Jessica’s Birth Story
Date: 16/6/2021
Location: Homebirth
Care provider: PRivate midwife
My birth story begins when I was 20 weeks pregnant. I think its an important part of my story to learn how I ended up having the birth I had. When I was in year 9 (so 14 years old), I studied child care, I remember watching “one born every minute” and there was a water birth, while my classmates cringed and turned away or called it weird… I was fascinated and I went home and told my mum “When I have a baby, I am having a water birth”.
Anyway- Joe (my husband) came to the 20 week appointment with me and we were met with a doctor who sat down and asked “So tell me about your diabetes” …. My reply- “I don’t have diabetes”, I immediately knew this was not going to be the appointment I had been looking forward to. After a lecture about my weight and discussion of extra testing for GD, I was excited to hear all about my babies measurements and the results of the scan, when the doctor told me, “we should book your induction date in now”… I burst into tears… I didn’t want my birth “managed” I really believed in letting it happen as naturally as possible.
Through my tears I explained that to this obstetrician and I was basically scoffed at… the rest of the appointment was a blur of lecture about how unsafe my body was and how they just wanted me to have a “healthy baby”. I left feeling so deflated… I cried the whole night, my hubby was so supportive.
That night I signed up for ‘calmbirth’ birth classes for when I was 32 weeks pregnant, I was so excited to learn some meditations and hopefully be able to learn some skills to help me on my path to have as natural a birth as possible. We had already signed up for birth classes locally but when I heard about calm birth I decided we should do both types of class.
Joe and I had also signed on to do an antenatal birth class with a local company called “Illawarra birth classes” we were asked about our pregnancy so far… I couldn’t talk about my experience so far without getting choked up. The teachers (two local doulas) could see that I was getting upset, in the break we talked more about my experience and I mentioned that I had seen the doco Birth Time [now available for streaming] and how I wish I had a midwife, they gave me the number of a local midwife who was taking on new patients privately.
I was now 30 weeks pregnant; I ended up emailing with K, the midwife, and we set up a meeting. I told her all the reasons I was high risk and had been risked out of having the birth I originally wanted (midwife that I could get to know and I wanted to use the birth pool but I had been told I couldn’t at the hospital because of my BMI). K agreed with me that I was a healthy person, BMI doesn’t actually have an effect on pregnancy outcomes and she was happy to take me on as a patient and I could have the water birth of my dreams! To say I was happy was an understatement.
This leads me to the actual birth;
Up until I was 37 weeks pregnant things had been going fine, my appointments with K were going well, it was so great having the appointments at home!
From when I was going to the antenatal clinic at the hospital I had a 37 week scan booked, because they were convinced I was going to have a big baby, because of my BMI.
I wanted to keep the scan appointment because I loved the scans, I loved seeing my little baby on the screen and it was always good news, so no reason to not like the scans.
I went and had the scan and they were saying the fluids were low and that I need to go to hospital and get some monitoring to make sure baby is OK. So I went straight up to the hospital and had a CTG monitoring for an hour, everything was fine with baby so they said to book another scan in a week to see how my fluids are.
This happened a few times and each time the fluid was ‘low’ but the baby was perfectly fine on the CTG… the last time I went for a scan was a friday, again I had to get the CTG also and decided that if it was still low after the weekend I would agree to induction, I really wanted the chance to let my body go into labour and birth in the pool.
I told the obstetrician this, who was pretty annoyed and she told me about how dangerous a homebirth would be and that my baby would need constant monitoring during birth because my low fluid would mean that the baby could suffocate in my womb… again K (I called her for support) assured me this isn’t true and also that she would be monitoring the baby at home.
Anyway I decided that I really wanted to just have the baby ASAP because all this “low fluid” stuff was so stressful. The following day I called a local lady and booked in for acupuncture to bring on labour.
So it was a Saturday, I had the acupuncture at 3pm- it was so painful and the baby moved around a lot, it was amazing!
By 6pm that night my waters broke, I was so excited- it worked!
But then nothing happened for 4 days, I would have contractions but they were very random. K came over every day to monitor the baby, CTG monitoring was always fine and my intuition said the baby was fine so I was never really too worried.
