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 1 - Labor (finally) Begins!

My estimated due date came and went.  At 40 weeks, I knew my body was nowhere near ready to give birth.  My first hint of labor happened at around 41 weeks.  I woke up in the night to strong contractions about three minutes apart.  I hadn't been expecting labor so soon, and I wasn't sure what to expect at that point, because these contractions had come on so fast, and my two previous labors had started out slow and mild.  Turns out, they stopped after an hour.

The next morning I was disappointed to not be in labor, but I noticed right away that my belly felt significantly lower.  I was curious to check my cervix to find out if my body was any closer to giving birth than it had been before.  When I checked, I discovered that my cervix was much thinner than it had been the week before and open about a centimeter.  I was encouraged by the progress.  That day I cleaned my whole house because I thought "It could happen any day now."  Of course, by the time I did go into labor, a week and a half later, it was messy again.  Figures.

At 42 weeks plus two days, I got that feeling again that I might be going into labor.  This time, I had some major menstrual-like cramps and nausea along with sensations directly around the cervix now and then.  They never established a constant rhythm, so I didn't get too excited, but it lasted about six hours before it fizzled out.  The next morning, my cervix was thinned out almost entirely and open about two centimeters.  But the tell tale sign for me was the presence of blood-tinged "mucus plug", a very strange name for the protective goo that blocks the entrance to the womb during pregnancy.  I was excited to see this, because I knew it wouldn't be long now.

But I still had to keep myself busy while I waited for things to get going, so I went to visit a friend, Nichole, who's due date was two weeks after mine.  She was now past her due date as well, and she was getting very impatient to have her baby, so we decided to keep each other company.  While our daughters played, we talked about labor, postpartum and breast feeding, and the general politics of birth within the medical and midwifery systems versus free birth.  She didn't seem like she was about to go into labor, but then again, I guess neither did I.  When I left she said "Hopefully I'll have a baby tonight!"  I smiled and joked "The race is on!"

Nichole and I were planning to call the same doula, Andrea, and that evening I called her to touch base, "What are you doing this weekend?"  She said she had nothing planned unless Nichole or I go into labor, and I told her I was pretty sure I would be in labor by tomorrow or the next day.  That was Friday evening.  Late that night, Andrea sent me a message saying Nichole was in labor and she was going over there.  I had a chuckle over this. What are the odds that we would have our babies on the same weekend?  I wished Nichole all the best, and tried to express to Andrea that I was confident I would be fine, even if she didn't make it to my birth.  Maybe I was too excited to sleep that night, because before I knew it, it was 2 am.  I felt a bit of remorse for staying up so late, knowing that I could very well wake up in labor.  I didn't want to be exhausted when it came time to give birth, so I tried to get some sleep.

That didn't last long though, because two hours later I awoke to a contraction that just about rocked me out of bed! ... (To be continued)...

To read Eagle's birth story - Part 2, click here

42 Weeks is Not That Bad

It can be a little socially isolating.  Most of the time, if people don't avoid me completely (like my mother has done for the past few weeks), the only thing they have to say is "No baby yet?" or some equally obvious question.  My mother in law keeps asking us that, and if I thought she'd see the humor in it, I'd answer with "Oh yeah!  We forgot to tell you!  We DID have a baby!"  Even my own husband, who is completely aware that the baby will come when it's good and ready, often greets me with questions like "Any contractions?"  Sigh.  I can't make myself have a baby today, no matter how much I may want to get this show on the road.

That being said, I haven't tried everything in my power to make it happen.  There are some home remedies that are decidedly unpleasant.  Castor oil, for example, beyond tasting disgusting, begins your labor by either causing you to puke or get the runs, neither of which are my idea of a good time.  I have tried a few things, eating pineapple, a glass of wine, a long walk, sex.  The bottom line is: it will happen when it happens.

Some people have tried to make me feel better, or appease their own nervous tension by insisting that I must be wrong with my dates.  Everyone that knows me knows how much I hate to be wrong, but that's not the only reason this bothers me.  Since my last daughter was born, I have used fertility awareness as a method of birth control successfully for four and a half years.  This requires women to keep track of their cycles and know when they ovulate.  For anyone who would like to do the math, my last period happened on Christmas day, and I ovulated on day 18 of that cycle.  40 weeks from Christmas gives a due date of October 1st, which I adjusted for the later ovulation.

