The Birth of Amy Alene Faith

After the unassisted home birth of Owen, my ninth baby, I thought maybe I’d get to have predictable and similar birth stories from then on. But my tenth pregnancy was nothing like the ninth and so I should have known the labour and delivery would have its own story as well. Roughly six days before this birth, I knew that this one would be more challenging to write, if only because of the start and stop I experienced during that time.

Rewinding back to last summer, we had traveled to a few conferences and had a busy and tiring couple of months. I said half joking that we should have a baby in July this year so we had a good excuse not to travel this year. We don’t plan our pregnancies so when I found out I was pregnant and due in July, I had a laugh at God’s sense of humour.

In early November I found myself very emotional – this was my first clue that I might be pregnant. This is unusual for me but was followed within a few weeks by brutal morning sickness. Because of how sick I was, we started telling people almost immediately. When I was pregnant with Owen, I had a much easier time hiding it and just for the fun of it, we waited until I was around eighteen weeks pregnant to tell anyone. The first people to find out this time knew at five or six weeks. This made the pregnancy feel exceptionally long.

Sometime in the spring, we decided there were things happening in the summer that we did actually want to attend – a local conference starting July 21^st and a weekend tent meeting we’ve been to three times previously that would start August 3^rd. So we began declaring that our baby would come early, and then more specifically on July 1^st. I had questions about whether I was “allowed” to do that, but we stood in faith and asked others to do the same. We attended the Canada Day parade and enjoyed events in the park and listening to our friends’ band play that evening but baby stayed put. I started deciding on other dates I liked and believing for those. While I had contractions and a few other signs of impending labour, I knew this could go on for weeks.

Like many of my past pregnancies, this baby was breech for at least a few appointments before 40 weeks. So as much as I wanted an early baby, I was also looking forward to knowing baby was in a good position for birth. While I would have pursued a breech delivery, I knew my chances of having baby unassisted at home were smaller with a breech. On July 10^th, I finally had confirmation that baby was head down. I had a few hours of contractions after that appointment but they also fizzled out. That pattern continued for the following week.

On the 15^th, I started having occasional bloody show and by that evening was having some regular contractions that actually made me believe I might be in labour. Again we listened to our friends’ band play at an event in the evening and I sat and breathed my way through painless but strong contractions. By bedtime they had stopped again. The bloody show, however, continued until baby came, something I’ve never experienced more than twenty-four hours before birth and was admittedly somewhat frustrating. I also had days where I would be woken up by contractions or yet more signs of labour.

I’ve always had discrepancies with due dates because of my usually longer cycles. Typically this has meant fighting a bit for a later due date than the clinic or doctor has calculated. This time the clinic originally dated me at July 5^th, two days before my assumed due date of the 7^th. After my 21 week ultrasound, because baby was measuring a bit small, the clinic changed their date to July 11^th, so I had some leeway on being overdue where I knew the clinic wouldn’t be pressuring me about induction. Still, deadlines loomed – in particular, July 19^th, when my three oldest teenagers were going to be heading to camp as summer students to prepare for the weekend conference we still intended to attend. This caused me so much stress a week or so before hand, especially because our oldest wanted to be at the birth. I wanted this for her and was worried that she would be heartbroken if she had to miss it. On the 18^th, she told me that she would be okay if that happened, as long as she could come home from camp right away to see the baby. I confirmed with the camp director that there would be no issue with that at all, and after that I felt much better about the situation.

That morning (the 18^th) I had woken up with yet more signs of labour and Mike stayed home because we were so sure that this was the day baby would come. But after half a day of moving around and trying to help things along, we both realized that it wasn’t going anywhere quickly. We didn’t regret the day off, though, and went and set up our trailer at camp for the weekend that evening. I had a good evening visiting a few people there and finally felt relaxed about the timing of this baby’s birth.

