He's here! He's been here for almost two weeks now! I'm a slacker. In my defense, I have been recovering, embracing, and praying for the ability to process my birth experience. Tuesday November 19, 2013 we headed to visit the midwife as I was 4 days over my guess date and tired of having contractions that didn't seem to produce anything promising. She checked my progress but it wasn't anything that even hinted "ready" and she decided not to encourage anything. She just said to go home and try not to encourage them. Throughout the entire day: our lunch out, a small trip to Target, picking our oldest son up from homeschool classes and chatting, my trip to the grocery store, I had contractions. They were enough to take my breath away but nothing new and nothing that anyone else would know of. I was pretty convinced that this day was not the day for a baby and just kept on with the things I would normally do. At 9:30pm I was having pretty consistent contractions coming 4 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute or so. Nothing I did would make them lengthen out and my previous ones never got closer than 5 minutes apart. I told husband that at 10:30pm, if they hadn't stopped and/or increased, I wanted to call everyone because I was pretty sure it was time. He sent a text to the midwife letting her know and she said she was headed to bed, to call when/if things got interesting. He sent a text to our birth team giving them a head's up and letting them know our plan. He took the older boys to bed and I remained on the birth ball just praying my way through the contractions, talking to my sweet baby. At 10:15pm, as husband was filling the birth tub, I felt an intense jolt and a small gush of fluid. I jokingly told husband, "Either my water just broke or I peed myself!" And I thought I had peed myself! But when I stood up from the ball, fluid flowed down my leg. I knew it was my water. What I didn't expect is when I sat down on the toilet, finding my pants covered in blood and gushes of blood happening. Quickly I ran through the risks: low lying placenta-they told me it was nice and high, rupture-blood loss should be much quicker, problems with baby-he was moving around and kicking. I looked it up online, only because I had contraction tracker open to time contractions and it said blood was normal in water breaking so I was good. It subsided except the few gushes I had here and there. Husband called the midwife and birth team at 10:20pm telling them it was indeed time! They all rushed to our house. I got in the birth pool and felt great. It made me buoyant and took the pressure off of my lower back where I had been feeling the bulk of my contractions. Contractions stalled a little bit but then picked up once I settled in the pool. My birth team quickly arrived around 11:30pm and were in motion just as fast. Husband's mother tended to our 2 year old who couldn't find rest except watching Chugginton on our bed. She laid with him in his bed until he fell asleep. My two dear friends were quickly at my side, soothingly rubbing my arms and back, pouring warm water over my exposed skin that was cold. It was everything birth should be. The three younger women who were here were great. They did things I don't even know of. Their sheer presence, knowing that my birth was changing their views and opinions on birth as they know it meant so much to me. I strive to live my life in a way that people see Jesus in me and I rarely feel like I ever achieve that. Never in my life do I feel as I am doing more for the Kingdom of God than when I am in birth and it blessed me to know that I was doing what I was created to do and allowing others to participate with me. By this point, about 11:45pm I was having strong contractions and feeling the need to just push my baby down. With each contractions, I would just give a squeeze and only because it relieved the pain of the contraction. I remember thinking of each contraction as a wave and envisioning the waves building, building, building, peaking, and then crashing down into barely a ripple. I would mentally view each contraction this way, moaning through, sometimes vocalizing loudly, and then focusing back on chatting with my amazing birth team. Husband faithfully kept my water warm. I had a contraction pattern that was different from what I am use to. I would have a contraction, a short 30 second space and another contraction, then I would have a few minute rest. Each time I just kept squeezing my body with each contraction in hopes I was bringing my baby down with it. By 12:15am, I couldn't talk between contractions because they were just so hard it took all I had between them to compose myself. I was losing my focus of the waves quickly because they just felt like they were peaking way higher than any wave I've ever seen. I silently asked God to give me relief. I decided continual prayer was best at this point! I felt best laying in the water with my belly forward. I tried different positions but none felt quite as comfortable. At 12:20am our midwife arrived and I asked her to check my progress. I needed a point of reference because all I could think about was how I needed my baby here right now and I wanted to be done with this! At 12:35am, she checked me and just said I had a bit to go. I wasn't bold enough to beg her to just tell me where I was. I asked if I could push now because it felt so much better and gave me a sense of accomplishment. (I was actually found to be at 5-6cm but she didn't want to tell me that because I was working so hard, having such intense contractions, and it would have