A Home Birth: A Birth Boot Camp Birth Story
Today we share an incredible birth story from Abby.
I woke up with a few strong contractions at 5:45 am. I was a few days past 43 weeks and we had a prenatal scheduled with my homebirth midwife that afternoon. I let my husband know I was in labor and got up to walk around for a bit alone while the house was quiet. Our three kids woke up about an hour later, we had planned on sending them to my mother in law’s house that morning while we went to my prenatal. I had gone back and forth on whether I wanted them at the birth again this time, so I decided not to let them know and have my husband bring them to his moms as planned.
My previous home birth was very distracting for me because I had too many people there and we made the mistake of waking our toddler up, who ended up screaming his head off as I delivered my daughter.
It was around 7:30 am and I was helping the kids get dressed and a bag packed while having random contractions that I was trying to ignore.
By 8 my husband left to take the kids over and I told him I would get in the shower and try to relax and see if my contractions had a pattern yet as I had been distracted by the kids. He left, I got in the shower, and within 10 minutes I had at least four good hard contractions.
I got out and put my labor clothes on, and told myself I’d make something quick to eat and then I would start timing my contractions on my phone. By the time I had a piece of toast made I was still having sporadic, but hard and frequent contractions.
My husband got back home and saw my current labor state (he knew better than me as this was our third homebirth) and asked if I told the midwife to come. I said I had talked to her and would update her within the hour.
He said, “she needs to be on her way now!”
And what seemed like seconds after, I started getting the hiccups.
I texted her back and told her things were moving faster and to go ahead and come. I am pretty calm during labor and very “social” up until transition, and my last labor was 13 hours so I didn’t want her to come too soon.
He quickly started airing up and filling my birth pool while I sat on my birth ball in hard labor. She was still 45 minutes away, and my birth photographer was on her way. My photographer arrived in 20 minutes, I greeted her and we spoke for a few minutes and then I had a big, double-peaking contraction.
I knew this was going much faster than I had anticipated, so I laid on my side on the couch to inhibit gravity and try to buy myself time for my birth team to arrive. Ten minutes later my water bag broke big time and I felt the urge to push. It took the three of us to get my pants off and I hollered at my husband to grab chux pads out of my birth tub.
Suddenly I was crowning and my body was pushing.
I started panting through the ring of fire as best as I could control, and his head was out in one push. Laboring on my side was pretty painful and I did not want to birth his body that way without the help of gravity.
My husband helped me off the couch and onto the floor in a half kneel/squat and I pulled his body out in one push. Thankfully my photographer was there in those last 20 minutes or we would have nothing but our memory! My midwife and her assistants arrived about 15 minutes later and were so shocked and excited!
It wasn’t what we planned, and it was very messy without those incredible women who know what they are doing during birth! But it was an incredible and healing experience for me to be so undisturbed during and after birth.
I just sat there and held my baby until they arrived, and after I birthed the placenta and cut his cord we got into my perfectly warm birth pool. My previous births, I didn’t feel like I bonded with my babies until after everyone left and I was alone with them to unwrap and enjoy them alone. I got to do that right away with him, just us skin-to-skin in the warm water and he latched on to breastfeed for a good half hour while my birth team cleaned up around me and made me breakfast.
