Welcome to Baby #4! & News Interview: More women in utah and the nation are choosing to give birth at home

Ready or not, get set, go!

Yesterday afternoon I got an unexpected phone call from channel 5 news asking to be interviewed about my home birth experience as they were doing a story on the rising number of women in utah choosing home birth.

Apparently the number of women choosing this option here has doubled, though that does not mean much statistically since it was only 1% in 1990 and has only risen to about 2% in the last 2 decades.  They also cannot differentiate the data to know which home births were planned vs. unplanned which is a huge difference in safety.  They wanted to do the story because a report was just released by the health department stating which facts they did know about the rise in which the health department said that it just wanted women to become more educated about their decision and in choosing a qualified caretaker to prevent any risks.  This is so important no matter where you give birth as safety is most mother's number one concern.  Choosing home birth for me made sense because I came from a family that has experienced planned home births safely for generations, however my first I had in the hospital to appease friends and relatives on my husbands side of the family.  For me the hospital was a place full of fear and protocols that led one to another until I left with one very traumatic experience and a beautiful baby.  I am not against hospitals, but for me they have their time and their place.  As long as all precautions are met as well as everything is flowing just the way it should with an experienced care provider, I feel I have less risks for complications in my home births, which is why I have chosen home births for all the following kids (though I still like to see a medical doctor during and after the pregnancy on top of my midwife visits when possible).


It is quite funny that I was called because I had a dream just before, that I was on a tight deadline to put together information on birth for a large group of people.  When I awoke I thought this meant I needed to finish the short book I have been writing on "Christ Centered Hypno-Labor" that helps women who are preparing for a calm, safe and peaceful birth and who are either using or considering using hypno style methods or any other type of meditation (hypno is highly recommended by me as my 3rd was completely pain free from using these methods of working through labor).  I had just had enough time to get the kids breakfast and pull out the computer to start writing when I got the phone call asking to come in only 45 minutes!  I quickly showered, picked up the front room, got all the diapers changed, dressed the kids, threw on some eye shadow, and before I knew it the news reporter we always listen to on the radio was there... what a rush!  My voice was shaking a bit and I was so nervous.

I have not actually felt ready to talk about my fourth birth to very many people yet even though my sweet baby is over 3 months old now.  The birth was a good birth but a few things happened that I wasn't happy with and so its been hard to process.  I guess I was meant to process it in front of the world, because now its part of the news.  Since they typically only use the clips that spin things the way they want even if out of context I thought it might be time to tell my birth story in whole here, where I've been asked for it anyway.

Right on the due date, September 15th, a sunday night, I awoke in the middle of the night with some contractions.  It was a beautiful moonlit, peaceful night and I am used to having contractions before labor actually starts for at least a month before birth with all my kids.  I got up to work through them, put some relaxing essential oils on my belly and potentially go back to bed.  When I got up I realized that the waves I was working through were every 8 minutes apart regularly and there was this intense peace that just filled the air, like you could feel angels throughout the home there to await and support our little Bonnie Jane's arrival (I was told by my midwife that this feeling is very common in all the births she assists in).  I became very happy and excited to see my little baby.  As long as I stopped as I felt the contraction starting and supported my weight on the counter or some other place while doing a very low squat and rocking through them I was in no pain at all.  It was work, like an intense exercise routine that lasted a couple minutes every ten minutes, but it felt more like waves.  I felt a wave coming in, prepped my position, and then worked with my body to ride the wave until it fizzled out.  Much like a surfer catches and rides their waves through.  After a little over a half hour of timing them I woke my Hubby up to tell him I was in labor.

I was cherishing the calm serenity of it all and knew I had a while to go so I told my husband not to have the midwife come yet.  He wanted to call her and so I told him to just tell her she didn't need to hurry, that she could take her time and put off coming for a bit but that it may be that morning sometime.  I knew I needed more time that morning, but she had assisted another midwife at the birth of my 3rd and remembered how fast that was (I had Daisy an hour after I awoke in labor and called).  Nervous about being late to a birth she rushed over as did a doula and a secondary midwife (they work in groups so that there is extra support to keep things as calm and safe as possible).  Well, when I knew I wasn't ready for people, I was right.  Even though she was my midwife and I trusted her the distraction of having her preparing her stuff along with the quiet whisperings in the background from her helpers and the occasional tinctures between contractions was too much for me.  I needed to be going within myself to follow the waves and when assistants came it became harder to catch the waves, but also I became nervous about how I would look while I caught the waves in front of them.  I also almost felt the need to host them, though that sounds really silly since they were there to help me, not the other way around.  When the beautiful sunrise came up the contractions became further and further apart and eventually stopped, that angelic feeling also slipping away with them.

I do believe that had I insisted we wait until I actually needed my husband to help with pressure points during the waves, or even just insisted that she not set up and wait in the car until that point, I would have had Bonnie Jane on that day.  I've read many instances of labor halting like this but have never known anyone personally who experienced it, so it was interesting to experience first hand.  I also believe it would have been similar to my painless and very calm birth experience with Daisy 2 years ago.  After labor stopped I did many very empowering fear release exercises for both me and the baby that helped me come to new understandings of the spiritual nature of birth, so it isn't all bad that I had to wait two more weeks.  In a book called "Orgasmic Birth" it actually talks about how to have that calm, safe, and beautiful flow of birth that I had experienced previously in my 3rd babies birth, but also why some don't have that ability.  When my labor stopped I read a section of that book that explained the hormone progression in labor that would actually cause what had happened to me.  It was so nice to understand why.  By the way "Orgasmic Birth" is by far my favorite book on birth and preparing for birth right now (no matter where you're planning on delivering), though "Ina May's Guide to Childbirth" follows closely behind.

