Young Beginnings

I had always been “homebirth curious”, and after the birth of my first in a hospital setting I knew immediately that I wanted to plan to have my next baby at home. My first birth I felt very out of control and pushed into interventions I didn't want despite being very educated and having done a lot to prepare. The birth left me feeling traumatized and confused. Thankfully, I was able to move through that birth experience and heal with help from a therapist, but going into my second birth I knew I needed more tools to help cope with anxiety and stress in birth and I hoped to feel more peaceful and in control. I started by choosing to plan for a home birth with midwives and then I was able to prepare using hypnobirthing techniques thanks to the Hypnobirthing course.

 

Toward the end of pregnancy I was growing concerned that my baby was large and I was going to go well past my due date as I had with my first. My midwives assured me that they were confident I could birth a larger baby, and weren’t concerned that my baby was too big, but as 40 weeks approached and my anxiety increased we talked about implementing some natural induction methods to encourage labor. After a few days of taking some evening primrose oil, having intercourse, daily accupressure and utilizing nipple stimulation (I collected a good amount of colostrum to give baby after birth!), I felt a shift in the ever-present Braxton Hicks contractions. My husband (Simon) went to work for an evening shift and I called my midwives to let them know that I thought things might be changing, but I wasn’t really convinced it was real labor. After dinner and getting my toddler down for bed I decided to take an epsom salt bath and try to relax, still unconvinced I was in labor. After my bath I moved out to the couch and decided to watch some TV and do some more nipple stimulation. I sat on the birth ball and did some Spinning Babies stretches to try to loosen my lower back and hips which were feeling tight. Around 9 pm I was feeling tired, but still having regular contractions, I decided to eat something and lay down for a while until Simon came home around 11 pm. I told him that I thought I might be in labor, and he should go in our spare room to sleep. I made myself comfortable in our bed and turned on some hypnobirthing tracks that I had been practicing throughout pregnancy. I drifted in and out of sleep for a couple hours using hypnobirthing breathing techniques to keep myself relaxed and calm. Around 2 am labor really shifted into gear and I woke up Simon. I was feeling really overwhelmed all of the sudden and the feeling of labor shifted solely into my lower back. I knew this could mean my baby wasn’t in a good position and I was beginning to have a harder time coping with the contractions while relaxing in our bed. I moved into the living room and Simon supported me as we tried some more Spinning Babies techniques to relieve the back labor and encourage the baby into a better position. After an hour or more I was feeling really overwhelmed and the back labor was increasing in intensity. We called my sister to come to help with our toddler, and I decided to rest from all the position changes we had been trying. Simon called our midwives and they arrived around 5 am. When the first midwife, Lisa, walked in I felt so relieved and we talked through how I was feeling. I expressed that I was really overwhelmed by the back labor and concerned that labor was going to be really really long as it had been with my first. With my permission  she checked in on the baby’s heart rate and my vitals in between a few contractions and encouraged me to take it one contraction at a time and to just move my body however I wanted and needed to. That may have been the advice I needed to put aside how I thought I should be acting in labor and just let go. 

 

I continued to labor in our room on our bed, largely squatting and kneeling on the side of our bed as well as on the bed supported by pillows. I am not a quiet laborer, and vocalizing helped me feel less overwhelmed with each contraction. Simon had begun filling the tub and around 6:30 I started to feel the urge to bear down at the top of each contraction. I was finally convinced this was happening and it wasn’t going to be too long until I got to meet my baby. Soon the tub was full and I eagerly got in, the water felt good and I continued to feel the urge to bare down. I labored and followed the urges to “push” for a couple of hours in the water using the J Breathing that I had practiced for the majority of the time. I could feel the bag of waters slowly moving with my hand as I made tiny amounts of progress, but after a couple of hours I was beginning to feel a little discouraged and tired from the intense urge to bare down and little progress. Another midwife, Mary, had arrived and she suggested that I could try laboring elsewhere if I wanted, maybe gravity would help because my bag of waters was still intact and acting as a balloon. I decided that was a good idea, got out of the tub and ate a little snack. I tried laboring on the toilet, but quickly decided that was horrible. The back labor was so much more intense out of the water. I moved back only to my bed and was resting in a child’s pose between contractions. Lisa asked if she could check my cervix just to sure there wasn’t a cervical lip. I agreed and she could feel that baby’s head was low and there was no lip. This encouraged me that things were okay and I could keep working baby down. Mary suggested that I try staying down in the child’s pose with my legs as wide as possible, almost like a frog, to rock my pelvis into the widest position it could be, suspecting that after over three hours of feeling urges to push, the baby was just needing a position change to really move down through the pelvis. Instead of moving into a squat or hands & knees position during a contraction as I had been, I stayed low in the child’s pose while they applied heavy counter pressure to my lower back. This was easily the most intense and painful labor I had felt, but after 5 or so contractions with the counter-pressure I felt something shift and there was a small lull between contractions. 

 

During the lull in contractions I moved to the floor facing my bed and using the bed frame to help support myself I was able to get into a very low and wide squat. Behind me, Simon applied heavy counter pressure to my lower back, I was able to bear down much more effectively, and I felt so much relief finally being able to feel the head moving lower with each push. I knew baby was close and with a really large contraction I was able to birth the head and my waters burst as the head was born. Lisa was closest and observing, she saw that the cord was wrapped around baby’s neck and as she tried to un-loop it said, “it’s too tight”. Mary stepped in to assist and together, as I bared down again, they were able to quickly maneuver baby’s shoulders and the rest of the body was born. We guided baby up onto the bed, untangled the loop of cord around the neck and the rest of the body from several more loops of the cord. I looked down and realized he was a boy. His head was very purple, which was a little concerning, but the midwives assured us he was okay and we gently talked to him for a few seconds and slowly he began to cry. I scooped him up and we climbed together into bed. At 10:19 am on October 15, 2020 our rainbow baby was born weighing 8 lbs 13oz and 20 inches tall. Immediately following the birth we just rested in bed. Our midwives checked all our vitals again several times as Alistair adjusted to life on the outside. Once he was a little more settled from the initial crying right after birth we waited for a few minutes and then Lisa asked me to bare down gently a couple times and the placenta was born easily and with minimal blood loss. Simon helped cut the umbilical cord and shortly after we named him Alistair Seton Hepp. We rested in bed and our midwives tidied up and I initiated breastfeeding. Our older son Lochaln and my sister returned from a brief outing to get some breakfast and we introduced Lochlan to his new brother. In typical toddler fashion he was only briefly interested and then was ready to get back to his blueberry muffin and playing. The midwives continued to monitor us and helped me get a quick shower and a bite to eat before we got tucked into bed again to get some sleep. We really couldn't have asked for a much better experience for our birth. I felt safe and in control of my birth. I trusted my body and my baby. 

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- Lizz & Simon, October 2020