Nearly a month ago I attended an AMAZING birth. This birth was the kind that all doula's and midwives hope for for every mother-to-be. Every woman wants to be as fortunate as Lily (the mother) when giving birth to their new baby. On one level, I feel so lucky to have witnessed such a perfect birthing experience as one of my first births. On another level, I fear that I will subconsciously expect all the future births I attend to look something like this one. This birth was different because I was actually asked to be a back up doula for my fellow doula sister, Sarah. You see, Lily was 13 days past her estimated due date when she went into labor. Sarah had already made plans to go on vacation (assuming Lily would have had her baby by now) and asked me to step in when Lily was 11 days past her EDD. I jumped right on it. I felt a bit unprepared but figured the best way to get more experience was to take on opportunities such as this. I hadn't even met Lily and Joe (her husband). I didn't know what was in their birth plan, I didn't know what they wanted from me, I didn't know much going into it, but that's sort of how birth goes. You just roll with it. I emailed Lily and Joe the next evening (12 days past EDD) and asked if they wanted to meet up. I figured it would be good for all of us to get acquainted with one another before I attended her birth, and I wanted a better idea of her birth plan and how I could best assist her. Well, that didn't happen. At about 4:30am on the morning of December 27 (now 13 days past EDD) I get a call from Lily's husband, Joe, saying that Lily has been contracting since about 1am and to meet them at the birthing center at 5:30am. It's funny how surprised I was that this was happening NOW, of all times. I mean, she WAS nearly two weeks past due, so you would think this would come as no surprise. I was all sorts of nervous, excited, anxious, and blissful. I arrived at South Austin Birthing Center at 5:30am. I walked into the room to meet Lily and Joe. She had just gotten in the birthing tub and Joe was holding her hand through contractions. I briefly introduced myself and sat on the other side of her. The midwife informed me that she was already at 8 centimeters, so it wouldn't be long before the baby was here. Whoa, that was quick. Lily put to rest any fears that I had about having an unmedicated birth myself one day (although, I don't have many). She seemingly breezed through each contraction. I'm sure this wasn't the case on her end, but she did at one point whisper that it felt really nice in the tub. Shortly after I arrived I greeted her mother, father, and sister at the entrance and they started following me back to the room. Then I realized that I didn't know who was and was not allowed in the room. As a doula, one of my jobs is to make sure all guest are approved by the parents. Without a prenatal meeting of any kind, I wasn't aware of their wishes in this matter. I asked them to wait outside for a moment and went into the room to ask Lily and Joe. They only wanted her mother and sister in there. Whew. Thank God I asked. At about 6:30am the midwife said it was time to push. She pushed in the water for about 20 minutes. The baby's heart rate would drop just a little (nothing that anyone so much as batted an eye about), but came right back up with some oxygen. The midwife then suggested that Lily push the baby out on the bed. I am still not 100% sure why she suggested this, but it appeared to be because she thought not much progress was being made when pushing in the tub. We helped Lily onto the bed where she delivered Jacob Aaron at 7am. Let me tell you, if you have never seen a live natural birth, YOU SHOULD (or, you COULD. I am learning not to "should" myself or anyone else. It's a radical honesty thing. Whole other subject). Time completely stopped for me and nothing existed outside of that room. I told Lily that it was the most perfect birth I had ever witnessed (although I have only witnessed two), and that she is my new birth role model ;) Truly, I only dream that when I give birth, it goes as smoothly and perfectly as this one. I am not sure if Lily could tell (I'm sure she had more important things to focus on, like her baby) but I couldn't stop looking "down there." Not in a weird way, but with pure curiosity. How beautifully our bodies adjust to give birth and make way for a new life. How perfectly they are designed to make and birth another human being. It's funny that we ever doubt our bodies and try to intervene when not necessary. Our bodies intuitive flow continues with the afterbirth. The placenta is a crazy magnificent life source that provides so much nutrients to our child. It was so surreal to watch a birth in such a raw state. As if Lily wasn't already super woman enough, there was no sign of her ever being pregnant as soon as Jacob came out, and when it was time to breastfeed, he had the perfect latch right away.