Tuesday morning my contractions were still pretty far apart but they were still there and still quite strong, so Joe stayed home from work. I stayed in touch with my midwife throughout the day as my water had now been broken for 4 days so I wanted to ensure everything was ok, she had been monitoring me pretty closely and baby was totally fine so I was happy. Joe and I inflated the birth pool, set up drop sheets and started prepping the house for labour, it was such an exciting time, I kept thinking about close we were to meeting our baby.
It wasn’t until about 10pm we notified K that my contractions were about 3 minutes apart, she made her way over to our house, when she arrived the labour seemed to completely hault… She chilled on the couch while I went into the babies room and did some calm birth meditations. I showered and cuddled up with Joe and things progressed again.
It is from here that I don’t have much memory of times or thoughts, I know at some stage it was suggested I get into the pool, I remember that throughout my whole labour I was freezing cold! It was a cold winters night and while we had the heater on, I just remember being pretty cold the whole time, basically Joe had to keep boiling the kettle and pouring the water into the birth pool, If I was in the bathroom, I had the huge bright heat lights on to create some warmth, it was not what I had imagined, darkness with candles and mood lighting, instead it was the brightest the room could be!
I laboured in the pool mostly, in and out to use the bathroom and have showers, I had to be careful because my water had been broken for so long.
I was in the pool when I started pushing, I remember my midwife saying “do you feel the urge to push” and me, not knowing what the urge to push felt like, said yes. I remember thinking that if I was pushing, it must be nearly over, which felt like such a relief.
As I pushed and pushed and pushed I felt immense pain in my back, it was excruciating, I was crying and crying and asking if this was normal. I just felt like I was doing it wrong, how can someone have a baby- wrong?! Seeds of doubt that had been planted in my mind crept in “cmon Jess, you haven’t stopped talking about how this is normal and natural and now you’re here- you cant do it?!”
Hours and hours passed; I just stopped pushing because it was so hard, I was so tired, it had been hours.
I asked K to please do a vaginal examination because I felt something wasn’t right… she had been monitoring the baby every 10 minutes and its heart rate was perfect but I just felt something was going on.
She felt that I had a cervical lip. K encouraged me to hop out of the water, I had been in there for hours and I needed to be careful of infection, also some gravity may help the lip…
We moved into my bedroom and K set the pillows up on my bed so that I could do an inversion ( I had practiced spinning babies throughout the pregnancy. K encouraged me to go with the contractions but try not to push for 3 contractions, it was so hard to ignore that feeling but I did it.
I sat up and exclaimed it hadn’t worked and that I was exhausted and I wanted to go to hospital, I was done, I had nothing left to give.
K said she needed to pack her things and perhaps Joe needed to get the car ready (reflecting back on this I see that she knew I was near the end and I was not going to hospital haha), I went and sat on my toilet, my safe space throughout this whole ordeal.
I was alone in the ensuite when suddenly I looked up and yelled out- “OMG I was lying before, I didn’t feel the urge to push, but I do nowwwww” K who was just outside the door encouraged me, this was great news!
The contractions were swift and intense and my whole body was tightening, I roared, a noise I had never heard before and can not imitate now, as my body pushed. In between each contraction, I was smiling, I remember thinking “holy fuck, this is more like it, I am not doing anything, my body has taken over”.
I got up off the toilet and went onto all fours using the edge of my bed, my body contracted and pushed and I roared, I felt the ring of fire. K said “You are going to feel like you are being teared apart but I promise you, you wont tear apart, you wont break, its your baby”. I started crying, it was the best/worst feeling I had ever experienced in my life. I moved back to the toilet, K had set up a towel across the bowl because I was so worried about birthing the baby directly into the toilet, At some stage, the head came out, I was elated but also exhausted, I remember I kept saying “Joe, get the tongs, Im done, I got this far, you do the rest”
I told K “get an ambulance to bring you what you need, a vacuum or anything, I am done”.
My body pushed and contracted and I roared, Joe lined up to catch the baby . My body pushed, contracted and I roared and that was it, Lawson was born. Joe caught him, K passed him to me through my legs and I sat on the floor next to my bed crying and holding my precious baby boy.
I was broken and whole at the same time and it couldn’t have been any more perfect.
