Today is my little man's birthday! Let me tell you about Caleb. I'm sure you have all noticed that there is 10 years between him and Trinity, that was certainly not our plan. We tried for years to have a second baby to no avail. I got pregnant once, but miscarried. Trinity as a young child had an imaginary friend she called her baby brother. She said he was on a long journey on a sidewalk, but he was coming. At a prayer meeting I very clearly heard God tell me a son was coming, but I had to wait like Hannah. So I did. I waited and trusted. Then, I got pregnant! I knew he was a boy because God said so. God named even named him. At the last moment a bunch of crazy stuff happened so at approximately 30 weeks pregnant I decided to have a home birth. We had toured the hospital I was supposed to give birth in and I was seriously freaking out. Even though it was 10 years prior, I still had major emotional trauma from Trinity's birth. I got myself an amazing midwife and I was thrilled. So this is my story of healing. My story of God's promise fulfilled. My story of strength. Sunday night we went to our church’s youth group meeting, It was a final goodbye to the youth pastor and he wanted to go out with a prayer and worship service. So I spent the evening losing myself in worship, getting prayed over and reconnecting with God. My relationship with God has suffered a lot in the past 10 months or so and I spent time repairing it. I let go of some things I was holding on to and when I walked out I felt ready. I felt good. That night I was having a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions and more of them were painful than usual. This had been happening for the past few weeks, so I didn’t pay too much mind to it. Just figured my body was getting ready and was hoping I was slowly dilating. At 4:30am or so I was awoken with a painful contraction. I was like “ow”, so then I rolled over to my other side. Then I had another and it hurt too. Switched positions again. This went on for probably about an hour before my sleep muddled brain realized that every contraction had hurt and was radiating to my back. Then I felt an odd pop feeling down below. No water or anything, just a pop feeling. I decided to get up and start timing my contractions. I sat on a chux pad on the couch just in case, made a grumpy facebook post about being awake and nerded while I timed. Seems the contractions were about 4 min apart. Consistently. That’s interesting. All of a sudden I felt a gush and realized my water broke. It was 6:30am. I kind of sat there in disbelief for a few min when I realized I should probably wake up DJ. And call the midwife. I went upstairs and told a sleeping DJ I didn’t think he was going to work today. He was all confused and sleepy and I told him we were having a baby today instead. That woke him up pretty quick. I updated him on the events and I called Dina the midwife. She was going to get up, shower and head over. No rush, but she was on her way. That was fine. I decided to shower and the water felt soooo nice. I got out and realized I should give a heads up to the rest of my birthing team, Regina our photographer and Anastasia our Trinity minder and birth support. So I called them both and told them no rush or anything, but baby is coming today and get childcare etc etc. I emerged from the shower, got dressed in a comfortable dress and realized that the most epic storm had hit. I haven’t seen it rain that hard since we had a hurricane blow though. I came downstairs and watched the storm in my backyard in awe of the awesomeness of it. I felt like Caleb was being announced into the world with the storm. I ate breakfast and we straightened up the house and made room for the birth tub. Still having contractions every 3-4 min by the way. Around 9:30am the midwife arrived and checked me. I was dilated at 2 and still had a long way to go. She told me my contractions would probably slow down and that was ok, she wanted me to rest anyways. She left at 10am and I laid in my darkened room trying to sleep. Too bad I was too excited to sleep. She told me I would know when to call her back. I gave up on sleeping and came downstairs around 11:30 to lay on the couch. Around 12 midwife called again and suggested we get the contractions going again and gave us some suggestions. 15 min later I was having strong ones 3 min apart so the walking began. My birth team all took turns walking around the complex with me and rubbing my back through contractions. If I sat down, they started to space out, so I had to be standing and rocking my hips or walking the whole time. I had been in constant communication with my midwife via text and calls. I labored in the backyard for a while leaning on a chair, then sitting in the grass. But the sitting was just no good. I could not speak though contractions anymore, but I was fine in between them. At some point I had a hot dog for lunch. This is about where my sense of time starts to get messed up. Around 3:15pm I declared to DJ that he needed to call the midwife because I wanted her here now. I was grumpy even in between contractions and know I had progressed quite a bit. She was asking him questions and I just kept repeating