When I was nearly rounding out 2 weeks later I was having contractions on and off but nothing was really sticking.  Just as a hospital doctor doesn't want a birth to over-extend, my midwife didn't want me to have complications from too long a gestation period either (although she always factors in that there is many times a lapse by 2 weeks in the calendar date set and I usually am just under 2 weeks later than my due dates).  With all my stats and the babies stats the way they were we decided it may be best to kick labor into gear instead of just wait.  She gave me some homeopathics and essential oils to use together (I waited 15 minutes between the use of one to use the other so that there would be less risk of them not working, but she said these specific ones tend to work whether or not they are used at the same time).  I took them quite often for the rest of the night and nothing happened beyond me having what felt like the same old inconsequential pre-labor contractions.  The next day I kept taking it with the same result.  We skipped church as my contractions were about 10 minutes apart and we tried going for a whole bunch of walks but nothing like that angelic feeling of the baby coming soon was really kicking in.

I was getting a little agitated around lunch time because when I'd close my eyes for a contraction the kids would get really close to me and try climbing through my legs or some other really distracting thing.  I thought I'd be maybe another 10 hours out, judging by how things had gone in my 2nd birth that was 18 hours long at home.  Well, I called my mom to ask if she'd just come play with the kids in the basement playroom while I just relaxed and tried to take a nap, because I was tired and thought I could sleep through the contractions ok if the kids would let me be.  Turns out when she took them off my hands and I tried to sleep that I couldn't sleep too well.  This was a point at which I just couldn't understand the waves that were coming (this has never happened to me in labor before and I think it was because of pushing the labor to start with herbs rather than letting it kick in on its own, similar to the way the waves change unnaturally when pitocin is taken).  Instead of a smooth wave coming in to ride it felt like an unrideable rocky mess, but I tried to work through it as I would a wave as much as was possible.  This took a lot of support from my hubby doing counter pressure on my hips and back while I rocked back and forth.

I finally thought maybe I could calm the waves with water and maybe slow the rockiness of it down a bit.  Little did I know that water can speed up labor when your body is actually in gear, to have the baby faster.  I was still 10 minutes apart on the dot when I got in the tub.  I really wasn't trying to have the baby right then as it didn't feel like she'd be coming for a long time still, but we called the midwife anyway to update her as to what was happening.  As soon as she heard I was getting in the tub she started getting her tools together and jumped in her car.  Honestly I felt like the birth was only 10 minutes long because time feels different during a birth, however that is not how long it really was.  I was in the tub for maybe 10 minutes before my water broke and my contractions quickly became only 3 minutes apart and then on top of each other.  Then we let the water out of the tub and I very reluctantly got out of the tub where I had great counter pressure on my back and we made our way to the front room where I had a plastic sheet with towels and pads on top, my exercise ball for me to kneel against while rocking with the waves of pushing, and of course the blinds shut for the dimmer lighting effect.  She was crowning with the midwife in the car and on the phone with us 10 to 20 minutes after getting out of the bath. All in all I think the point when it became true labor to when she came was around 40 minutes start to end, feeling like only 10.

I think the part that made this part difficult for me was the fear.  Fear is what causes pain as well as most complications.  Fear causes you to work against your body, so your muscles are pushing against each other instead of working together as well as tightening areas that are meant to be loosening, and naturally loosen easily when fear is eliminated.  My midwife told my hubby over the phone to try not to have the baby till she got there so that we could make sure I was fully dilated before pushing.  She is an amazing midwife, but I do wish she had just said "good.  You're doing great.  Just remember to breathe that baby down.  Don't push.  Just breathe and trust your body and your baby."  Or maybe I just wish that is what my husband had said, since I never actually talked to the midwife directly; either way, that's what I really wanted and needed to hear.  Those words would have helped me more than anything because I needed to trust all of my experience and research and just trust myself, but in that super vulnerable state of birth where every woman is so susceptible to comments and guidance I couldn't do that after being told to try to hold her in, even though in the hubby's defense he did also tell me to breath her down (problem is you can't breath the baby down at the same time as trying to hold them in so it didn't do much for me to hear both).

My hubby was a little frantic checking the door quite often for the midwife when I wanted him right there and I relieved much of the intensity of it all through low animal like groans.  I told my Hubby that she was coming and trying to help my skin smoothly slip around her head, though the fear of tearing and the midwife not there yet was making it tighter than I wanted.  Before I knew it she slipped out right into his strong arms and belched out a beautiful loud cry with some very strong lungs.

The midwife pulled up to the house just after that and then I finished the after birth and fed my new angel while getting checked out and waiting for another midwife that specializes in stitches to come.  Even though this birth was a bit rockier than the last one, those stitches were far more painful than the birth itself.  My preparation paid off by making the skin and previous birth scars more elasticized for this birth and stitches, so the tears were not as extensive.  The tearing this time was less extensive, but where it did tear was quite deep still making recovery difficult.  The recovery has been even more difficult because of the NICU stay for high biliruben levels due to an unexpected blood incompatibility 2 days after her birth for a week along with trying to move and sell our home shortly after that, which is a whole other story.  One word of caution to those out there who are expecting, try to move before having your baby if you have to move.  Moving while pregnant is hard but doesn't mess with the hormones and recovery nearly as much as moving shortly after.  Give it 3-6 months before any big changes if at all possible for the sake of your health.  She is happy and healthy today and is as cute as a button.

Here is that news story and interview I told you about.  Its short and simple but changed my entire day yesterday.  Enjoy!  ksl news story : home-births-in-utah-doubled-since-1990-health-department-says