A Mother's Decision to Home Birth

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  The journey to my homebirth began not this past summer when it occurred, but four long years ago at the birth of my first daughter.
  
  I went into labour with that first child on a hot August morning. I had spent a lot of time researching pregnancy and parenting, but devoted an embarrassingly tiny amount of thought to the birth itself. I knew that pain was bad and drugs were good. That was the extent of my thought process. I didn’t fully comprehend just how profoundly this experience would affect me and as such, I completely deferred to the hospital staff.
  
  

  

  
  
  The hospital staff were not villainous in any way. In fact, they helped me to achieve the exact kind of birth I was hoping for at that time. The moment that contractions started, I got a shot of morphine. When they intensified, I got the epidural. When the epidural was so effective that I couldn’t locate the proper muscles to push, they used a vacuum to help me out. My first child was born. It truly was one of those rare moments in time where angels sing, time stops and the love that you feel is so strong that it makes you ache. And yet, in the midst of all that magic I couldn’t help feeling as though I might have missed out on something. My doubt in my own ability to cope with pain, created a situation where I hadn’t even tried.
  
  In those early days of being a mom however, the belief in myself grew. I existed on little sleep, I was an advocate, and I loved with a ferocious passion that I never knew existed. I began to research birth and birth methods extensively. This research consumed me in an almost retroactive attempt to reclaim the power that I had so easily parted with.
  Three years later, I became pregnant again. It seemed only logical that armed with this new knowledge and confidence I would pursue midwifery care and explore the option of a home birth. I was put on a wait list for a midwife and in the meantime stayed with my GP whom I trusted immensely.
  
  As the weeks ticked by, I became even more fascinated with the idea of birthing at home. I would have family and friends ask why I had become so fixated on this notion and I didn’t really have an answer. It was just one of those things that you know you have to do but you are not entirely certain as to why. I had tunnel vision, and the end of that tunnel was the image of me holding my baby in my warm and comfortable bed.
  The end point looked fabulous, but in truth the journey to get there was still one that terrified me. I was frightened once again, of my ability to cope with the pain. In those last weeks when everyone kept asking me how excited I was, I had to fake it. Truthfully, I was consumed with self defeating thoughts of failure.
  
  My due date came and went and yet still I had no baby. I went to my midwife appointment and at 40+2 my cervix was thick, closed and high. We sat there and discussed how to manage this turn of events and what my wishes were and I broke down. I knew that my body wasn’t responding because my mind had created such a huge internal block. If I had any hopes of delivering naturally I had to go easier on myself and simply do the best I could.
  The next morning I woke up and my water broke. I called the midwife who was not on my team and at another birth and she told me to hang tight. She would come and check it out when that birth was done, but to call if contractions were 4 minutes apart, lasting one minute, for one full hour.
  
  I started contracting about 15 minutes apart. I didn’t want my playlist, or birth ball or any of the carefully planned things that I had set out. All I wanted to go lay on the couch and watch The Kardashians.
  
  My older daughter woke up and that made me very emotional. I was eating breakfast with her, acutely aware that it was our last breakfast as a family of three. My plan was to keep her around thinking that her and I could snuggle and bond as things progressed. Apparently, that’s more of a TV thing. I would have a contraction and she would be jumping around and I couldn’t deal with it. We called our friends to pick her up, which was the right choice but made me even more emotional. She walked out the door and I just lost it, tears, boogers, the worst. It was a bit heavy to deal with while in labour.
  
  

  

  
  
  I was coping pretty well with the contractions by walking around. My husband is someone who likes to be busy when stressed out so he cleaned and checked our supplies repeatedly.
  Not long after my daughter left they seemed to be coming pretty closely. Four minutes apart but not a full minute and certainly had not been happening for an hour as it was only 10am or so. Still, I felt I should call and the midwives said that they were on their way but still a half hour out of the city.
  
  I continued to handle the contractions well, I just kept walking because laying down and the birth ball were excruciating.
  