The beautiful flow of Lily's birth made my job super easy. Well, the fact that she was already at 8cm when I got there, coupled with a beautiful labor, and no problems breastfeeding made my job nearly non-existent. I fetched her some water, held her hand through some contractions, voiced words of encouragement, but for the most part I observed. Which I am a bit glad this labor turned out the way it did. Of course, I am up for anything that the laboring process throws at me (that's part of the job), but being a beginner at what I do, it was nice to sort of sit back and observe. After Jacob was born, everyone swooned over him. I stuck around for another hour to make sure everything went okay, to see how breastfeeding would go, and to get more familiar with the afterbirth process. Like I said, it went perfectly. When I got home that morning at nearly 9am, I crawled into bed with my partner who was still asleep and cried for a little bit while he held me. What an amazing morning that I was so blessed to experience. I will never forget it.
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| Jake and me at my postnatal meeting with Lily and Joe. He was about 2 weeks old. |
With Lily and Joe's permission, I am also going to share the birth story that they have written from their perspective. Here is the birth of Jacob according to them:
I was 12 days overdue, Wednesday, December 26th. I hadn’t had a single contraction, yet I had been 3 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced all week. We had two days to get the labor started or I would have to go to the hospital to be induced. So the plan (Plan A) on this Wednesday was to breast pump in order to induce. So Joe and I went and rented a breast pump. We got the pump home and Joe eagerly set it up so I could begin the process. After an hour of breast pumping without a single hint of a contraction we were scheduled to go do another ultrasound. The appointment was just to confirm what we already knew, everything was still OK. Next, Joe and I met with a midwife, Leonora, at the Birth Center at 4pm. She also had me on a breast pump while taking a combination of herbs. I pumped for 15 minutes at a time with 10 minute break in between. An additional measure that the midwife took in order to start contractions was a procedure called “sweeping the membranes” which basically stimulates the cervix. This was the third time this week that Leonora had done this. After doing all these things we finally went home after two hours without a single twinge of a contraction.
Now things were getting serious because we had one day left. On the last day we were going for Plan B. Our midwife said I was to consume 4 oz of castor oil in a milkshake the next morning at 8am. Then after the pooping and vomiting stopped, we would go to the birthing center and hope that the contractions would begin. If not, a midwife would accompany us to St Davids hospital to induce labor the Non-Old Fashioned way. When I heard this, my heart sank. This couldn’t happen! It wasn’t going to happen.
Joe and I left the Center at 6:30pm and picked up the castor oil and ice cream. I ate some chicken and took a bath when I got home, and went to bed at 10pm. At 1:00am I woke up because I felt constipated. I went to the bathroom, but the feeling went away. I got back in bed and the feeling came back, then went away, and then came back. I thought that was weird. All of a sudden the constipated feeling went away and the pain moved around front. I felt cramps. I thought, “Is this it?” Excited, I grabbed my phone and started timing. They were 2-3 minutes apart, 30-40 seconds long. I didn’t want to wake Joe, thinking this would go on a while and we’d just sleep through it.
The “cramps” quickly turned more serious. I woke Joe at 1:30 and he took over timing contractions.
(Joe's Story)
Lily woke me up and gave me her phone suddenly. I wasn't really awake when I heard “start timing”. Then I realized what was going on and was excited and dazed since I had only been sleeping for about two hours. I remembered I had this cool app on my computer for timing contractions so I grabbed it and began timing for the next hour. I was desperately trying to remember when we were suppose to call the midwife, 4 minutes apart, 2 minutes apart, how long, etc. I knew they told us that stuff but I couldn't remember.
It didn't take long to see a pattern in the contractions. They were already 2 minutes apart lasting around 45 seconds. After an hour I was still not sure if we should call the midwife hotline because all of the stories we heard in birthing class that indicated that you would be able to just go back to sleep for a few hours once contractions began. But, Lily finally said with a little urgency, “you should probably call now.” So I called the midwife hotline, which was an answering service. So it took about two more minutes before our midwife actually called us back. I noticed that Lily couldn’t stop shaking. It was unusual because for months she has slept in the cold with the fan on and uncovered and now we were piling blanket after blanket on her and she kept shivering. I would rub her legs and feet between contractions to warm her up and would rub her lower back during the contraction to help her relax through the contraction. Finally, I got a hold of our midwife, who was on call that night.
Our midwife called around 2:45am and asked what was going on. When she learned that it was Lily that was in labor she was pleased that Lily hadn't needed to go through Plan B. I explained that Lily had woke me up at 1:30 and we had been timing her contractions for an hour. She asked me if I knew how to time contractions, which I really didn't, and she told me to time from the start of a contraction to the start of the next contraction. Then the length of the contraction needed to exceed a minute. Looking back I can see that the frequency of the contractions was right but the duration of each contraction was not very long. Also, the midwife thought we needed to stay home longer because we had just started labor. She talked to Lily between a contraction and then we hung up and went back to timing. I think Lily was surprised that we weren't going to the center yet and I was surprised we weren't back in bed sleeping yet.
