A Home Birth

I have to play some catch up since I'm starting this blog 6 months after Baby's birth, so here is a brief post about her birth day. I promise it won't contain any gory information and I did my best not to include obvious nudity or guts ;-)

I was very restless the day I went into labor. I painted my toe nails, tried to play some cello... I kept having hot flashes and couldn't stay still. When my partner came home I asked if we could get take-out and go to Jamaica Pond for a picnic because I just needed to get out of the house. We got some Indian food, thinking the spice might get me going. Apparently it wasn't necessary because I had about 3 bites and then told my partner we needed to go home. This was around 7pm.

We tried to watch Milo and Otis. I made it maybe 20 minutes in before I couldn't concentrate. I called one of my midwives and she told me to eat some more, get in a bath, and try to relax/sleep. I did, but there wasn't a whole lot of relaxing going on. Things continued to progress and the midwives (Tara, Audra, and Catherine-- their apprentice) arrived around 3am.

I truly believe that things would have gone differently if I hadn't had the birth pool. Even though I didn't give birth in it, it helped so much with letting me relax earlier on in labor, especially because I had crazy hormone-induced tremors. Before the midwives had arrived I actually made my partner call them because I thought I was having seizures or something. They assured me it was normal (maybe that's not the right word), but dang was it annoying!

When I first got in the pool, the midwives asked me how it felt. My response, with a totally straight face, was "I am going to marry this tub." They also recorded that I said "I'm adopting next time" and "Where's my orgasm?"

Coconut water and a few bites of yogurt with maple syrup were all I was able to eat during the 12 hours of active labor. My partner kept asking me every 20 minutes or so if I wanted chocolate truffles. My answer was no every time, but every time he seemed surprised!

I don't know why he's smiling, but to this day it makes me want to smack him! Also he did a horrible job putting that headband on me. I look like a disheveled ninja.

I also labored on all fours on the bed and crouching on the birth stool, but those photos were a little too graphic to post here. Ultimately, though, Baby was born when the midwives insisted that I sit on the toilet and try to pee. Instead I had a huge contraction and she crowned. On the next contraction, Catherine yelled at me to stand up and good thing too, because two pushes later and she was out! Baby was still inside the bag of waters when she was born, which is called en caul, and is apparently an Irish blessing. It's very rare nowadays since it's often considered routine to break your bag of waters in the hospital to speed things along (apparently it does tend to work, but at the expense of making things way more intense/painful).

Okay there's a tiny bit of blood in this photo, but I look so elated I couldn't help sharing :-)

Trying to take her in. Totally in awe.

How can you not immediately fall in love with that face??

First time nursing. She latched on maybe 30 minutes after she was born. 

Tara and Catherine try to decide whether she was 8 lbs 1 oz, or 8 lbs 2 oz. Since she had already pooped at that point, they gave her the benefit of the doubt ;-)

Grandma dubbed this her "cheerio face."

Checking her hips

Despite the cross-eyes, she was trying to look at us the moment she came out!

This was my absolute favorite newborn-related purchase. It's basically a shirt that you wear your baby in so you can be skin-to-skin. Aside from nursing, this was the best way to settle her and felt amazing from my perspective, too!

The happy ending! Or beginning, rather!

I do want to add that it was so awesome to be able to crawl into my bed with my new baby and just stay there for basically two days straight. My midwives also came to me for postpartum visits, checking on both me and Baby... I can't even imagine having had to get in the car with my little peanut that early on to go to a clinic. Giving birth is overwhelmingly challenging, but I'm so glad I did it at home!