in the background “She needs to come now. I want Dina here now”. DJ began to blow up the birth pool. Dina was at my house in a half an hour with her student midwife arriving a little later. She checked me and I was dilated at 6. Yay!!! I labored on my hands and knees for a while on the bed while my people filled up the tub. The hose was going too slow, so they were using pots and pans to fill it. This is comical in hindsight. But you gotta do what you gotta do right? Dina then asked me with a smile on her face if I would like to get in the pool. I was like yes omg right now. Into the tub I went and it felt very comforting. I labored in the in various positions. The most comfortable was sitting cross legged and rocking on my hips side to side. I had a lime popsicle. It got to hot for Caleb after a while, so I labored on the birth stool for a bit. This was about 7pm. On the birth stool I got really queasy and informed everyone that a bucket or bowl might be a good idea because puking was going to be happening. I threw up. While that’s not my favorite thing, I knew it was good and I was probably entering transition. I got back into the tub and became more vocal. I started putting the cold washcloths over my face to tune everyone out. I didn’t want people touching me because my skin hurt. My midwife was calmly watching me and knitting. She would check Caleb’s heart beat at variable times and ask me questions. Otherwise I was left alone to do what I wanted, wich is what I needed. Around this time I also declared that I didn’t want to do this anymore and I just wanted to take a break and cuddle. I had a long break in between two contractions and I rested. I kept thinking that this was really going to hurt when the next one came and it really was a big one. I kept wondering if I would know when to push. I had directed pushing with Trinity so I wondered how I would know. At 7:50pm a contraction came. I was reclining on my back and my body involuntarily rose up and pushed. Someone yelled “I think that’s pushing!!!” and everyone jumped pool side. After the contraction I confirmed that yes I was pushing apparently. I pushed in the tub till 8:20pm in a bunch of positions. I got him far enough down that he was just a fingertip from the opening. I just could not make any more progress in the tub so I moved to the birth stool. After two contractions I could not do the stool anymore it was killing my back bad. So midwife suggested to go upstairs to my bed. I knew I only had about 2 – 3 min to get upstairs and set up in bed before my next contraction so with just a little assistance from DJ I walk up my stairs with a baby in my dang birth canal. I could not understand why the midwife was telling me to spread my legs as I flew up the stairs because the reality of how far down the baby was had not hit me. In a flurry chux pads were put down and I jumped into bed in time for the next contraction to hit. I pushed flat on my back and that was working very well. 7 minites after jumping into bed he was crowning and I was howling about how bad it hurt. OMG the name ring of fire does not do that justice. Midwife was dumping tons of arnica oil on me and baby to help stretching. At 8:53pm Caleb was born into DJ’s hands and placed onto my chest. He was covered in vernix and crying like a champ. I was shocked. OMG there is a baby on my chest. I kept saying “oh my god. oh my god.” I did not cry, I was too shocked. I looked him over to make sure he had everything and make sure he was a boy. And I was just amazed. At a few minutes old DJ anointed him with oil and prayed over him. And I just still sat there gaping at Caleb. I birthed him in my home with no meds. It was amazing. I would never do this in a hospital again. I was surrounded by love, support, and calmness.
I feel empowered and strong. Welcome Caleb, my promised gift from God.
1 Comment
When you get pregnant with your first baby you think you have an idea of how things are going to go. You think you know what kind of parent you will become. I had been a live-in nanny for babies when I was younger, so I mostly thought I knew what I would be like as a mom. Sometime after that, I decided I would just let Trinity wean when she was ready to. Breastfeeding was very primal to me, and I could not imagine a cavewoman marking off the days until her baby hit a year old on the wall of her cave and cutting him off from the boob when time was up. The thought actually cracked me up. When she hit 2 years old, I started the "don't offer, don't refuse" method. She could nurse whenever she asked, but I usually would not offer (unless she was completely freaked out or something like that). This was a very useful parenting tool to help us get through the toddler years, by the way. Two of the biggest lessons are: I don't know everything, and you never know what you will do in a situation till you get there. I do not judge how other people raise their kids and live their lives. I am not in their shoes and have no right to tell someone who makes different choices than me that they are doing it wrong. Feed and love your children. The details of that are up to you. Live and let live. |
AuthorI'm so tired. The children are so not tired. |