Eloise
I LOVED my second birth. It was beautiful. It's been almost seven months, so I've lost some little details here and there. Sometimes in postpartum spaces a wholly positive birth story sticks out like a sore thumb. And sometimes on social media people are quick to add a little negativity where they can. And so to keep away from the "you got lucky's" and the "you don't get an award's" and to keep my beautiful, perfect birth beautiful and perfect; I've mostly held it close. This is your chance to stop reading if you don't want to read a birth story, or if positive stories can be triggering for your birth trauma/PPD (I understand, you are valid, your birth trauma is not your fault).
My mom came up and I did a bunch of last minute little things on Saturday, 2/25. At this point I was 42 weeks and 3 days pregnant, my midwife and I had already discussed our limits for this pregnancy and when we would transfer to OB care, but it just felt like I wasn't going to be pregnant on Monday. Before we all went to bed my mom braided my hair and we colored birth affirmation cards together.
I started feeling contractions around midnight on 2/26
I tried to stay in bed but they were strong enough that I wanted to move through them, so I got out of bed and went to the living room where I labored with my mom until 5AM when I woke Erik to fill the birth pool. Maybe I should have gotten in right there, but I was so worried I would be too tired to make it through the birth if I didn't sleep. I tried to find somewhere to lay down and be comfy, and around 6AM I fell asleep and contractions stopped, I slept until 8AM.
At around 11 am (2/26) my doula/student midwife and very dear friend came and rewarmed the birth pool. We planned to do a fear release guided meditation in hopes that we could relax my body back into having contractions. I remember her asking me, "what are you still afraid of?" And I said "that I'm really just not strong enough to do this". Shortly thereafter I was in active labor. At this point my sense of time in hindsight is fully skewed, I don't remember specific times super well, but my labor records say that active labor began at 12:45PM.
The next several hours of my labor notes reflect my memory perfectly: I was absolutely not interested in getting out of the pool. I changed positions and labored through contractions, I threw up a lot. I got out a couple of times but nothing outside of the pool felt right. No toilet, no hip squeezes, no sacral pressure. After being with me my first labor my doulas had to shift gears from the very hands on support I wanted and needed my first labor. I asked for someone to rub my back, and only my husband knew exactly what I meant. My mom asked if I wanted her to come in for a while and I specifically remember thinking "yes" and saying "no", like my instincts were taking over for my mind. At 6:05 PM I said "I can't do this".
"I can't do this"
. At around 6:30 PM I got out of the pool and shifted between the bathroom, the bed, and leaning against the wall. By 7:15 I was back in the pool. My birth team did such work in keeping that pool the perfect temperature, constantly removing water and adding hot back in. Everyone was SO HOT, except for me. I was cold in between contractions. My room is not a big one, so it was VERY steamy and humid. I slept in between contractions, and it felt like 5 minute naps when in reality they were probably 30-60 seconds. I guess I didn't need to worry about when I would rest! I shifted from leaning over the pool into my husband, to reclined, to hands and knees. I took some medicine for the nausea and FINALLY stopped puking, but this is again, the next several hours of my birth.
I slept in between contractions
At around 10PM I got out of the pool again and I had a cervical check; at that point my waters were bulging so much that my they ruptured during the exam! I got back in the pool after I had a good cry about my water breaking (a mix of birth trauma resurfacing, and my hopes and dreams of an en caul birth melting away). I don't know where I went for the next hour. I remember saying "is that his car?", because somewhere in the depths of my mind I was 14 again and I was back at home, waiting for my dad to get there. My doula saying "what? Who's car?" Brought me back and it was too much to explain so I just said "nothing" and around 11 PM I started feeling pressure and using the top of my contractions to push.
I was pushing strong with my contractions by 11:30 PM
I could feel my baby moving lower, closer to me. I pushed there for a while, working toward my dream birth, my water baby born peacefully in the pool, where I reached down to catch her myself. I worked, my husband held me and cheered me on while I pushed, and my midwife applied counter pressure to help me have something to push toward. She told me my baby was SO CLOSE, my records say that around 12:36, still in the pool, they could see little peaks of my baby's head.
It was somewhere around 1AM that my midwife asked of me the hardest, most Herculean thing I did my whole birth: get out of the birth pool. It was her opinion that I wasn't quite in the position my baby needed. In my head, I started moving towards this goal right away. In reality, it took me about 20 minutes to make my way from the middle of the birth pool to the edge, onto my bed into McRobert's. It sounds so easy in hindsight, but I have no way to describe the feeling of a baby THAT LOW, almost ready to work her way out.
It was the hardest physical work of my labor.
Supported
At 1:30 AM, my husband, my doulas, my midwives were seeing peaks of my baby again, and I could feel her coming. I was so ready to meet her I wanted to push through the rest times, I wanted to push through the fire, I wanted to push to the end of the earth to have my baby on my chest but I rested and allowed my baby to make her way slowly, I pushed with the intensity of my contractions and my body knew exactly how hard, how long, or how little to push. I was in my body and out of it and it was such intense relief to feel my baby moving towards us. At 1:49:38AM her head was out and at 1:49:55AM her little shoulders and body followed behind her.
I hope I never forget the feeling of her warmth touching my skin for the first time.
I hope I never forget the joy and relief that I felt when she let me hear her voice. And I hope I carry the power of this birth with me throughout my life, because it gave me more than I lost in my first birth. If you want total honesty, I didn't believe that I could do it until the moment she touched my belly. Somewhere in my mind we were going to end up right back in the OR where we did the first time. The moment of her birth I felt feelings that I have a hard time describing now: the most intense gratitude, shattering grief from the first, swelling pride in what we did together, my baby and I, me and my baby. The hard separation between birth and having a baby didn't feel so hard this time, they melted together and it felt like hugging someone you love but haven't seen in years, she was just, finally here.