A friend and midwife/TBA I know insists that we ought to be counting 40 weeks from our ovulation day, rather than our period, so I looked up the history behind how we measure due dates.  It seems around 1850, a doctor determined that the average length of a human pregnancy is 266 days from conception or 180 days from the first day of the last period (assuming ovulation on day 14).  But in modern times, the length of human pregnancy is being extended due to better prenatal care, nutrition and education on risk factors.  It is suggested that, for Caucasians, we add 15 days for the first time mother and 10 days for subsequent pregnancies.  So coming up with an actual "due date" can be a bit ambiguous.  Besides that, 40 weeks is an average.  Both midwifery and modern obstetrics recognize that a normal pregnancy is anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks for most women.  Technically, a women is not considered overdue until after 42 weeks.

If all this is true, why does being post EDD make people so nervous?  Why are we all so impatient, and quick to assume that something is wrong or more likely to go wrong?  Unfortunately, the medical system has overblown the risks of going overdue, and minimized or completely ignored the risks of induction.  As a pregnancy extends, the placenta can become less effective at doing its job.  This happens gradually, and begins at about 42 weeks.  This is a problem in about one percent of women over 42 weeks.  But about 35% of women are being induced, or having labors augmented with pitocin.  Even non-chemical forms of induction, such as the cervical stretch and sweep or artificial rupture of membranes, are not without risks.  "An induced labor forces the baby out before the body is ready, before the complex hormone interaction has primed the cervix and often before the baby has reached his full intrauterine maturity." (Gail Hart, The Postdates and Postmaturity Handbook)  With an induced labor, there is an increased risk of ineffective contractions, fetal distress, meconium aspiration, shoulder dystocia, vacuum or forceps extraction, and cesarean.

So with all this in mind, it is clear that routine induction at 41 weeks, as is common now in hospitals, is a pretty irresponsible practice.  Obviously, the safest and healthiest thing for me and my baby is to wait for labor to progress naturally.  In the meantime, my baby is kicking (often) and moving around like crazy.  My belly has dropped, and I'm getting a lot of infrequent contractions and menstrual-like cramps.  My cervix is mostly effaced and about a centimeter open.  These signs of early labor have been going on for about a week now.  I am not really bothered by the duration of this pregnancy so far.  My last labor started 2 weeks and 2 days after my due date, so I am not really surprised either.  For now, I feel just fine.  I am a bit uncomfortable, and it's taking me longer to get around, but I can still do what I need to do.  For the most part, I can't really complain.  42 weeks isn't that bad.

Powerful Mamas, Peaceful Births

I hit that 40 week mark earlier this week.  Not that there is anything magical about that number, but I did celebrate my going outside and taking some pictures.  The setting is not really a forest, but just a small grove of poplars, some of the only trees on our little acreage.  And even though fall in Alberta is not as colorful as other places, I LOVE the fall leaves.  So here I am kneeling on the ground in a very "ready to give birth" position.  This is the position some unassisted birthers take, because they can reach down and catch their baby in their own hands.  This picture makes me feel powerful, which I am.

Not that saying this is an ego thing, or that I feel I am any more powerful than anybody else, except that I believe in myself.  Unfortunately, I think people often underestimate pregnant women (and women in general).  We are capable of so much more than most people expect of us, and often than we expect of ourselves.  During this pregnancy, I have rototilled a large garden space, shovelled truckloads of mulch, planted, weeded, and harvested.  Not to mention packed and moved my family, patched drywall, learned to milk a goat, trimmed goat's hooves (which was no small task), built a milk stand, and put up a fence.  One thing my parents told me over and over growing up: "You can do anything you set your mind to."

So as my body prepares to have this baby, I set my mind to give birth, and I believe that I can.  I won't be alone, necessarily, but I will be in charge.  I will have the final say in who participates in this birth and in what way, and in what happens to my baby in the moments following.  Unassisted birth doesn't necessarily mean you give birth without help.  I am helped by my supportive friends and family, my husband, and a knowledgeable woman I have invited to be present, whom I believe understands and agrees with my preferences.  Unassisted birth, or more appropriately called freebirth involves a woman's right to choose where, how and with whom she gives birth.  There is no government sanctioned "professional" in attendance or in charge at a freebirth, but rather the birthing mother is the expert on her own body and what she needs to birth her baby safely and effectively.  She is free to follow her intuition and free from routine procedures, which can interfere with the course of labor.