been discouraging. I'm so glad she didn't say anything.) It felt good and I was encouraged to push gently unless it hurt, so I did. I noticed my midwife preparing things as I was vocalizing through contractions and I felt like I was getting close. I am thinking how it's time to get my boys here for this moment as they prayed for their baby to come tonight! I eventually felt my baby almost thump in my pelvis and I could start to feel my body opening to allow him out. Time is such a funny thing while in labor. It just doesn't exist. Or maybe it does but it seems so much longer than it really is. I just lose all concept! With each contraction, sweet and loving voices are quietly encouraging me. They are the voices of women who have gone before me, telling me I'm doing so good, compassionately humming along with me through my pain, praying in agreement with me. It's the voice of my amazing husband telling me he's right there with me. After I feel my baby descend, I start pushing, trying to feel for his head because in my mind, I know it must be close. I can't feel it but I push through each contraction anyway. Then I feel it and I know I cannot fight a crowning head any longer so with my next contraction, I push with everything and his head is born. I go from being forward in the water, to being on one knee with the other fanned out, almost in a modified squat. I know this will open my pelvis and allow the baby more space as well as being upright, gravity would be on my side. At this point, I can't get another contraction to come. It feels as though too much time has passed with his head out and I begin pushing just to ignite a contraction and get my baby off of my perineum. This being my first water birth, the feeling of his head just floating there with little pressure on my perineum area is odd but so much more bearable than my previous births. My midwife says, at least I think it was her and I think this is what she said, "Just feel for his head and gently push your baby down and out. Don't strain." I say, "But his head is out!" Immediately action ensues! Using a flashlight, my midwife tries to look and see how things are going. I presume to check on cord and such. I don't realize it but something is happening. Finally, finally, another contraction comes and I push. It ends and I rest for a few seconds, then another and I push again. At 12:55am, I feel my slithery little baby glide right out of my body, where I grew him and nurtured him for 10 months, into the water. My midwife tells someone to turn on lights. As soon as they do, I bring my baby out of the water and he is covered in blood and his mouth is full of blood. His, mine, we aren't sure. I hold him to me as close as I can with his short cord but I realize this isn't normal. We have a few moments together while they cover the floor and then we are directed to get out of the pool and onto the floor to see what kind of bleeding situation is taking place. He is perfection. Trying to breath, making noises, perfect color, working on opening his eyes to see me. As I sit on the floor, getting to know my sweet new baby, I hear my second child, my 4 year old, say, "You know, Grandma? I really wanted a sister." And we all erupt with laughter! The joy of the Lord! Husband starts talking to me and Gunner looks at his daddy with adoration as if saying, "I know you. I've heard you all of this time." Not long after we are sitting on the floor, my placenta comes. The cord is clamped and cut and I can finally bring my baby close enough to kiss and snuggle. I get that moment where I look at him and can't see anything else. I can't hear anything else. It's just me and this miracle child. Apparently, my blood loss is significant and the reason I am on the floor is to assess the severity of the situation. The birth pool is murky at best. You can't see anything except dark water. I tend to have a high blood loss volume post birth anyhow, but this seems much more serious. Despite all of that, I am in my birth haze. I just want to shower and be fresh for my baby and I want to get in bed and cuddle him close. I do get in bed, sans shower, and snuggle up with my sweet little pumpkin. He is examined and I am examined. I figure I am kept from the shower to assess how I will respond to the blood loss. No one wants me passing out in the shower! While I lay in bed getting to know my precious baby, it is revealed what a miracle he truly is. It is believed, though no one will ever know, I had a velamentous insertion with vasa previa. This is a condition that only occurs in 1% of singleton pregnancies, cannot be determined during pregnancy unless the ultrasound is specific and everything is positioned just so, and typically ends in the death of the baby. The hypothesis is that when my water broke, it rupture a vessel which caused the bleeding. Then when the baby engaged, his head pinched off the bleeding from the vessel but when he was born, it broke a chunk of the vessel off causing the bleeding in the birth pool. There is no way to know if the blood was maternal, fetal, or placental. It's likely it wasn't fetal since he had great apgar scores and was doing great post birth. It's more likely it was mostly maternal and some placental since the placenta was nearly void of blood volume. Another thought is that I had a low lying placenta and when my water broke, a chunk of the placenta broke with it. Lastly, I could have had a post partum hemorrhage and/or any variation of these thing! Like I said, we'll never know 100% for sure, nor would they in a medical setting. We are just thankful for God's hand upon us!
