A Birth At Home.

Baby A, born January 16th 2013, At 11:15 pm.

 Now that things are starting to find a new normal I feel I have time to tell the story of our delivery of our third little one.

My parents came to town and stayed for a week in hopes of meeting the new baby and helping us after she was born. As it turned out she needed more time in the oven and didn't make her appearance for them. With my other two babies they came before or just after my due date and so by the time I was a week passed my due date I was ready for her to be here. I was having a very hard time sleeping. My hips were killing me and some nights I had a lot of contractions. It was nice to have my parents here to take the kids in the daytime I spent quite a few days sleeping while they took the kiddos out to play. Finally last Tuesday I decided to get my membranes swept. I have never considered doing this before and I had mixed feelings about it. Deep down I was hoping it would work immediately (which is super unlikely  it takes about 24 hours if it even works at all) and she would be born before my parents went home the following morning.

At about one in the morning on Wednesday I was having solid contractions that were real. They came about every 10 minutes and lasted about 30-40 seconds long. I told hubby and we called my midwife at about 3:30. She lives about an hour and a half away so I told her I didn't want her to come until later that morning especially since I hadn't had any blood or fluid. We were all expecting the labor and delivery to be fairly fast because my two previous children were. I got up at 4:30 and ate some food while hubby took the kiddos next door. Then we went back to bed. I woke up at 7 and realized I hadn't had a contraction in about an hour. I called my midwife back because i didn't want her to drive all the way here for nothing. After that I called my neighbor and we decided that she would keep the kids until at least noon to give me a chance to see if things would start back up. Hubby was convinced things would start back up and at 8 am I had another contraction. Hubby then decided to try to trick my body into thinking it was night time and he covered all the windows to make it dark in the house. Then he started recording all of my contractions and the times they lasted. We did this and watched a lot of X-files on Netflix until about 2 pm.

 I took a shower at some point and was surprisingly hungry. I ate a lot of food all day long. All that time I had about 2-3 contractions an hour and they were pretty mild in intensity but they were lasting 30 seconds to a minute. At about 2 they started to speed up in frequency and length and my midwife called and said she would be coming to town later to check on me. By the time she got here at 6:30 at night I was having a contraction about every 4 to 5 minutes and they had started to last longer and were more intense. She decided to go get some dinner and I was debating setting up the birth tub in our living room. Right after she left things sped up dramatically. I was having a harder time with the pain and I decided to get in our tub. I didn't want to set up the birth tub because now that I was having baby three it was less of a "fun" thing and I always commented before how I felt it slowed things down for me. Hubs drew me a bath and I got in it and then my midwife returned with take out. She decided to be fast because of how things seemed to be progressing when she left. She listened to the baby's heartbeat and told me the water was to hot. We put in cool water and shortly after that I was out of the tub because the cast iron cools down so fast it stopped being effective for me. I also wanted to be checked to see how dilated I was.

 I was at an 8 and things were getting intense and I was hoping the baby would be out soon. I think it was about 7:30 at this point I kind of lost all sense of time and my contractions were coming really fast and hard. I remember moving around the house a lot and trying to get into all sorts of different positions. I found myself praying that the baby would come out quickly and everything would be fast. I had my midwife check me a couple more times and then at some point I decided I would like to try to push. I had been feeling a lot of pressure. I did a few pushes and then I ended up lying on my side on the bed. As I pushed in this position I started to feel really large movements from the baby and I started being very vocal about how much pain I was in. All I remember is how bad those movements hurt. They almost opposed the contractions and when there was a break in the contractions the movement would happen and it was worse then the contractions themselves. This lasted for what I think was like 5 minutes or more and when it was done I declared that I swore that the baby just spun around inside me. After that I got up never to lay in that position again and we went into the bathroom to push from the toilet.

