When I received the last issue of Birthings and read the topic for this month, "Inductions," I thought to myself, "Why would home birth mothers consider inductions given we are out of the system and don't have the same pressures as other Mums who are pushed to abide by hospital regulations that state that 40 weeks plus 10 days is the magic number for every baby?" I figured if it was medically necessary, home birth Mums would obviously need to consider an induction, but why push a baby to come before he or she is ready as wouldn't it be best to give them the time to choose their birth date and wouldn't it be more interesting to find out which day they decided was their special moment to land in their parents arms? Those thoughts came a few days before we were due to have our baby on December 19, 2009 and my "wouldn’t it be more interesting to wait and see theory" nearly went out the window several times as I rode the roller coaster of "overdue" emotions up and down for exactly 19 days and weathered the emotional storm of being overdue during my 42 week 5 day pregnancy.
The irony of being so far overdue was that I always say in my prenatal classes that a normal gestation is between 37-42 weeks and that it is important to not tell yourself that you are going to have your baby early as most babies come after their due date. So what did I do? About midway through our pregnancy, I told our midwife, Betty Vella, that David and I both had a feeling separate to speaking to each other that our sweet little muffin was going to arrive around December 15. I was not only going to have our baby before his due date, but we had actually intuitively figured out the date of our baby's birth. Laugh. Now if that doesn't smell like a bit of trouble, then it is no wonder that I nearly lost the plot on several occasions.
December 15 came and went and I was frustrated as my theory flew out the window, where was our baby? Maybe he will be like our daughter and be born on his due date, but what was the likelihood of that happening? My main worry was that our baby would be born on Christmas and I really didn't want a baby born during the holidays. Little did I know that our baby heard me loud and clear and decided to be way on the other side of the holidays.
His due date, December 19, went by and I was o.k. I figured, wouldn't it be amazing to have a baby on the summer solstice? December 22 slipped past and we were headed for the holidays. I kept telling myself to let our baby decide when he wanted to come and be patient. Any day was fine with us, but Christmas. I didn't want to be controlling; I just kept picking the days of MY preference for birthdays. Laugh.
Then, my next hiccup was telling myself that most babies come within a week after their due date. That week came and went and so did my frustration as I started to also value moments together with my husband and our two year knowing that our lives were about to change dramatically. We still had no desire to induce our baby and wanted to give him the time he needed, but maybe a bit of sex would encourage him just before Christmas. Sex was nice actually, the orgasms were fabulous, I felt some more intensity in the braxton hicks waves through the day and then, NOTHING. "O.K.," I thought to myself, "No more trying. I was just going to let this baby decide on his day. He must have some unique date picked out. Oh, a blue moon on December 31 and a partial lunar eclipse. My baby is going to be born on December 31.” David suggested on that morning that maybe if I laid out in our back yard naked under the full moon that might trigger the labour. I laughed at the thought as that was the most creative induction method we had come up with yet, but decided to pass on the idea.
January 1 at 2 a.m. I woke up. David woke up. Both wide awake we decided to use our time on the couch pressing on some gentle acupressure points. Wouldn't 01/01/10 be such a cool birth date? At least the light touch massage was nice for both of us as I woke up pregnant as ever when the sun came up that morning. Mornings were the hardest part of the day. I knew that nothing had happened during the night and as the day wore on, I became hopeful each evening that my labour might start and we would be holding our baby in the morning.
Worry started to over take me. Our midwife had another mother who was due on January 5 and she went early with her first baby. What was the chance that our baby would come on the same day? Should I use those herbs that our friend Gin had made up for us? No, I didn't want to start our birth story; I wanted our baby to start the birth. Little did I know, I was birthing a lesson in patience and trust as I still had one more week.
Betty came on Sunday, January 3. I was 42 weeks plus one day and surprised to still be pregnant as Betty, David and I figured we would have our baby sometime during the week. We even booked the appointment in the morning thinking it would be a post-natal appointment. Betty was not phased and very confident and trusting of my body and our baby. David and I had said the week before that if we were still pregnant on Sunday, we would do the first ultrasound of our pregnancy on Monday. After listening to our baby's heartbeat, which was really loud, clear and strong, we not worried in the least, nor was Betty, so we decided to wait and see if we would have our baby in the coming week. Nonetheless, we figured that it wouldn't hurt to have Betty do some gentle reflexology. That day came and went and so did the night. Thankfully, the reflexology did nothing to encourage our baby to come as the next morning Betty's other client had her baby. I was so relieved and gone was the worry that we would miss out on having Betty at our birth.
Wednesday, January 5, I cried before I went to bed, each time I got up to use the toilet, and in the morning when the sun rose as there was no movement to indicate that the birth was going to start and I was so over being pregnant. I had lost the plot and hit a wall. I was not willing to do any other types of inductions like a sweep of my cervix, acupuncture, or herbs. I really wanted my baby to choose his day. The wait was the longest of my life. I called Betty and just started crying on the phone. We sat there and talked about any fears that I might have about the birth. My fear of the baby getting stuck came up again and I realized that it was my birth story coming up as my mother had been asleep during my birth and I was stuck in the birth passage without my mother able to push me and also being drugged not being able to use my own push to come out. But this birth would be different. I was going to be awake, moving around and assisting our baby. He would be aware and able to use his power to push his way through with my uterus working with us. Speaking to Betty, I had compared being pregnant to being on a train and only being able to get off when the baby decided on the stop. Betty told me that I needed to get back on the train and trust as we both knew I was trying to jump off before the final stop. I got back on my pregnancy journey. That evening, I started to feel some changes in my body indicating that we were approaching the final station if not that night; it wouldn't be too far away.