God is so amazing! My midwife is 2 hours from us and we prayed that there would be a sign that would ensure she would make it in time. My water has never broken to start labor but this time, it did! And she made it to our house at 12:20am just in time for a 12:55am birth! In a situation that could have gone so very wrong, it went so perfectly wonderful. The grace in it is that it happened quickly. We have lamented what would have happened in the hospital and given the initial blood loss, they would have pushed hard for a c-section. If we had avoided that, upon birth, where there was blood visible in his mouth, they would have suctioned him and yanked him from my body. He would have been whisked away to the nursery and likely, because of our small town hospital, he would have been transferred to another hospital with a NICU. I would have had my placenta forcefully removed from my body, causing much more bleeding than necessary and I likely would have been given drugs to control the bleeding and likely a blood transfusion to replenish the 1000mL of blood lost. My sweet baby would have been tortured with tests, lights, foreign objects, and strangers. He would not have been allowed to breastfeed until I was able to get to him. His first moments would have been spent scared and alone. Then when he passed bloody meconium, they would have wanted to run more tests to see where this bleeding was coming from. While it was from the blood he ingested in the birth process they would have thought it to be an ulcer or hernia. Please, please don't think I don't appreciate the medical technology we have available to us. I just know in our situation, while it could have gone very wrong, our specific situation would have been made much worse, possibly life-threatening in the medical setting. God's sovereign hand of mercy was certainly upon us from the beginning to the end.
I write this while my sweet baby boy lie asleep on my chest. His loud sleep noises bring joy to my heart. I am beyond thankful that God saw me fit to be the mother of this child and that His plan is so great for this baby, that despite the odds, He gave life to this child. Looking back, I am thankful that my intuition told me in early pregnancy that I needed a midwife. I am thankful that my initial midwife wasn't able to see our pregnancy through due to legal reasons and that this God-sent angel of a midwife decided to take us on as clients. Without her, without my birth team of the 6 most precious women in my life, without my birth warrior husband, without my children, I don't know that this birth would have been the same. I am so thankful for a body that bears life full term. I am even thankful for my anomalies. It seems each birth, I have some rare thing take place but God sees me through each and every time, revealing to me that He is in control of everything. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is my refuge and my hope. When it all seems out of control, God reminds me that He is in control. I cannot express what my heart feels adequately. There just are not words to explain. I am indebted to each person who stood by my side at this birth. They know who they are and there is no way I could say thank you in a way that truly shows what I feel. I have said before, and I say it again, I will always use our midwife. She forever has my business. In fact, I asked her today if she would be there for us if there is a next time. Thankfully, she said yes!
Please know that if I needed to use a hospital to birth at, I would! No one wants healthy babies more than I do! I promise you that! Hopefully you can see in my experience compared to the standard of care I described in a hospital setting, the homebirth choice was best for us! There is currently very little diagnostic for the situation I had. I have never had that before and likely will never have it again. The vessels had to be in just the right place and my water broke in just the right place near the vessel and the placenta had to be in just the right place....nothing about it is certain! Birth is God's business and my experience clearly shows that to be true! I saw UNC several times in my pregnancy, saw a midwife for my other visits, had two ultrasounds. No one could have predicted this situation! I trust in the Lord, in the body He created, in my body to do what it was created to do, and in myself! I own my births. They belong to me and the outcomes are my sole responsibility. I am thankful for a healthy baby and for a healthy body. I am thankful for life! I am thankful for a God-fearing, supportive husband. I am thankful for my children. I am thankful for my Jesus who made this all possible!
Gunner Jedidiah (means: Bold Warrior, Beloved of God) Seawell, 9lb 1oz, 20 3/4" long, born November 20, 2013 @ 12:55am at home
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