I have no I idea how long all this went on and I tried to leave the bathroom a few more times to do various other positions  I kept saying that everything hurt and nothing felt good. I remember our midwife saying "well ya everything is going to hurt because I was in labor." Eventually I started to ask to have my water broken and my midwife told me it would break on its own when it was time. Sure enough it did break while I was pushing in the bathroom.  Right after that my contractions went away for a while and we moved into the living room. While we were in there I whispered to hubs that I couldn't push this baby out and that I didn't want to try anymore. I was starting to be really tired. We moved back to the bathroom. Shortly after that I managed to muster more energy to push and I could finally feel it working. Her head started to come out and I remember  feeling so relieved to have that sensation. I remember my midwife announcing that the baby was posterior and that she had been having suspicions that she was. Shortly after that she was born and I was holding her in my arms. We went to the bed and I was so happy she was out.

During the time I was being attended too just after the birth we talked about the position of the baby. How I had felt her turn during the labor. Hubby said that it was weird looking when she started to come out and that he thought it was a bunch if cord all balled up but then he realized it was her face. I realize now that it was because of her position that made me so tired and made it take so long. Really it wasn't that long of intense labor and pushing, just a little over 4 hours.

Looking back I am glad we have decided to have our babies at home naturally. I have found that it truly is possible to manage the pain of natural birth. I have thought a little about my 2nd and 3rd labors and the untypical or strange way they progressed and it makes me shudder to think about what would have happened if I had been  at the hospital. You can read about the birth of our middle child here. Baby three was a whole pound lighter than the other two and I finally accomplished my goal of not tearing.

I am grateful we live very close to a hospital in case something had gone wrong. I am grateful for my midwife and her assistant and the relationship I have with them. I am grateful for my husband and the awesome support he gives my during labor. He holds me up, stands in uncomfortable small spaces to encourage me for hours and is right on the same page as I am of how and where we want to bring our children into this world. I see the birth of a a child as a special spiritual event and am grateful I am healthy enough to have my babies at home.

I am looking forward to our future as a family of five and am happy to be on the other side of pregnancy and delivery. Lets hope I can keep it this way this time.

Waiting for Baby

Its been quiet around here and I have been just waiting to have this baby. It keeps snowing and  I don't think I have been outside in a few days. I like the snow. It makes things cozy and I have been preparing my home for her arrival and the work it will take to get her here.

At first when I found out I was pregnant I was really upset. Mostly because my last pregnancy was still so fresh. My memories of labor and delivery were so fresh. I couldn't comprehend another nine months of feeling sick and uncomfortable. Now that its has been almost two years of being pregnant I cant really remember what it feels like to be normal. I have the knowledge that I will have more energy and no longer have heartburn but I am having a hard time imagining my life that way.

My official due date is tomorrow and last week I decided that I needed some projects to take my mind off of the waiting and wondering when this baby would come and what the labor would be like this time. I was pleasantly surprised with baby 2 how much easier it was than baby 1 but I am a little nervous about baby 3 for some reason. I decided to finish an old project that has been on the back of my mind since we moved into our house. I did a blog post of it way back when and you can see it here. All I had left to do was the binding and thanks to the internet and Pinterest I was able to find a couple of tutorials on how to do a binding fast and easy. It didn't turn out perfect but it is finished and I am happy.

Here is another project I finished. I got this idea off of Pinterest as well. They are burp clothes. I used some fat quarters that I had lying around from a project I thought I would do almost a year ago but never felt quite right about, and some old towels I had. I was really tempted to use some of my more tattered cloth diapers but decided to go with the towels because I thought they would look better. Normally when I use something for burp clothes I use my infant sized prefolds because they are just so dang adsorbent, but they are not very cute out in public. I am hopeful these will be adsorbent as well. I don't know about you but something can be as cute as it wants but if it doesn't work I will use something that does.

Here is a picture of our back porch  It is my staging ground for our home birth. It turns out that you have a lot of stuff to gather to have a baby at home, especially if you are going to have a birth tub. It is nice that we have a room to shove it all in so it doesn't have to take up a corner of our living room.

I am anxious to get this baby out of my body. I am ready to feel and look normal again. I love how right after  I have a baby I am so happy to eat. The negative associations that have built up around food for the past nine months immediately go away. Last time we ordered in Indian food and if we can we are going to do it again. It was sooooo good.