On July 19^thI had a prenatal appointment and it could not have gone better. My favourite doctor was on the clinic rotation that day and a nurse friend who has featured in past birth stories was working as the intake nurse when I was there, which had been very rare during this pregnancy. My friend and I had a good chat and then the doctor asked me what I’d like to do if I reached 42 weeks, which according to their books, would have been on the 25^th, the day after the conference was done. He said either we can induce you or you can go for an ultrasound to check out how the placenta looks. I said I’d really prefer the ultrasound, and also agreed to go for a non-stress test the following day. I left that appointment feeling amazing about things – much how I had felt after the last appointment I had when I was pregnant with Owen. Being given choices and not being told what to do was a wonderful mood booster. I ran a few errands, saw my older kids off to camp in the afternoon, made supper for my younger kids and prepared to go out with Mike to, again, watch our friends’ band play at open mic. While I was making supper, I had some actual bleeding. It was alarming at first but after talking to a nurse friend, we decided I would just watch it and go to the hospital if it increased. I also had some discomfort that felt a bit like labour signs but after everything I’d been experiencing for more than a week, I couldn’t be sure. Mike asked if it would be selfish of him to hope that I wasn’t in labour so we could go out and I said I was totally fine with it so we went around 8.

I spent the next few hours fairly uncomfortable but not exactly contracting, so we didn’t rush away. At 10, I finally said I was ready to leave and we headed home. We were in bed by 11, knowing that it was highly likely something was happening now. I dozed off and on but by 12:30, asked Mike to run a bath because my lower back was hurting so much. I don’t even remember what the pattern of contractions was at this point because I never bothered to time them, but they were significant enough to prevent me from sleeping. The bath was an immediate relief and I stayed there for two hours. After that I felt that maybe getting out was a good idea and I moved to the living room to sit on my exercise ball. Mike slept on the couch for about an hour at this point and I still felt like things were manageable but by then had figured out that I was experiencing back labour, something I had only done once and then only briefly.

I knew a few things that might help to turn baby so the back labour would stop so I spent some time attempting those movements. Unfortunately there wasn’t any change. At 3:20 I texted a friend who was three hours ahead of me, thinking she probably wasn’t up but would be much sooner than anyone locally. Two hours later the back labour had turned into something agonizing and I texted her again. She sent me some more things to do but at that point I knew the only thing to do was to get back in the bath.

I don’t know the exact time I got back in the tub but things intensified once I was there. At this point, my water still hadn’t broken and all along I had been begging for it to happen and speed things up or help baby to descend. In the end, it was probably just before six in the morning when I started to feel the urge to push and checked to see if I could feel baby’s head yet. Instead what I felt was an odd bulge that I might have mistaken for the umbilical cord if I hadn’t known better. I knew it had to be the amniotic sac and that it was possible that it just wouldn’t break until I pushed. The first real push I attempted, just trusting it was the right time, broke my water. There was blood in the water, which I have never seen before. I chose not to focus on it, knowing I’d probably have baby out fast anyway. I could feel the head there and pushed again before Mike asked if I wanted to get up on my knees. When I had Owen in our tub, I got stuck in a semi reclined, half on my side position. Pushing in that position was painful and my tailbone popped and gave me trouble for months. So we both knew that being on my knees would be a much better position for birth. I struggled but somehow managed to move between contractions. Almost immediately baby was crowning and I delivered the head fast. I tried to slow down but really had no control over the speed. I asked Mike then if the head was out and he said he couldn’t see anything. I had to remind him that to see it he’d have to look behind me. I’m still laughing about that. After that point, it was one more contraction and baby was here. Mike reached down and handed the baby to me and I moved back into a reclined position. We looked at the time a few minutes later and figured it had been 6:05am when she was born.

This was a moment I had planned out – I wanted a video of finding out whether this baby was a boy or girl. I have never had record of that moment and especially because Jenny couldn’t be there, it was important to me. Even more so because I had a gut feeling that this was a girl and I wasn’t the only one who had felt like this. At this point neither of us had seen anything and I was holding baby against my chest. I had Mike get my phone and take a video and while I will likely never share that video publicly, I will at least share a still image from it. I was completely overwhelmed and honestly blubbering that this baby was actually a girl. We had waited so very long for this baby girl and I had to check three or four times to really believe it. Our Amy was here, eighteen years after our first daughter was born.

Right after her birth but before birthing the placenta, I passed a few large clots. This along with the bleeding early in the process and blood in my amniotic sac, left me feeling somewhat concerned. Then when we moved from the tub, it became obvious that the placenta wasn’t going to come easily. We cut the cord a bit earlier than we wanted to just so I could move more freely and try to move the placenta along. In the end, it took more effort than it ever had and without any real contractions to help me out. And then it felt and looked nothing like it had been with Owen so we made the decision quickly that we should go to the hospital. Mike called his mom and she came to stay with the kids while we went in. She held Amy while I was dealing with the placenta and then by eight, my sister-in-law and her kids came and Mom made breakfast for everyone.