I continued timing Lily's contractions and after 30 minutes I had this realization that we weren't going back to bed. In fact, I should start getting dressed. So between contractions, I began getting ready, then timing, then gathering up our stuff, then timing, and so on. I finally noticed that the contractions were lasting 1 minute and 15 seconds every two minutes, like clock work. Lily's tone of voice and state of mind had definitely changed and she said I should call again. When we reached our midwife this time, I explained the contractions like before. Then our midwife began explaining some things to do to help Lily through the contractions. But this time, she heard Lily's groaning though one of the contractions and realized things were more serious, so we planned to meet at the center at 5:30am, another 45 minutes later.
(Back to Lily) Joe tried his best to keep my feet warm, and massaged my lower back during contractions. I started groaning through the contractions, and said, “Joe, I think you should call Leonora again.” He did, and when she heard me groaning in the background she said we should come in. Joe had been running around getting himself dressed and gathering our things. I scrambled to get dressed, threw some snacks into our birth bag and flew out the door. The Birth Center is only 2 minutes away from us. Joe had warmed up the car. We flew down the 3 flights of stairs, and I had 3 contractions before stepping foot in the Birth Center.
Leonora met us at the door and took us to the “Folk Life” birthing room, which was my favorite. The room resembled a country bed and breakfast with beautiful patch work quilts hanging on the wall. I stripped off all my clothes the minute we got in there. I was on a roll. Leonora checked me and I was 8 centimeters! She said nobody comes in at 8 centimeters, usually at 4. I was going to have this baby very soon! She drew me a bath and it felt so good. I labored there for about 45 minutes. At one point, Joe mentioned having contacted my parents and sister and that they were on their way. I don’t know why but tears started coming. They weren’t sad tears, but joyful tears. Then I cried, “I don’t want my mom to miss it.” The midwife said if I wanted them to be there I might need to cross my legs; she was joking. My family arrived at 6:15. I was reclined in the tub, Joe on my left, Mom on my right. I would grab and squeeze their hands during each contraction. Leonora frequently checked baby’s heart rate. A few times it went way down after a contraction and then way up. She thought it would be good to give me some oxygen for the baby several times. The baby's heart rate perked right up. Leonora was so good about encouraging me and giving me a head’s up about what to be expecting. For instance, she would say stuff like, “at the next contraction you might feel some stinging because the baby's head is starting to apply pressure. And sure enough that would happen. Or, she said, “you should feel an urge to push with the next contraction”, and it happened with the next contraction. During one of the contractions she broke my water for me. I knew she had done this because I had felt a “pop”. At one point I reached down and felt the baby’s head. I was so encouraged and it gave me a burst of energy realizing the baby was almost here!
Leonora asked me at about 6:45 if we could move to the bed to change positions and help things progress. I got out of the tub and had a contraction in a standing position bent over the bed. After that had passed I got into the bed and assumed the “power” birth position. I pushed for 15 more minutes and Jacob was born at 7:01am. As soon as his head popped out he started crying. The midwife quickly placed Jacob on my chest and he cried for a minute. I just laid there catching my breath, kind of in a daze. Joe checked the baby and announced “It’s a boy”, and cut his cord about 15 minutes later.
(Joe)
My wife was amazing. I had read a book and practiced doing things that would help her in labor. She didn't need me. She was so strong. I thought I would have to help her slowly down the apartment stairs to the car, but instead she flew down. I thought I would have to coach her to breathe and relax; she was so relaxed she barely squeezed my hand throughout the entire process. All I could do was encourage her and make sure she drank water the whole time. It was funny that we had talked about if Lily would be a modest person during labor or not. I was surprised to see her shuck her clothes so quickly upon arriving at the center; she had a mission. When Jacob finally slipped out, he had such a healthy cry. He was all warm and gooey, like a meat ball. The midwife was quick to flip and turn Jacob around so that I would be the first to see if he was a boy or a girl. When she showed me there was no doubt; he was a handsome little Butler boy.
(Lily)
Jacob Aaron weighed 7 lbs, 4 ounces and measured 20 inches. He is just perfect. Joe and I are so smitten with him. I give God all the glory for this amazing birth. I’m still in awe of how incredible it was!