I am nervous about what labor will be like and how long it will be. I am nervous about how it will start. Even though I am doing this for the third time I still worry about my water breaking and soaking the bed while I sleep. Deep down I know I can do this at home, in the setting I have chosen surrounded with the people that I know. I know that once it starts it will be ok and I will make it to the other side. Its the anticipation that makes it hard.

I'm going to hope and wonder again if this baby will come tonight.

Baby Girl

We had our baby girl December 19th. And we sure were surprised since we thought it was going to be a boy because I carried her vary similar to the way I carried our son. I was all baby sticking way out front. Though in hindsight I do think she sat a little lower down than he did. It was really fun not knowing what she was and I am glad that we didn't find out now because I would have been stressed out trying to figure out how a girl and a boy were going to share a room and have it look good too.

 We had her at home and the labor took 11.5 hours. It sounds like a long time expecially since I have always only counted the part of labor with bubie that was the hard part and it was 7 hours. If I were to count the early labor pains with him (which didnt bother me, my mom laughed when I commented how easy it was) it would have been about 20 hours.

My water started to leak with our little sweet pea at 7:00 am and from there I called our midwife and then continued on with my day. Hubby took our little man to a friends house and my contractions were pleasantly mild. I did the dishes and ate breakfast and my husband and I made up our bed to prepare it in case we had the baby there. When I finally got checked at around 11 and I was dilated to 6-7. That totally surprised us because my contractions were no closer together than 4 or 5 minutes. At that point we blew up the birth tub and filled it which took about an hour. That is always the part of labor that I look forward to the most, since I practically grew up in the hot tub at the swimming pool. I got in and the midwives showed up. They checked me again at around 1:30 and I was at 8-9. I was so shocked because the contractions were not intense and still not very close together. I was talking and we were laughing in between each one. Around 3 pm I started to want to push. I was fully dilated and I pushed and pushed and pushed. I pushed for 2.5 hours. Some pushing happened in the tub, some on our bed. At the end my contractions were still too far apart and I didn't feel I was getting anywhere. My midwife told me I was going to have to get the courage and push the baby out. My legs had started to cramp up and it was terrible. Honestly the leg cramps were the worst part. I had been thinking for some time that if worst came to worst I would squat to have the baby. I knew from our birth class before we had bubie that squatting was a really efficient way to get a baby out.  Since my legs were killing me and I had such weird contractions I decided it was time to get it finished. At that point I announced that I was going to go over by the closest  (where there was a decent sized patch of bare floor) and have the baby. And I did. One last agonizing push which seemed to last forever and then I remember our midwife asked if I was going to see what we had. I looked down and saw the babies face starring up and me and then had to look further and saw that she was a girl.

I was really happy to have this baby because I was not happy pregnant. She was killing my back and I had a slew of other complaints. Hubby kept saying that he thought my delivery would be a breeze because my pregnancy with our son was so easy and the delivery was so hard. I keep thinking that I feel like my labor with our little girl was so easy because I kept expecting my entire body to be in pain and to be throwing up every 10 minutes which is what happened in my first labor.  I think the biggest reason I was unhappy being pregnant this time was that I had absolutely no energy or drive. That is not like me because I am usually a really high energy, go, go, go project kind of girl. I am really looking forward to this next year in our home as a family because I feel like I am going to be myself again and be able to do so much.

 I am glad hubby took this sweet little picture of her feet. I love babies feet. Her feet are so different then bubies feet were. she has slender feet with pretty toenails. His feet have always been fat, wide, and cursed with the flat toenails that run on my dads side of the family. Pregnancy and birth truly are amazing events. I remember my mother telling me that birth is a miracle when I was pregnant with our son. She is right.

 Our little man is always trying to touch her. He calls it "being soft" which is him touching her face and head and I don't think it is always very soft. He likes to give her kisses and has generally been sweet. Although the past couple of days he has started to be a little more rough,

Things have started to calm down for us around here. Baby Girl is six weeks old now. I am going to try to be better about blogging. Start checking in on us more...we have a lot of growing to do around here.