  The midwives came and I was desperately hoping to be 10cms. I had always heard that transition was the worst pain, and was looking forward to being past it and beginning to push. They checked me and I was only 6cms and I was pretty disappointed. I continued to walk around by myself and contended with really pointless and negative thoughts like “If I was two yesterday, all this pain has been for four centimeters” or “I have pretty much this entire thing to do again” or “You have had an epidural, it was great, why are you even bothering with a home birth?” I considered going to the hospital, but thought I’d try the bath first. It took forever to fill up and contrary to every single birth story I have ever heard, it was awful. I got in, sat down, had one contraction and got right out. I sat in my towel perched on the side of the bed and somehow that was okay. I would contract, the midwives would talk me through it, Steve cooled me down with a cloth and ice chips which helped a lot. I stopped thinking of the end point and just dealt with one at a time. Let myself feel them, amp up, hang on and then let go and lose their bite.
  
  I sat for a while and then got up. I went to the bathroom and instinctively I knew that I needed to be checked again.
  
  Midwives looked and I still had a lip which they were able to pull up and around babies head. I hadn’t felt the sensation to push with the first labour because of the epidural, and it was just extraordinary. It was instinctual and animalistic and sounds came out of me that I didn’t even know I was capable of making. The contractions didn’t hurt as much, but the pushing itself was more effort than I could have imagined. After a few I was like “So, um, is she close?” I didn’t feel like I had a lot left to give.
  
  I pushed a few more times and they suggested that I change positions to a birth stool because sometime that can help. I sat down and pushed, but I didn’t love it. My body wanted to arch my back and they kept telling me to tuck my chin. I was sweating so it was hard to even hold on. At some point a huge gush of blood erupted and I could see it through the mirror on my closet.
  Things got kind of frantic at that point. The midwife was saying that she didn’t know where the blood was coming from and they were doing extra monitoring. I asked “What do we do now?” and the midwife said “We need to get this baby out, NOW”. I was pushing and in between pushes I was saying how scared I was. They got me back on the bed and she said not to worry that she could get her out if she had to with an episiotomy (to which I was thinking, just do it already). I was really scared because I knew how much was riding on my shoulders and quite frankly, I didn’t know if I had the strength to push anymore. It was terrifying.
  On the bed she got out the scalpel but at the last second my previous episiotomy ripped open and at 1:15pm out came sweet Matilda. Perfectly healthy in every way and screaming within seconds! They were fearing a placental abruption, and had already dialed 911 on the phone.
  
  

  

  
  They put her on my chest and in a few minutes I delivered the placenta. She was already rooting and I immediately nursed her.
  
  The blood as it turned out, was from an internal rip that went up into my cervix in addition to the one in my perineum. Midwife attempted to repair it just at home in my bed, but was not able to get as high as she needed to. She suggested a hospital transfer via ambulance to get everything repaired.
  
  

  
  

  
  At the same time they weighed Matilda who ended up being 9 pounds 9 ounces and also required a hospital transfer to check on her blood sugar. I went in the ambulance, but for some reason they wouldn’t let the baby come with me so Steve drove behind us.
  I was riding there and just thinking “Holy shit, I can’t believe I just did that!”
  At the hospital both myself and the baby were checked out and given the all clear to go home that evening.
  
  

  

  
  
  I have had a lot of people tell me how sorry they were that my home birth “failed” and how disappointing it must have been to wind up in the hospital anyways. In truth, I don’t view this experience as a failure but instead a success of epic proportions. The home birth was important to me, not for the house itself but rather because it symbolized my ability to overcome my fear. I think sometimes about those last few pushes. I think about how scary it was to see the blood on the floor, how exhausted my body was by that point and how in those critical moments I found the strength to continue. I was able to do that because I am a mom. I drew strength for the same reserves that all moms do. When our child is up with a fever at 3am and we know that our alarm is going off at 6. When the same child is having a complete meltdown in a grocery store and we don’t give in, but rather finish our shopping with our heads held high. When we send them off to school for the very first time and hold back our own tears so that they don’t think school is anything less than fantastically awesome. All of us moms, whether we have had home births or c-sections, breastfed or formula fed, we all find strength in ourselves that we never knew existed.