It’s hard to put in words what an utterly incredible experience giving birth to a little human is. But I want to try because I want to remember as many of the beautiful details as I can years from now and especially when our baby girl grows up and is expecting a little human of her own.
Just thinking about the day before her birth when my husband and I went grocery shopping, I was still carrying her inside and my belly was very large. It’s quite surreal to think that less than 24 hours later, we had our baby girl in our arms and were beginning to get to know her at last. I do feel like I already knew her though because her sweet personality shone through during my pregnancy. Her gentle tapping when I’d put a pillow under my belly to sleep, her favorite froggie position on the left side of my belly—which is still her favorite sleeping position but now on our chests, her darling little hiccups that I could feel quite prominently in the final weeks of her gestation.
And when she entered the light and graced us with her presence in this beautiful and complex world, her sweetness continued to shine. She had inquisitive eyes as the doctor passed her sturdy little 9 lb, 4 oz body to me—they say babies can’t see very well in their first few weeks of life outside the womb but I loved seeing her beautiful eyes looking up at me and finding my breast quite quickly. I think I was a bit in shock from all that went on leading up to her grand entrance, but I still remember the overall sense of calm and being home at last when she was in my arms finally.
Earlier on the day of her birth, I began to have pretty regular contractions in the middle of the night, but my husband and I had seen these kind of cramps before—they were very similar to the menstrual cramps I endured before and after it was discovered that I had Nutcracker Syndrome 4 years ago. (The Nutcracker Syndrome is the entrapment of the left renal vein by the aorta and superior mesenteric artery, which causes extreme pain and/or chronic achiness in the pelvic region due to residual varicosities where the renal vein had to drain due to the entrapment. My husband reminded me later that I had always said that the Nutcracker-induced cramps were excellent practice for when I would be in labor someday and they were!) So we timed the contractions and waited for them to last at least 1 minute long and be 3-5 minutes apart, as we'd been instructed in our childbirth ed class, by our midwife and by our doulas. But they consistently lasted only 28-30 seconds long and came every 2.5 minutes. It wasn’t until I started to feel the urge to push with every contraction that we realized I was probably farther along in labor than we had initially thought. And within an hour, by 5am, with one of the pushing sensations, my water broke. My husband called our midwife and she said we should head to the birth center and to breathe through the pushing urges on the way there—we didn’t want to have our baby on the freeway! Wow!
Upon arrival at the birth center some 30 minutes from our house, the midwife checked to see how far dilated I was and discovered that I was fully dilated! We had gone through the entire first part of labor at home in the middle of the night on our own. Another wow!
I was invited to get in the jacuzzi tub at the birth center and begin pushing. It was quite surreal that everything was moving so fast. I didn’t know if we’d be meeting our baby girl within the next hour or if it would take longer, but I tried to breathe through all the sensations and feelings running through me and focus on pushing. To my surprise, I didn’t feel that much pain at that point, it was more like lifting weights or pushing something really heavy around. It was good ol’ physical work—no wonder this process is called labor, huh? :) The pain had been more prominent early on when I thought I was only having early labor and at some point told myself this has to be the real thing because it was quite intense. All that we learned in our Birthing From Within childbirth education classes really did help—I remembered to breathe, I remembered to take breaks and close my eyes and even try to sleep between each contraction, I remembered to push the energy down, and I miraculously stayed calm.
It was such a natural process—one I knew deep down that my body was born to do, so I trusted and I felt secure with such an amazing group of kind souls around me to help me welcome our baby into this world. Our midwife, Andrea was there, her midwifery student, Felicia, our doula, Jennifer (who would have been happy to come to our house in the middle of the night to help us before heading to the birth center but we didn’t know we were so far along), my loving and supportive husband, Geovanny, and my amazing momma, Maureen. I know my brother-in-law was there somewhere too because he graciously picked up my mom early that morning and brought her to the birth center.