At around seven, I had made a call to the camp caretaker who is a very dear friend and asked her to wake Jenny up for me and have her get on wifi and call me. There is no cell service at camp so I couldn’t just call Jenny directly. About ten minutes later, I got a Snapchat video call and got to tell my daughter that she finally had a baby sister after waiting so long for one. She cried and laughed and then when the call ended, woke up Elias and Erik and they left to come to town and meet her. They got home by eight and had about an hour holding Amy and visiting before we left for the hospital.

We found out on our way to the hospital that the birthing centre was on diversion due to staff shortages so our options were driving forty minutes or going to the ER. We were in the ER for a short time and had a quick check by a nurse who determined the placenta was intact and there was no obvious emergency so we were sent down to an assessment room in the birthing centre anyway. We were treated kindly but not very personally – I suspect that with more unassisted births happening all the time, some doctors aren’t excited to treat moms and babies who chose to stay home. Amy was weighed and surprised me at 8 lb 11 oz. She just felt so tiny and delicate that I didn’t expect her to be so heavy. Since everything looked normal, we headed home after about an hour and a half. It was lovely to be back in our home so soon after.

There is a lot of “after” to this story – we did go to the conference as planned, when Amy was only twenty-seven hours old, Jenny held her as much as possible and everyone else had to fight her a bit for a turn. Jenny cried four or five times over the weekend just amazed that she finally had a sister. Mike took four more days off and a friend gave us a baby shower the following weekend. I mostly felt great, aside from some core instability and back pain in the first week and headaches in the second. I came out of birth unscathed by tearing or tailbone injury so I have felt much better than my last three births. We went to the tent meeting when Amy was two weeks old, and then ten days later spent most of two weeks at camp for back to back teen and kids camps, with a second baby shower in between all of those things. Amy is a great sleeper and eater and generally just a very easy baby, which is wonderful when you are so busy in the first six weeks postpartum.

The busyness of our summer since she was born also makes this the latest I’ve ever gotten around to posting a birth story if I remember right. Most was written when she was about ten days old but it has taken me until six weeks (officially tomorrow) to get it finished. There are probably many more things I could write about – how my birth playlist was so perfect again and each song spoke to me in the moment just what I needed, how our community rallied around us again and blessed us so immensely with meals and gifts. Mostly I just want to get this out there, though, so I’m sure there are things that have been missed by my waiting so long to finish it. In the end, we had no regrets having another unassisted home birth, even when things were not as straightforward as the first time. And we are thrilled to have this little girl and to get to love her together as a family who have waited so long for her arrival.

The Birth of Owen Anthony

On Monday, April 19th, at eight days past my due date, I had my last prenatal appointment. It was possibly the best one I’ve ever had, especially so late in pregnancy. The doctor confirmed that baby was head down – a relief because he was transverse at my previous appointment. He then asked me if I wanted to come in and be induced. I said no. He said okay. He asked me if I wanted a membrane sweep. Declined that as well. No problem. He asked me how long I was comfortable going over. I said I felt totally fine about going to 42 weeks. I told him that I was happy to go in for non-stress tests to make sure baby was happy but I definitely wouldn’t want to be induced without good cause because of past experiences. I explained how things had gone when Lucas was born and how an aggressive pitocin induction was something I wanted to avoid. In the end I agreed to go back on Thursday afternoon for a non-stress test and I left the clinic feeling excited and confident. I had two appointments with this doctor in a row and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one who was this relaxed, especially considering my history and perceived risk factors. I felt I had full autonomy and that he wanted me to be the one calling the shots.

On Tuesday night I realized that I was a little bit afraid of the unknown – if I was going to go until 42 weeks or be induced, whether I would get the intervention free birth we had prayed for or not. I repented for that fear of the unknown and had a good four and a half hour sleep without interruption. At 4 in the morning, I woke up suddenly wondering if I might have peed myself. I knew it was very unlikely but I was just not expecting anything like this. The bed wasn’t wet but I knew something had happened. I jumped out of bed realizing that it might possibly be my water breaking. I started leaking as I speed-waddled to the bathroom. I made it to the toilet but the gush came before I could sit down. This was unmistakable. It was also the first time my water had broken outside of the hospital and was only the second time my water had broken on its own. The fluid was totally clear which was immediately reassuring. The funny thing was that this was something I had prayed for a few times, knowing how unlikely it was that my normal pattern would change from past births.

