by Julie Overend. They even watched YouTube videos of births with me. We talked a lot about what labor would be like. I was confident that they were fully prepared, though we planned for my mother to be their dedicated caretaker during the birth, should they want to leave the room.

My due date was a Tuesday, and it went by with nary a contraction. On Thursday morning, I awoke with painful contractions about 10 minutes apart. Even though they weren't that bad, they were definitely real contractions, so I asked my husband to stay home from work. He started getting everything ready for the birth while I puttered around. As the morning wore on, the contractions got closer together, only to space out again in the afternoon. I spoke on the phone with a good friend, a doula and homebirther herself, looking for advice on how to kick-start labor. I tried some of my Hypnobabies techniques for both inducing labor and for relaxing, without much success.

That night I had contractions that were 5-10 minutes apart the whole entire night, which severely disrupted my sleep. I was only able to sleep in between contractions, though I ended up spending most of the time awake and trying to encourage labor-both with walking and with using the birth ball. I also spent two or three hours in the shower, as the pain, while not too bad, was starting to wear on me.

The prodromal pattern continued all of Friday. We ended up filling the birth pool so I could relax. The pool was absolutely wonderful in between contractions, but really didn't do anything to ease the pain-and if anything, it was harder to feel focused and grounded. The contractions were giving me less of a break in between, and they were also getting stronger. I took to leaning on a low table, my hands flat on the surface, and swaying my hips during contractions. It seemed to help and kept me feeling like I could manage them. By the early evening, my patience was wearing quite thin. This was definitely the hardest time for me, as I was tired and discouraged. I remember telling my husband that I regretted planning a homebirth, because at the hospital, they would have given me Pitocin and the baby would have been born by then. I knew intellectually that I was doing the best and safest thing for me and for my baby, but by nature, I'm a terribly impatient person.

Through my research, I was aware of how fetal positioning can influence labor, and the baby's movements made me think that that her positioning might have been a bit off. I tried several positions and movements to get her to readjust, though with little success.

As evening approached, I called my midwife. She had dinner plans, so I asked my midwife if she could stop by my house on her way home and check my dilation. We didn't do a vaginal exam right away; instead, she checked the baby's heartbeat and my blood pressure, then we hung around in the living room for a while. My parents, who live in an in-law downstairs, came and met my midwife for the first time. After about an hour of chatting, my parents went downstairs and I asked my midwife to check me. I was found to be 2 cm and 90% effaced, but still posterior around 10pm. The baby was right under my pubic bone and causing huge amounts of painful pressure. After some discussion, my midwife decided to head home for the night and I tried to sleep-but again, the contractions were painful enough that I woke for each one and got very, very little sleep. The only way I was comfortable during a contraction was in that same position as always, bent over some low table, rocking from side to side. At that point, though, we were hopeful that labor would pick up within a few hours and the baby would be born by morning. The pressure of the baby so low was extremely uncomfortable. I spent the night trying to sleep (mostly unsuccessfully), on the birth ball, or in the shower.

Saturday morning at around 8am, I called the midwife to complain that my contractions has once again spaced out to 10 minutes apart, though they continued to get more and more intense. By that time, I had been awake for 48 hours with my sleep coming in 5 minute increments, and not many of those at that. I told her that even though I desperately wanted a homebirth, I knew my limits and that I could not handle another night with no sleep-so I decided that we would transfer to the hospital and ask for the whole shebang: epidural and Pitocin, if the baby wasn't born by 5pm or so. I got off the phone at about 8:20am and chatted with my mother for a while. We discussed whether it would be better to call my former obstetrician's office in advance or just show up in the emergency room. As we talked, I thought of all the things I had planned for this baby: delayed cord cutting, no rough treatment from the hurried nurses, no unnecessary vaccinations, no cold baths too soon after birth, no separation from mama. I knew that we could fight for all these things in the hospital, but dreaded the effort it would take to get our way.

At about 8:50am, just a half hour after getting off the phone with my midwife, I had a contraction that felt different. Previously, it hadn't bothered me if my husband and mother talked during contractions or even if my children were clamoring for my attention. This one contraction wasn't any more painful than the others, but the presence of my mother and children seemed to distracting. I asked my mother to bring my boys downstairs (my husband tried to say that the boys could stay upstairs, but I insisted). I retreated to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and immediately began having contractions about 2-3 minutes apart and much more intense than anything I'd ever experienced. I was quite vocal-later, my mother told me that she was really worried that my boys were getting upset (though I don't think they actually were). I wondered a few times if I was just being melodramatic, but I couldn't, for the life of me, not react so loudly to the contractions. They weren't especially painful, just extremely intense. After a few contractions, though, I felt the baby's head surge really low, and that's when I told my husband to call the midwife.