At 3:45 am. on January 7, I happily told my husband that I felt I was in pre-labour and we sent a text to Betty to let her know so she would not go to work that morning. I slept through the night until our toddler woke up at 6 a.m. Still in pre-labour, I wondered if it would all fizzle out with the sun and our toddler rising. Betty assured me I would continue to progress. I was so comforted by her reassurance.
At 7 a.m., the waves started to come every few minutes and at first I wondered if I was in established labour, but after about twenty minutes, we were calling our support people to come to the house. When Betty arrived at 7:40, I asked her to check how dilated I was and she asked if I really wanted to know? With all my practice in relaxation and meditation in preparation for the birth, I have such an easy time with the first stage of labour that it is hard for me or a midwife to tell where I might be as I look and sound so relaxed and with it. I went on to say to Betty that the control freak in me needed to know as I had been so out of control this whole pregnancy. She laughed and announced that I was already 8 cm. We had already had the pool filled and ready, so I gleefully jumped in.
After waiting so long to be in labour, I welcomed each wave and even had a smile on my face at times. I was only concerned that my support people would not arrive in time for the birth. I was so happy to hear our friend Tamara come into the house. Her role was to look after our two year, four month old daughter, Maia. My friend Cassandra came in shortly after with her healing spirit and energy ready to give me support and video the birth. But where was dear Kyle who had camped out around home over the holidays, only venturing short distances and always with her camera and technical equipment ready to photograph the birth? When David had called her earlier, she said something about taking a few hours to get a rental car and I was yelling to David, "Tell her to come now, the show is definitely on and I am in established labour!" Little did I know that her car had died and she had to walk to the car rental place with all her stuff and drive from the other side of the city which on a good day could take her about 40 minutes. I could feel myself waiting and when I heard her enter the house I said out loud, "Thank GOD Kyle is here!" and I felt myself let go and the labour progressed.
I look back at my birth experience and I see flashes of me on my hands and knees in the birth pool just surrendering to each wave. It was intense and I would meet it and go into it and relax with it, allowing it to work through me. Before I had been chatty in between the waves, but now I was just quiet in between. At one point, I remember one surge being very intense and uncomfortable, but I decided to play with it and use a little mantra that I had heard on Ian Gawler's relaxation c.d.s, "Softening, Loosening, Relaxing, Releasing, Simply Letting Go." And to my surprise, the discomfort diminished and was almost gone. I was playing with the discomfort and it was working...laugh. Other times, I just needed to accept the power of a surge and go with it. My back in this labour was far more uncomfortable and I must have been at transition when I had a thought surface that I just wanted it to stop. I quickly got back on track and went with it. I started to feel an urge to push and asked Betty if it was o.k. to push. She gently kept reminding me to just listen to what my body was telling me to do. I started pushing and soon I felt a pop as my waters broke. Then, my husband lovingly put his hands on my hips and we swayed together as I pushed our baby down with each subsequent wave.
The baby was coming on view, but I was afraid to push and that is when Betty did something magical. She put her forehead against mine and held my face with her hands. I felt my jaw relax, I felt my butt relax and my lower half just let go as she encouraged me to keep following my body and that it was o.k. to push. We kept working together in that way and then my baby's head came through my vagina! Hooray! I was almost there. The next contraction came and went and no baby. Another contraction and Betty told me that on the next contraction, she was just going to assist our baby's shoulders out. My fear surfaced and I started to worry about the baby getting stuck. So the next wave came up and she told me to PUSH and I let out an almighty "OM........" "OM........" and "OM......" at first she tried to assist the top shoulder and then the bottom and there our baby boy came through and out into his father's hands who then passed him underneath the water through my legs to me at precisely 9:30 a.m. after exactly two and a half hours of established labour. I saw him floating there before me as I reached down and gently pulled him up, careful not to pull him out of the water too fast and I brought him to me. By that time, our two year old had come into the room with Tamara and had seen her brother born. After a few minutes, we looked down to see that YES, my gut feeling through the pregnancy was confirmed, we had a lovely, little boy. Our son Kiran was finally with us.
This is the birth that made me feel whole. I don't know how to say it otherwise or put into words how pieces of myself seemed to finally come together as if to say, "YES, I am healed and I am whole." Gone was the trauma of my own birth and the feelings of inadequacy that came up in the second and third stages of my previous birth experience with our daughter where my perineum would not stretch and our daugther's heartbeat stayed at 80 beats per minute requiring me to have an episiotomy. This was the first our midwife had to perform in her ten years of home birth experience. The placenta that did a dirty dummy came out inverted and stayed half in and half out of my vagina for what seemed to be an eternity and within the week, a prolapsed uterus. All of that simply washed away as I held my son.
This birth was so different. Although, I have to say that my first birth experience was amazing and positive, the problems that surfaced during the second and third stages took away from the high that I came to feel after Kiran's birth. He just came out and I only had a small tear that didn't require a stitch thanks to all the perineal massage, the epinode and those calmbirth lessons and PSH sessions with the lovely Peter Jackson. My placenta just easily fell out and it was as large as a dinner plate and red and healthy. My uterus did prolapse slightly, but not as much as the first birth and I know that it will come back up as it did following my daughter's birth.
So after eating stale cake that had been baked nearly a week before and seeing our lovely friends and midwife off, we were so thankful for the beauty that Kiran’s birth brought to us. It is no wonder his name means, “Source of Light.” As his little light gave me a glimpse into the power I had within myself, the beauty of how Mother Nature moves through us and how incredibly designed women are to birth their babies if we just trust, let go and let the force move through us.
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