The Birth of George

Sweet little George.

My second homebirth. A homebirth that I had fully expected to be pretty much the same as my first. For parts of it, it was the same! I rode the waves peacefully for the most part. Moving, swaying, sighing, moaning. After about 6 hours of labor my waves had gotten more intense, I was almost fully dilated but was not able to complete because my bag of waters was bulging, not breaking, and not allowing George to press on my cervix properly.

My midwife, who I trust with my life gave me two good options. I could continue to labor, we can try different positions to get my water to break on its own. Or she could break it for me. Which she said would most likely bring baby earth side in the next 30 minutes. Long story short because of his position and how my water was, he was not coming until my water broke. In my previous births my water broke early on and I had heard horror stories of the intense pain that can come with breaking the water later on in labor. I told her I was scared and didn’t want her to break my water. So I opted to try something else to try and get it to break on its own.

My husband hung up one of those pull up bars and they put a bed sheet over it for me to hold and squat with. I took one look at that and completely changed my mind at the thought of basically doing exercises at the end of labor when I was exhausted already. So I told her I wanted her to go ahead and break my water. I climbed in bed, they set everything up and she very easily popped the bag of waters during a contraction. And in that moment everything I had heard came true.

I went from having waves I could totally manage to a pain I had never felt before. The breaking of my waters didn’t hurt, but the intensity of the contractions after felt like my bones were breaking. I had always prided myself with my previous birth. I was nice and calm and everything was smooth and perfect!! This was so different. I felt like I lost total control. The contractions felt like they didn’t stop. Like it was one long contraction from the moment my water broke to the moment he was born. I wasn’t calm and collected, I was screaming and yelling, cursing and biting my pillow. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t relax my body no matter how hard I tried. Pretty sure I hit or punched my headboard a few times too. That child WOULD NOT drop into the birth canal. I didn’t think I could continue on with that amount of pain. I said out loud once or twice that I couldn’t do it. And of course my wonderful midwife said “YES YOU CAN!” I growled (or roared? I can’t even remember) that baby out myself since he had no plans on making the evacuation and I was DONE with it.

The moment his little self shot out like a rocket, it was over. The pain was gone in an instant and my sweet baby was here and that’s all I cared about. I took a minute and just laid there because the feeling of relief was so overwhelmingly good didn’t want to move. George was born with a LOT of meconium in the waters. So they made sure he was cleared out before handing him to me. I also remember feeling embarrassed after it was all over because I thought I had acted like a crazy person, not able to calm or control myself. Not being able to relax my body when they were trying to encourage me to do so. I mentioned that to my midwife when she asked me at our 2 week follow up how I thought my birth went. She reassured me it was perfectly normal. Which I knew! But going into it the way I did, expecting to be the same as my other home birth, made me feel embarrassed for some reason.

You’d think I would have known better to assume my two births would be the same. And thankfully I have moved past that feeling and look back on my birth fondly, comically, and proudly! What us mammas do to birth our babies is nothing short of miraculous. But man…I will say that the moment he was handed to me made every ounce of agony worth it. And my crazy self would do it again.

-Words written by the Mama in the video!

Video clips from January 14th were taken by me, the rest from January 25th are taken by Kathryn J Birth Stories. Kathryn replaced me as a back up. Video edited by me.