It was all very powerful: my husband was soothing me, telling me that it was almost over, and I couldn't help making these really loud, primal sounds. Oddly, I didn't particularly want him around during contractions, only in between, so he had time to put the plastic sheets on the bed and prepare our bedroom a bit. Our plan was for me to birth on the bed, as my previous births had been precipitous and I didn't want to speed the pushing stage further by being upright.

As I started to recognize a faint pushy feeling during some of the contractions, I worried a bit about whether the midwife would make it. My husband was being wonderful and holding a cool washcloth to my forehead in between contractions, reassuring me, and being very positive. And he kept asking over and over again if I wanted to move off the toilet and into the bedroom. The poor man, he must have been terrified. Nothing at that point could get me off the toilet, though I had it in my head to hobble to the bedroom as soon as I felt that the birth was truly imminent. I was apparently still in some form of denial, as I thought to myself that I couldn't actually be in late labor, because the contractions weren't that bad, and transition was supposed to be horrible. Where was the feeling like I was dying? Where was that foggy inability to think clearly? I was sure I still had plenty of time. At one point, in between contractions, as my husband crouched in front of me, cool cloth pressed to my forehead, I opened my eyes and told him how much I loved him. After all, if I could do that, I couldn't actually be in transition, could I?

Unfortunately, the contraction that heralded true descent and pushing was more or less the same contraction that birthed her head. I remember cursing a bit and alerting my husband to the fact that the baby was coming right then. He definitely sounded worried but was present enough to do what needed to be done. He practically begged me to stand up as he really couldn't reach in between my legs to grab the baby, and we didn't want her flopping out into the toilet bowl. Improbably, I managed to lift myself up enough that he was able to grab her as she came out. My eyes had actually been closed the whole entire time I was pushing, and I finally opened them after feeling that final relieving woosh of the baby's body coming out. There was my husband, fairly drenched in blood, holding our daughter, who was already breathing and looking around. The look of shock mingled with pride on my husband's face is something that I will never forget.

Somehow, the umbilical cord ended up breaking (I think he may have accidentally moved her too far away from me). I started to panic because it was bleeding freely. The midwife still wasn't here, so I took the baby and pinched her end of the cord shut. I asked my husband for a towel to keep the baby warm (she was nestled in the folds of my overlarge nightgown), and he tossed me a facecloth while running to get the phone. The next few minutes passed in a confusion of him trying to find the midwife's cell phone number, me telling him to get my mother upstairs now (I was so worried about the cord, I wanted something to tie it with), my mother coming into the bathroom not knowing that I'd had the baby and the complete look of shock on her face, my mother demanding that we call 911 (and my husband thankfully saying no), and the midwife finally arriving. At some point, I was given a full size towel for the baby, and yes, we do still tease my husband about the facecloth.

We tied the cord, I birthed the placenta and showered, and we all got into bed. We figured it out later that she was born at 9:55am, barely an hour after active labor started. I felt really bad that my boys missed the actual birth-they were so excited to see her be born and they wanted to assist the midwife, but it couldn't be helped.

The difference between home and hospital after the birth was just as striking as the birth itself. Immediately after our baby was born, she was in my arms. The tying of the cord and the midwife's initial assessment was done with her still clutched to my chest. I only passed her off to my husband when I got into the shower, and she spent that time snuggled up cozily in her daddy's arms. Once in bed, the midwife examined her more closely, though the baby stayed in my lap the whole time. The whole experience was so gentle for the baby that she didn't cry once. We wrapped her up snugly and then my midwife ensured that we had an hour or so with the baby alone, while she and my mother cleaned up the mess in the bathroom. Eventually, my mother, my boys, and my sister came into see us, and we all rested comfortably in my bedroom. My children were able to come and go freely, I was able to eat and drink things from my own house, and didn't have to worry about a thing.

For me, my homebirth was an incredibly educational as well as spiritual experience. The best way to become empowered is through education-by learning everything I could in advance, I felt prepared to handle every eventuality, and could let go enough to birth my baby without fear. Listening to your body is something that all people need to do, but nobody so much as the woman with child. I feel sure that, had I labored in the hospital, my long, non-progressing labor would have ended in a c-section. I'm grateful that I listened to my intuition early in pregnancy and planned for a homebirth. Listening to my body enabled me to find positions that helped me cope with the pain and birth my baby efficiently, and none of those positions were in bed. And perhaps my subconscious even knew that an unassisted birth was likely, given my history, as my good homebirthing friend later noted that I had made several comments throughout my pregnancy that I felt confident that we'd be able to handle the birth ourselves, should the midwife not make it. I would never plan to birth unassisted, as I believe that competent, caring birth attendants are necessary, but my unintentionally unassisted birth was an incredible, gratifying experience.