Simon Henry was born on October 18, 2012 in our master
bathroom tub. He was caught by my
husband. We had an unplanned, natural,
unassisted home birth and this is our story.
I think you need to know a little about my past labors and
deliveries to make this most current one make a little more sense. It needs a bit of back story for reference. Our first daughter was born in the hospital
with the aid of forceps after about 24 hours of hard labor. I had an epidural after I didn’t
progress. I didn’t cope well with the
pain and puked the entire time I was in labor.
The only place I found any comfort was in the tub. Because of the forceps, I tore terribly and
was in pain for months afterwards. My
scars still pain me at times.
I was scared of labor and delivery during the entire next
pregnancy. I did what I could to make
sure the baby was positioned better since my first daughter’s posterior
position made labor awful. I was
successful in my efforts and labor was much better. I labored in the tub by myself until it was
time to go to the hospital. We got to
the hospital and I requested an epidural immediately. I labor really slowly after all (or so I
thought). I started feeling pressure as
soon as the epidural was placed and it turns out that I had been in transition
shortly after our arrival to the hospital.
I was disappointed that I was so close to having a baby without drugs
and hadn’t realized it until it was too late.
The delivery still went really well with a small tear, but I wasn’t able
to be up and around very quickly and had to have a darn catheter in for hours
afterwards.
This brings us to my final pregnancy. I was no longer afraid of labor and delivery
and started researching natural child birth pretty early on. I read countless
birth stories, Ina May Gaskin’s book, a hippy book full of home births, and a
book on the Bradley Method of child birth.
I knew I wouldn’t and couldn’t do a home birth because there weren’t any
midwives in my area to work with. I knew
I wouldn’t and couldn’t do an unassisted home birth because I’m not some crazy
hippy. LOL! I trusted and liked my OB
and felt really good about doing a natural birth in the hospital setting.
Jon was on board with the Bradley Method. It’s a husband as
coach method, which I knew would be great for us. Jon did really well with
helping me with the other two labors and this book gave us more information on
how to do even better. His job was to
help me relax, protect me from interventions that I didn’t want, and to basically
be my rock. He took it seriously.
As the pregnancy progressed, I exercised very
regularly. I went to the gym a few days
a week and worked up a sweat. I gained
about 25 pounds total. I had gained
about 40 pounds in my prior two pregnancies so that was a great
improvement. I tried to work on my
mental strength also – doing planks and not giving in to pain. I just kept going and worked out until I was
39 weeks pregnant. People joked that the
baby would come out with one push and that he’d come out kickboxing.
Also, leading up to the big day, I had a tour of labor and
delivery. I got a good vibe from the
nurses there, but I was really disappointed that they didn’t have tubs to use
for laboring in. I decided then and
there to show up at the last minute and to use my tub at home like I had with
my last labor. Basically, I wanted a
redo of the last labor, only without the epidural at the very end.
On the morning of October 18, I had an OB appointment at
9am. I had been having contractions
overnight, but they felt more like cramps.
They woke me up, but I didn’t need to really do anything to deal with
them. By the time I was up for the day,
they had mostly stopped.
Jon and I got up at 6am, shared a shower, and got ready for
the day. The girls slept in since it was
rainy and dark outside so I took the opportunity to eat my breakfast alone
while hanging out on Facebook. Once the
girls were up, I brought them over to their nana’s house along with the
dog. I didn’t know how my OB appointment
would go and I didn’t want to have to worry about the dog being locked up in
the basement. We had a cleaning lady
coming so I didn’t want him in her way either.
I chatted with Nana (my MIL) for a while and then headed to my
appointment.
My appointment really wasn’t all that exciting. My BP was a
bit high (140/70 something, I believe), but they weren’t concerned. My doctor did a check of my cervix and I was
4cm dilated and 75% effaced. He did a sweep while he was in there so we kind of
thought I’d be back either later that day or on Friday. He assured me that he’d come in if it was on
Thursday and that he was on call all weekend so he wouldn’t miss it.
I was so excited to report back to people about my progress
that I left my coat and car keys up in the OB waiting room. I went downstairs to my husband’s office to
hang out for a while. The nurses were
excited to see me. Jon hadn’t had
breakfast so we walked down to the doctor’s cafeteria room and got some food
there. I had contractions, but they
continued to be mild. I walked and talked right through them and eventually
remembered to go get my coat and keys from upstairs. At around 11am, the contractions started to
hurt more so I went and laid down on Jon’s couch in his office. I also started
timing them.
Some of the contractions were 3 minutes apart, some were 6.
I was still feeling pretty comfortable and functional. During this time, the cleaning lady called to
let me know there was a drip coming from the ceiling in the living room. Great.
This added a dimension of stress to the day for both myself and my
husband. He had a couple of patients left and then we planned to run home to
pick up a couple of things, check on the leak, and perhaps labor in the tub for
a bit. We probably wouldn’t have
bothered to go home if we weren’t concerned about the leak in the ceiling.
Jon came into his office between patients and saw my face
during a contraction. He decided to ask one of his partners to take on his last
patient so we could run home before it was too late. I was totally on board
with that plan. We made our way out of
the office, said good-bye to a couple of people, and then quickly walked to the
car in order to avoid parking lot contractions.
My contractions were still bearable in the car. I could
breathe through them. I could talk.
There was one that I tensed up during and that sucked, but otherwise, I
was doing fine. We figured we still had
a few hours. This was at about 11:45am.
