Eagle's Birth Story - Part 3 - Then suddenly, everything changed!

To read Eagle's Birth Story - Part 1, click here
To read Eagle's Birth Story - Part 2, click here

The walk changed everything, and very quickly put me into active labor.  It was probably about 1:00 in the afternoon when we came back in.  At one point, my friend Jo called, and I chatted with her between contractions.  I told her things were progressing slowly, and I didn't know how long this would take, but it might be a while (little did I know).  I asked her to tell me about something completely unrelated to my labor.  Towards the end of the conversation, she apologized for distracting me.  Not at all, I said, it was so comforting to hear her voice.

I labored sitting on my yoga ball most of the time.  Andrea or Brian suggested we put on some music, and since I hadn't specifically prepared any, I suggested the only thing I knew the location of, Stevie Wonder's The Definitive Collection.  Venus, my eight year old, who was anxious to help, went and got it.  That CD is an hour and twenty minutes long, and Eagle probably would have been born before it ended, but we switched to something more mellow at the end.  I still have no idea what it was, because I couldn't concentrate by that point.  It's safe to say that by the end of labor, I was no longer in a Stevie Wonder sort of mood anyway.  But for a while, I tried to sing along and circle my hips on the yoga ball to the rhythm.  Brian sat behind me and rubbed my hips and thighs, and Andrea moved my knees in big circles to keep me loose.

So I hadn't been checking my dilation regularly, but things were progressing a lot faster than I thought they were.  I pulled myself back from the edge of panic a few times.  Once, when I was kneeling and leaning forward over the yoga ball, with a bucket near me because I thought I might puke, I felt this immense expansive sensation in my lower abdomen, and then the thought occurred to me that my ass was about to explode.  For a split second, I actually thought I was about to be ripped to shreds.  I'm not sure how I knew, but at that moment I told myself, "You're not going to explode, it's just the baby moving down."  And as quickly as it had come, the feeling passed.  Still, I had no idea how far along I was, I kept wondering when I might start going through transition.

At that point, Andrea suggested I get in the birthing pool.  What a great idea!  Why hadn't I thought of that before?  She reminded me to go pee once more before I got in.  In my second labor, which was my first home birth, I felt the need to have someone at my side at all times, and there were many times that Brian literally held my hand while I went to the bathroom.  But during this labor I was much more independent, and used the bathroom alone just like I would any other time.  The last time I peed before getting in the pool, I had a really intense contraction on the toilet complete with a lot of downward pressure.  At first, I wasn't sure how to cope.  I stood up, sat down, stood up, sat down, stood up...I just couldn't get a handle on it!  I was about to call for somebody to come and rescue me, when I talked myself out of panic again.  I told myself, "I am not going to loose it yet.  I am a strong, able bodied woman, doing what woman's bodies do."  The contraction passed, and I pulled off my leggings and undies and made a bee line for the pool.

As soon as I lowered myself into the water, I felt an incredible relaxation come over me.  There was such a difference between the contractions I'd been having outside of the pool and the first few in the pool.  I actually said "I feel like I'm on vacation!"  When I checked my dilation, I said "Oh my gosh!"  I was surprised to discover that I was almost completely dilated with the bag of water bulging out.  I didn't tell Brian or Andrea what I felt, but I think she suspected I was close.  It seems a bit clueless in retrospect, but I was still waiting for transition.  I was still waiting for that time in labor when I would start saying irrational things like "I can't do this!", "I don't want to do this!", "I give up!" or "Just give me drugs!"  But I never said anything like that, and before I knew it, I felt my muscles tightening and bearing down.  Without my conscious effort, my body was starting to push my baby out.

The sensation was strong, and I was starting to get very vocal.  Andrea asked me if I had done yoga before, and suggested I make an "OM" sound, a long, low and calming sound.  Brian and Andrea were making "Om" sounds, and I was trying to match my tone to theirs.  Even the girls were "Om"ing!  By this point, I felt like I was sweating buckets, and I asked for a cold cloth and a bowl of ice water, which Venus went and got.  Andrea went upstairs to get some warm towels from the dryer.

Then I started to feel the most incredible and intense feeling I have ever felt.  I can't even really describe it.  It isn't like anything else.  I suddenly knew what people meant by "The Ring of Fire." (I didn't have this feeling in my other unmedicated water birth).  It burned and it stung.  Oh boy did it sting!  The intensity took my breath away.  When Andrea came back downstairs, she says I looked at her with "wild eyes."  I was searching her face for some sign that she knew what I was feeling, that she had been there before.  She smiled and said "Is the baby right there?"  This was the only moment in my labor which I would describe as painful.  It was also the only moment in which I felt fear.  I wasn't  afraid that something was going wrong or that something would go wrong, I was only afraid of the pain.  Nobody likes to feel pain.

As the contraction ended, the burning subsided, and I talked to my baby for the last time before meeting him face to face.  I pleaded with him: "Please don't hurt me.  Please don't hurt me."  The next contraction was all business, with the bag of water bulging out and my baby's head inside it.  Half way out.  One more contraction.  The head was out.  I breathed the biggest sigh of relief in my life.  "The head is out."  "Oh, thank god!"  I rested through the next contraction, maybe a few of them.  I caught my breath, had a drink of water.  Then one more contraction.  The bag of waters broke open as he slid out into the water, quickly and easily.

I held him while he was still under the water and looked at him.  I saw balls.  "It's a boy?" (I had never had a boy before)  I checked again. "Yup, it's a boy!"  And Brian said "Hello, Eagle!"  I brought him up out of the water, and he cried a little.