This is not a new thing.  It is a very traditional way of birthing.  One hundred years ago, before the advent of medically managed birth on a large scale, it was the way most women birthed, and such has been the case throughout history in most cultures.  Often, the birth was attended by a female relative or trusted woman in the community, but an understanding of the process was usually common among women, and not seen as something that required patriarchal interference.

It is a fallacy to believe that our medical system has made birth safer for women or babies.  Even in our prosperous, developed nation, the morbidity and mortality rates of hospital births are extremely high, and the rate of surgery is ten times what is considered safe.  Many women and babies are injured by invasive techniques and instruments, and surgical deliveries are dangerous and painful to recover from.

That being said, the process of natural birth is a delicate dance of hormones and responses within the mother's body and the baby.  Allowing the body to cultivate these hormones is the only way to a safe, natural birth without complications.  The birth hormones flow at their best when the mother is comfortable, relaxed and free from fear.  The same is true for all mammals, and is a biological necessity.  A mother gives birth when and where she feels it is safe to do so.  If she does not feel safe, her body will hold back until she does.

With that in mind, I don't recommend unassisted birth to anyone.  I don't recommend home birth with a midwife.  I don't recommend hospital birth or birth centers.  The only place a woman should give birth is the place in which she feels most safe and comfortable.  She should recognize that there are options, and the choice is hers to make.  She should chose carefully for her sake and her baby's.  She should believe in her abilities.  I have chosen the way of giving birth that I feel is best for me.  As my body prepares to give birth, I prepare my mind as well.  I remind myself that I am a strong and powerful person.  My body is up for the task, and I can do anything I set my mind to.

Things to Come

It seems I only blog when the rest of the world is sleeping.  One reason I actually love insomnia.  It helps with creativity.  Plus, I'm pretty good about allowing myself to take a nap during the day, so if I don't get much sleep at night, I don't stress it.

There was a really awful sounding bird squawking outside my window when I woke up.  Some bird noises are peaceful and serene.  Owls are awesome.  But this bird was more like a squeaky door being opened and closed continually in my yard.  Nature: it takes all types.

Not to mention the fact that I usually wake up in the night feeling like I am dying of thirst.  Is this because I am too distracted in the day to make sure I drink enough water, or because I sleep with my mouth open, and wake up with a dry mouth and throat?  I am on my second liter of water since 4:30 am.  And yes, I have a bladder the size of a walnut.

I have about two and a half weeks till my due date.  Half of my place is still under construction.  I have made it clear that whatever doesn't get done in the next week will have to wait until after the baby's born.    I want the last two weeks before my due date with my house to myself, without construction workers coming in and out all the time.  When I've explained this to people, they've assumed it was so that I could follow my "nesting urge", or as someone put it, so that I can decorate.  It's not.  I feel very little urge to nest.  Is nesting really supposed to be an urge that all pregnant women get?  Or is it simply what they become obsessed with based on their domestic motivations?

I have much respect for my friends who are domestically inclined, who keep a neat and tidy house that looks nice, with everything in it's place, who are usually on top of things like laundry and dishes, who get all their baby stuff laid out before they enter their third trimester.  That's just not how I roll.  I would be lucky to go into labor with my kitchen floor recently swept.  I am pretty okay with the way my house is most of the time, and the amount of work I put into maintaining it.

The reason I want my own space for a few weeks before the baby's born is because I like solitude.  It helps me focus.  This construction is disrupting my chi.  I need to meditate, to settle into my space and feel like it's mine.  Like its safe, private, calm.  This baby will be born here.  So over the next few weeks, the place I intend to birth will become like a sanctuary.

Even as my inner life becomes more and more still, my outer life keeps rolling along.  Yesterday I helped build a compost, and learned about it, so that I can build one at my place this weekend.  I picked up some fencing, which will go up in preparation for when the goats come.  The goats I had been looking at got sold to someone else, and it was back to the drawing board, but I am going to look at some more this weekend.  I may just bring them home in the minivan!

I'm pretty excited about setting up my little homestead.  My goal is to produce the food we eat in a sustainable and healthy way, and take care of the land.  Part of modern homesteading is also living in a more sustainable way, which influences what I consume and my connections with the community.  Our vegetable farm has started to sell some produce at the market.  It went really well last week, and we'll be there again this week.  I'll try to post some pictures of that, and anything else that happens around the funny farm.  But for now, it's time to start the morning fiasco. Wake my daughter up get her clothes, make breakfast, pack a lunch and get her off to school.  It seems so strange, but even by grade four, I still don't find this easy.  Of all the things I do in my day, this is the hardest part.