The cleaning lady was just finishing up when we arrived at
home. I talked with her for a while. Jon
checked out the leak and realized it wasn’t too bad. We started gathering a few
things. I already had my hospital bag in the car so I just wanted to get the
present for the girls from Simon, the boppy, and Jon’s overnight stuff. I ran downstairs and got the present. I used the bathroom a few times and noticed
that the bloody show was getting more interesting. The cleaning lady left at about 12:15 so we
headed upstairs to use the freshly cleaned tub for a bit.
I used the bathroom during a contraction and there was a little
more blood in the toilet than I felt comfortable with. I also realized I hadn’t
felt Simon move for a bit so I panicked.
I got out the Doppler and Jon and I listened to a very reassuring
heartbeat while I was standing up getting ready for a nice soak in the
tub. Looking back on it, this was
probably transition.
The bath water was perfect and immediately relaxing to
me. Jon got undressed to join me. It was
his job to rub my back and that was easier done in the tub. I teased him about being my eye candy during
labor and told him I liked his underwear.
The fact that I still felt like joking around was pretty
reassuring. This was probably around
12:25.
I leaned back into Jon for the contractions. We talked about
various things that I don’t remember. He
reminded me to breathe, wiggle my toes, relax my shoulders, and I was able to
handle the contractions well. It was really comfortable leaning back on him in
the warm water. At one point I cried for
about a minute about Charlotte (our second daughter) not being the baby
anymore. Other than that, I was pretty
much normal acting.
All of a sudden a big contraction hit and I couldn’t help
but vocalize during it. This was the
first contraction I hadn’t been able to just breathe through. It was a long one and we both decided it was
time to go to the hospital. Jon pushed
me forward so he could get out of the tub and towel off. I moved forward in the tub and pulled out the
drain to empty the water. From there, I
got into a squat so I could get out of the tub very carefully.
That’s when everything suddenly got serious. I realized that
I needed to push and told Jon. He said
something like, “No you don’t!” I told him he’d better get in the tub to look
because I didn’t feel like I could get out.
He got in and sure enough, the amniotic sac was hanging out a little
bit. He asked me if he should call 911 and I said that he needs to catch the
baby and not ask me any questions.
I had a contraction and could feel the baby crowning. He
called 911 and very concisely told them the information before hanging up on
them. He got behind me and was ready to
catch. I could feel myself stretching as I waited for the next
contraction. I thought about the need to
wait in order to reduce tearing. I was
pretty calm and Jon was too. Jon tore
the sac open with his fingers. The
contraction hit and I pushed. All of a
sudden there was relief and Jon said something like, “He’s out and he’s
beautiful!!!” I looked back at him. He had the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. It was 12:45.
We were both in shock.
Now what do we do? I twisted around to see the little guy and had to
step over the cord in order to hold him.
Jon handed him over so he could run to get a bulb to suck him out and a
towel to warm him. He had already rubbed
on Simon. Simon was crying loudly and
was very pink so we were really happy.
At some point Jon snapped a picture of me with Simon in the tub,
surrounded by gore.
While Jon ran around the house looking for various items, I
delivered the placenta and then sat down in the tub with Simon. By then there
wasn’t any water in there. Jon came up
with a bowl to put the placenta in, then wrapped Simon up in a towel and went
downstairs with him. I stayed upstairs
and got myself toweled off and dressed in order to meet the paramedics. They
showed up right as I was walking down the stairs. Boy were they happy to see a
pink, crying, full-term baby, but I think they were a bit disappointed that
they didn’t get to assist.
The paramedics took down all of our information. They did
some vitals on both of us. We both checked out fine. We decided to drive
ourselves to the hospital. The
paramedics left. We were just getting
ready to head out when we got another knock on our door. It was our neighbor,
my OB. He heard that we had the baby and
came over. He helped us get the cord cut
and he checked me out before we all left for the hospital.
I called my mom on the way to the hospital to let her know
what happened and to ask her for possibly the biggest favor ever – to clean up
our master bathroom. That tub was
something of nightmares. There were
messy towels and clothes all over the place. Jon had put the placenta bowl down
on the carpet. The placenta was in the
kitchen garbage. Bloody scissors were on the counter. Yuck.
She agreed to come and do it though.
I called my dad and Jon called his dad. By then we were at
the hospital. A little old lady saw
Simon when I walked in with the car seat and asked how old he was. I said, “About
an hour.” She was absolutely shocked. We’ve
gotten used to that reaction since.
From there, things became pretty typical. I had a small tear
that needed to be stitched. The worst part was getting examined to see if the
entire placenta had been expelled. That hurt worse than labor. Seriously. My uterus was already cramped up tight and
resisted. I had to watch for excessive
bleeding.
Luckily, I haven’t had any problems. I’m feeling fantastic. I’m so much more mobile and energetic than I
was after my other births. I am so glad
I was able to have him naturally. Yes,
the whole unexpected home birth part was scary, but I don’t regret it. I can’t believe that I was tough enough to go
through the whole thing without once doubting myself. My only true moment of freak out occurred when
we came home from the hospital. It was
like returning to the scene of a crime, even though it was clean. I’ve gotten past that now. Jon was a great coach. I’m extremely thankful
for my husband and his ability to handle all of this. He couldn’t have done any better than he did.
Simon is doing great too. He’s healthy and nursing well. His
birth weight was 7 pounds, 1 ounce. He was 19 inches long. His APGAR score
given by the EMT was a 10 (or was it a 9?).
His sisters are crazy for him.
They’re adjusting really well so far.
I’m so glad our family is now complete.