Eagle was born at about 3:30 pm.  After a few minutes, Andrea asked me if I wanted to get out of the water.  I told her no, I wanted to deliver the placenta in the water.  So we covered him with warm blankets and waited.  I held him skin to skin and looked him over and over and over.  He didn't want to nurse right away, he still had amniotic fluid coming from his nose and mouth.  He nursed after about 45 minutes, and the placenta came after about an hour.  Nobody was rushing us.

Now, for the first time, the baby and placenta were not attached to me, but they were attached to each other.  Brian held Eagle and Andrea held the placenta in a pot while I got out of the pool and laid down on a mattress in front of the fireplace.  Then we laid Eagle on my chest and the placenta pot beside the mattress.  After about another hour, we cut the cord.  When we examined the placenta with the amniotic sac still attached, there was a hole in the membranes just the size of his head, and the rest of his body had slipped right through it.  Looking at him, I thought he was so small.  I said to Andrea "I think this is my tiniest one yet!"  So we weighed him, nope!  Nine pounds, two ounces.  The same size as my second baby was.

Andrea had called her husband, PJ, and he arrived and immediately set to work emptying the pool.  While normally I am not comfortable being naked in the same room as someone else's husband, I guess all's fair in love and birth.  We really can't thank the two of them enough.  They thought of the things we didn't think of, took care of things so we didn't have to and were an enormous help throughout the whole thing.  Their support made this birth easier for us.  Andrea didn't do it for the money, she did it because she cares.  She genuinely cares about the well being of mothers and babies, and she wholeheartedly believes in women's right to choose where, how and with whom they give birth.  Brian was also incredibly helpful to me during my labor and birth.  The two of them did such a great job supporting me.

I am grateful to have a husband who trusts Nature and the birth process, and a wise woman who I am proud to call a friend.  I am grateful to have a son, another beautiful baby, whom I have very quickly fallen in love with.  My life will never be the same, not just because now I have another child, but because of the journey I went through to bring him here.  I am grateful for the experience of a peaceful, undisturbed, autonomous birth.  It is truly a life changing experience.

Eagle's Birth Story - Part 2 - Just Getting Warmed Up!

To read Eagle's Birth Story - Part 1, click here.

So, at 42 weeks plus 4 days, I woke up at 4 am to one giant contraction.  Maybe it was my excitement, but I couldn't sleep anymore.  I was having to find other positions during contractions, and I didn't want to wake Brian up, so I went into the other room.  Fairly strong contractions were coming about every 8 minutes.  I sat on my yoga ball and killed time on my computer between contractions.  During them, I kneeled on a cushion and draped my arms over the ball.  After about an hour, I sent emails to some friends to say I was in labor, and announced on facebook that I was having a baby.  Then common sense kicked in, and I went back to bed, to try to get some rest.

My contractions continued while I slept in between, until about 7:30 am when Andrea, our doula/birth attendant called.  I remembered that Nichole had gone into labor in the night as well, and asked how she was doing.  Andrea said she had her baby already.  I felt a twinge of jealousy over how fast some women give birth.  I still felt I had many hours of labor to go, actually I thought my baby wouldn't be born till evening or early morning on Sunday.  Andrea said she would eat breakfast and feed her kids and be out at my place by 9:30.  I reminded her that I have a history of very long labors, and not to rush.

This phone conversation was when Brian learned that I was in labor, even though I told him the night before that I would probably be in labor the next day.  He asked why I didn't wake him, and I told him I thought he needed the sleep, and it hadn't really been that strong yet anyway.  We both got up and cleaned the house a bit and had breakfast.  When Andrea and her husband PJ arrived, I was upstairs folding laundry.  PJ set up the birthing pool for us and dropped Andrea off.  She had been up all night at Nichole's birth, so we both laid down to take a nap.  My contractions were about every ten minutes at that point, and during them I would roll over onto my hands and knees, or elbows and knees.

By 11:00 am I couldn't sleep anymore.  I got up and went to the shower.  I labored in the shower, mostly on my hands and knees, letting the water hit my back.  I kept my mind busy by singing to myself, Marvin Gaye's "What's Going on?" and "Heard it Through the Grapevine."  I grew up on a lot of old motown, listening to my parent's records, and it always has a way of lifting my spirits.  I took quite a long shower, and by the end I was feeling pretty good, contractions were coming about every five minutes.

For lunch we had burritos with pinto beans, avocado and tomatoes.  Shortly after lunch the contractions started to get stronger, and I asked Brian if he could help me through them.  While I leaned on the kitchen counter through them, he stood behind me rubbing my hips and thighs.  This helped, but I was still holding tension in my body.  When Andrea woke up, she reminded me not to tense up against the contractions, but to try to relax every part of my body.  We were sitting in the living room, me on the yoga ball, chatting between contractions, and I commented that I thought it should be more intense by now.  I made a peace sign with my fingers and asked Andrea how far along she thought that was.  "About four centimeters" she said.  I said I had thought so, and that's how far along I was when I was in the shower.

Well, since things seemed to be in a bit of a lull, she suggested we go for a walk outside.  I didn't really want to, because I didn't want to run into anyone that might be kicking around the farm, but since I knew it might help to get things moving, I agreed.  The whole family went outside, including Venus and Ocean.  We first stopped to say hi to the goats, I wanted to make sure they were happy, that their water and hay were stocked up.  We really only walked out of our place, around the workshop and back, which is a very short walk, but I stopped for several contractions along the way.  By the time we got back in, contractions were longer, stronger and closer together.  That walk really did the trick!

...To be continued...

To read Eagle's Birth Story - Part 3, click here