I woke Mike up and adrenaline kicked in. He was just as excited as I was. We got up, had breakfast and I started feeling some cramps and then very mild contractions. They became more intense but never really became painful. We were playing worship music and I was sort of trying to get things moving but at six I started feeling really tired. I told Mike that I wanted to go back to bed, even if all I could do was rest. We turned off all the lights and music and went back to bed. I dozed for about an hour total, even though I was still quite restless. Mike confirmed that I was asleep because he heard “the sweet sound” of my snoring. When I’ve struggled with sleep through this pregnancy, he has loved hearing me snore because it meant I wasn’t struggling. ❤ I was aware of some contractions while I was in bed but mostly ignored them and they definitely slowed down.

At eight, Mike got up to get the youngest boys some breakfast and I had a burst of energy and decided that it wouldn’t hurt to take a few laps around the block. We woke Jenny up and told her that things were happening which was absolutely thrilling for her. I was so glad at that point that we had time to let her sleep longer. We went twice around the block and things picked up again. I wasn’t timing them but Mike said if he could guess, the contractions at that point were 20 metres apart. 😂

When I decided I was done walking, we went inside and I used my birth ball a bit and eventually went back to bed and finished an episode of One Born Every Minute I had started the night before (a labour and delivery show, of course). My contractions were obviously stronger and getting closer to something I could call painful. That time is still very fuzzy to me – I know I moved around in a few different positions and tried to rest and breathe through contractions. I was messaging my sister and a friend in the States about my progress during this time as well. At around 11:30, Mike came in and we talked a bit and I asked him to run the bath for me. I knew the water would feel good and that if things suddenly progressed, it would be the easiest place to contain any mess made by birth, even though I was certainly not sure it would happen there. At this point, I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do. I just knew that I wanted to wait as long as possible to avoid intervention in the hospital. Mike was 100% on board with the idea of staying home for the whole thing but I wasn’t quite there.

I got in the bath at noon (thank you, timestamps on conversations with my sister…I was totally unaware of the time for most of the day). I had a birth playlist playing with worship music that I had made during my last pregnancy and a mixture of orange, lavender and frankincense oil in a diffuser as it was a scent I was really enjoying at the end of pregnancy. As things progressed in the bath, I prayed, sang between contractions and made declarations of what this birth was doing in me. I knew God was giving me a testimony even though I didn’t know the outcome yet. One amazing thing that happened was that while the playlist was on shuffle, each song that played seemed to be exactly what I needed at each moment during the next two hours. I know that was the Holy Spirit ministering to me.

For half an hour, things picked up but were manageable. I could tell I was out of early labour at least. At 12:30, I prayed that the baby would come in half an hour and decided that I would probably want to head to the hospital at that point if it hadn’t happened. I told Mike this and he stayed close by after that. Some time later, I asked him between contractions what time it was and he said it was 1:18. I knew this was outside my time frame but I felt I was managing just fine and I didn’t really want to get out yet.

It was likely not more than twenty minutes after that when I started feeling a bit overwhelmed and realized I might be in transition already. It was so different not being checked for dilation this time so I was just going off of how I felt. It was getting hard to manage and feel in control and I expressed this to Mike a few times. I absolutely thought a few times that I wanted to be in the hospital where there was nitrous and possibly stronger drugs. Mike was nothing but encouraging, praying for me and reminding me that I was made to do this. I never really made a decision about staying in the bath but if someone had tried to get me out at that stage, I definitely could not have moved. I could barely change positions and eventually got fully “stuck” in a semi-reclined sitting position.

After three or four of these transition contractions, I started feeling pressure. Not really an urge to push, but more like my body was moving him down. I assume it was probably around 2:00 that I knew I needed to push. I felt to see if baby’s head was obviously coming and it was probably halfway down the birth canal already. I had hoped to really experience fetal ejection reflex and let my body push this baby out without pushing the way I had always been coached to do. In the moment, though, I had this instinctual feeling that this baby needed some help getting out and I was going to have to put some hard work in here. I won’t lie – it was very hard. I’ve had babies between low seven pounds and mid nine and this took a lot more effort than my littlest ones. As I was pushing, I heard an audible pop and knew it was my tailbone – this had happened when I had Jenny nearly sixteen years ago and it led to six months of recovery from a bruised or broken tailbone. In the moment, it didn’t hurt but I couldn’t ignore the sound.