As the pushing progressed, everyone was so encouraging, telling me I was doing an awesome job and how impressed they were with how calm I was throughout it all. That most definitely helped with what would next occur. Our baby girl took her first really big poo! Meconium is what it’s actually called. It’s the one sure thing that will turn a perfectly normal birth center birth into a hospital birth out of precaution for the baby, because if the meconium is inhaled into the baby’s lungs, she may need a suction right after birth, which is only at the hospital.
So our entourage packed up and got ready to head to the closest hospital, which thankfully was only about 5 minutes away. I was instructed to not push again—a very difficult feat after having pushed for the past several hours—and we all drove in a caravan to the hospital. I have to be honest here, I was not thrilled to have to transfer to the hospital. I really truly wanted to experience our baby’s birth in a more peaceful setting, but the next best thing was having all the peaceful people surrounding us there come with us to the hospital and advocate for us and support us. It almost felt like we took over the delivery room and were only using the facility in case we needed it. I liked that. The hospital staff probably felt a bit put off by so many capable birthing staff being with me but I felt secure. The doctor on call asked about my big scar, which was from the surgery 4 years ago to correct the Nutcracker Syndrome and which hadn’t been an issue during the pregnancy in the least bit. I almost got mad when another doctor came in and asked me the same question. This was not the time I wanted to be talking about an old surgery, which had nothing to do with the beautiful baby girl trying to make her grand debut this morning! But luckily a kind doctor was called in and had a big smile on her face and our birthing entourage helped explain my past health adventures. I remembered—quite miraculously I might add—that we had our birth preferences plan with us, in the event of a hospital transfer, and we were really impressed that the doctor and nurses respected our wishes and asked us questions before assuming anything.
One of the greatest surprise blessings of being transferred was that we were able to donate our cord blood, something I had wanted to do since I learned about it a few years ago but that wasn’t available at the birth center yet. That made me feel a little better about having a hospital birth. Also it was less than an hour from the time we arrived in the delivery room to when our baby girl was born so there was no time for the hospital to try to offer pain medicine or any interventions, and that made me feel really proud that we were able to stick to our original plan of a natural birth, despite having to go to the hospital in case our baby had inhaled any baby poo. Another concern that our midwife had warned us about was that we might not be able to do skin-to-skin right away if the baby needed a suction. That idea really broke my heart because I had read so many wonderful benefits of uninterrupted skin-to-skin time immediately after birth for the baby. Thankfully the kind doctor who helped us deliver the baby said that she would let me hold the baby and have skin-to-skin time right after the birth and they would check the baby out to see if a suction was needed. And luckily none was needed.
They still wanted to monitor our sweet baby girl and because she was born a very healthy 9 pounds, 4 ounces, they wanted to check her blood sugar as well. Our midwife told us that we didn’t have to stay overnight but that the hospital would recommend it. We decided to stay though just to be on the safe side and after such an adventurous 9 or so hours, it felt kind of nice to stay in one place for a bit. We got free food that was actually really good. The hospital took our baby girl’s footprints and gave us a keepsake which was really nice. We got to ask lots of questions about breastfeeding and later that first evening, we asked for help with our baby girl’s first bath, since she was covered in green meconium from labor. Of course there were some obvious differences in what the hospital believed and what we and our midwife believed, but I took all that information with a grain of salt and later asked our midwife for clarification.
Overall, for having things turn out differently than we had expected, which I’ve heard is the case in so many birth stories, things turned out really well. And we even got to visit with one of my co-workers who was scheduled to have her twins on that same day in the very same hospital. :) And a baby photographer came by before we left the hospital to take pictures of our sweet baby girl too. It was a good experience, and I’m really grateful we got to experience the birth center atmosphere too. I think its calming environment and energy really helped me through the unexpected events.
And then so much energy and focus and preparation is placed on the actual birth, but no one can really prepare you for the sheer and absolute and unconditional love you’ll feel for this little human that has entered your life all of the sudden. As our doula put it so beautifully, it’s like living with our hearts on the outside of our bodies now. So true. Our beautiful baby girl did wonderfully during the pregnancy and birth. And so we began the amazing journey into parenthood.
