Pregnancy

Here’s my last post in the pregnancy category for a while!

For a week or so before my due date, I had been waking up around 2am with contractions that were too strong for me to sleep through. I would get up, do a hypnobabies script, and then they’d usually die down enough for me to sleep. My husband and I kept joking that she was going to be born at 2am.

At 2am the night after my due date, I woke up to go to the bathroom and realized that I wasn’t having contractions. I thought, “Oh well, I guess it’ll be another day.” As I sat back down in bed, I felt a gush. Confused, I went and changed my clothes and went to the bathroom again. A bunch more liquid came out when I stood up, so I changed again. I did this 4 times before I realized that my water had broken. There was a pile of clothes in my bathroom from all of the changes. My water had never broken on its own, and I definitely hadn’t imagined that it would break before labor!

I woke my husband up and told him that I thought my water had broken. It kept gushing, so I called my midwife who told me to put on one of the adult diapers in my birth kit – niiiiice. I had my first good contraction a few minutes after my water broke and I realized this was definitely the real thing. I started shaking from adrenaline. I called my parents on the east coast and told them to book a flight ASAP and maybe they could get here in time! My midwife told me to call back later. She said I sounded like “Yay! I’m having a baby!” and I needed to call when I felt like “Get her out!” or “I don’t want to do this!” I came downstairs, posted on GCM, and my husband and I did some final little cleanups before the baby arrived.

For the next 2 hours I had contractions that were still very manageable. Around 4:30 they started to become more intense, so I grabbed my birth ball and my ipod and started listening to my hypnobabies birthing day script and affirmations. It felt so good to sit on the ball, listen to the scripts, and lean on my husband and the bed during the contractions. I was so excited that everything was so manageable.

I decided to hop in the shower and see if I liked that. I didn’t. I felt really cold all of the sudden and wanted nothing to do with the shower. I told my husband to call my midwife because things were really picking up. I went back to my birth ball, and kept practicing my hypnobabies while the contractions came.

My midwife arrived around 5:30 and by then it felt really good to make horsey lips or a low sound during the contractions. I was still using my fingerdrop and hypnobabies. My midwife checked me and I was 5cm. I stayed near my husband and wanted to lie on my side. I felt like my blood sugar was low and I felt a little dizzy. My midwife made me some eggs and brown rice and I felt a little better after eating. By 6:40 the contractions really started to pick up and for a few of them I was having trouble relaxing. I told my husband that I wasn’t keeping myself limp like I needed to, so we moved positions and I started to get concerned that the hypnosis wasn’t going to work. I had him say some affirmations. Around 7:00 my birthing tub was almost full, so I decided to move over there. As soon as I hit the water, my midwife said my countenance changed. I felt so calm. The contractions were really intense but in a way that I could totally handle. They were tight and had a lot of pressure, but not pain. My hypnosis was working again. My body was pushing. Amy (my midwife) checked and said I was a 7.

The next few waves were great, but intense. My body kept pushing. I was trying not to push, but I couldn’t control it. I told Amy that I was going to poop and she put on a glove and grabbed the net. I pushed and thought “My goodness, what did I eat last night?!” I pushed a few more times and heard “The head is out!” I guess I didn’t need to poop after all. The assistant midwife arrived just then and scrambled to get things ready. I was in between waves and had no desire to push. I pushed during the next contraction and Sarah was out. I sat there in the pool amazed. After two complicated births, I had had my beautiful homebirth. It was amazing!

We went to my bed after the placenta was delivered and my kids held her after she nursed. My 5yo son cut the cord. It was all so beautiful and peaceful. I still can’t believe it! I had never gone into labor completely on my own, had never gone drug free, had never had an uncomplicated birth, and my body did it all! I’m so proud of body!

This week I have been struck by how (unknowingly) dependent I have been on the opinions of my care providers. I like to think of myself as a pretty independent woman, and yet I’ve noticed that I keep thinking that I need to check with my midwife on things I already know.

My example for this week:

At GCM we are blessed with a wonderful retired midwife whose opinion I trust more than any doctor. She recommends a few supplements from time to time, and I decided to pick them up after she made some personal recommendations to me. I noticed that my first instinct was to jot down a note to ask my midwife if she approved. The more I thought about it, the more odd that I realized my thinking was. I knew my midwife would leave it up to me – she’s not the type to force her opinion. She will give me her thoughts if I ask for them, but it is not that I need her permission to do something.

I’m not sure how I got into a habit of not thinking for myself, because that is one of the last ways that I’d ever want to be described. It has happened though. Somehow I lost trust in myself and decided that I needed validation from “experts”. When I ask questions, I usually get responses that I already know, and yet I somehow have been desiring the comfort that comes from hearing my own thoughts coming at me from a more respected source. How bizarre!

Really… there is something very wrong.

As I mentioned a few entries ago, hearing the heartbeat has made me much more focused.  Today I decided to resume my reading of Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth.  I got to the part where she talks about the fact that many women have excessive bleeding when they deliver the placenta, and my whole body tensed up.  I was pretty impressed that I noticed it, but freaked out that it not only scared me but also created a physical response.  Just a few paragraphs later I saw this

Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon.  You are not a machine.  The Creator is not a careless mechanic.  Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo.  Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

This is the core of it.  I am afraid that my body doesn’t work as well as it is supposed to.  Things have happened, and even if many were the result of interventions and modern science, it still rattles me a bit.  I said from the beginning that my biggest challenge would be in trusting my body and relaxing during the birth.  If I can relax and trust in peace, then I know I will be fine.  I’m just not exactly sure how to get there.

On a related note, I have recently realized how much I hold my stress in my body.  My yoga teacher commented last week that my shoulders were super tense.  I’ve been having a lot of migraines, and they always “sit” in my shoulders.  I am working so hard on relaxing my body, but its tricky.  Who knew that controlling your own body could be so challenging?