I knew exactly when baby was crowning and I definitely said something about how much it hurt but didn’t actually tell Mike that he was crowning. Then once his head was out I may have said something or maybe he just looked for himself but he was astonished that I was that far because in the hospital, he had always seen the baby’s head long before then. I pushed again and felt like I had to give birth to a second head – I can only assume his shoulders were broad because I don’t remember any of my other babies taking that kind of effort.

Mike reached down for him once the first shoulder was out and lifted him out once both came. He was still underwater until that point. He picked him up out of the water and I reached down for him. I immediately felt as I put my hand under his bum that he was a boy – not a surprise at all to me. He was making a bit of noise, was definitely purple but not limp, and right away I saw the bath was totally brown – he had pooped at the end at some point, quite possibly when I was pushing because that was the first time we saw any evidence of meconium. He also had a thick coating of vernix on his back which I had never seen on my other babies. I rubbed his back, flicked his feet a few times and scooped some mucus out of his mouth. I had watched some unassisted birth videos and also had a few friends who had their babies unassisted so I knew what to do if a baby was struggling a bit at first. Very quickly he pinked up and started crying. This happened fast and somewhere in there Mike looked at the time and called 2:12 pm for time of birth. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say pushing took no more than ten minutes.

Jenny was apparently listening at the door at the end and heard me pushing but didn’t believe I could be so close already. It felt like a long time but I was only in the bath for two hours before I started pushing. Once she heard a cry, she came in fast and totally stunned and excited. Shortly after that, Mike covered me with a towel and the boys all crowded in to the bathroom to see their new brother.

I nursed him right away and waited for the placenta to come. This is a part of my birth stories that I’ve likely never bothered to tell in the past but it was so different again that it seems important (also might come across as TMI if you’re just not into birth like I am). I knew it should come within an hour or so and could feel pressure but couldn’t push in the position I was in. Eventually I knew I would have to stand up so I carefully passed Owen to Mike and shortly after the placenta came easily and I caught it myself. We asked Jenny to get a bowl but should have said a bucket because she grabbed a frequently used salad/chip/popcorn bowl from the kitchen. Thankfully it was old and cheap. 😂

After this point, we did everything with a baby wrapped up in a towel and a placenta in a salad bowl. Mike did his best to clean things up and prevent a bigger mess from being made and we eventually were able to move to our bedroom so I could rest while we decided what to do next. Elias made me probably the best grilled cheese sandwich I’ve ever had and I phoned the hospital to explain the situation and see what they would advise. I suspected I had torn so I thought it best to at least go in to get checked.

The decision was made that we would go in, cord attached to placenta and all and get checked out. I assumed we would stay the night so I brought my hospital bag along. We left home at around 4:45. I had a very small first degree tear that required two stitches and otherwise everything was fine. I never had an IV or even the standard shot of oxytocin in the thigh that they typically give you when baby is out. I said to Mike later that this was truly an intervention free birth – far beyond what I expected as I thought I would have to either fight care providers for what I wanted and make people angry or give in and compromise on my hopes for this birth. The staff were all very kind and some of them familiar from past births – I told them very honestly that I hadn’t really planned to stay home but that there came a point where I just couldn’t get out of the bath anymore. No one scolded me or questioned that decision at all, which was a relief.

The biggest shock I had in the hospital was his birth weight. I only gained twenty-five pounds this pregnancy and never felt or looked huge at all. I had an inkling that I had a long baby – he was 20 3/4″ – but thought from holding him that he was around eight and a half pounds. I believe the nurse said something along the lines of “hold onto your hats” when she told us his weight – 9 lb 13 oz! My biggest baby! Jenny had held the record for nearly sixteen years.

We were originally told we could go home roughly twenty-four hours after his birth but due to antibodies I had during pregnancy and a pediatrician who seemed to want something to be worried about, it took us a bit longer than we had hoped. We have been dealing with him and odd blood results all week now, honestly putting a damper on the first week at home, especially when Owen seems to be perfectly healthy and has no obvious symptoms of the issues the pediatrician is concerned about. We will hopefully have some more clarity on that within the next few days and be done with all the follow up.

Owen is being well loved and snuggled by everyone here and no one has expressed any disappointment that he is a boy. My recovery has only been made difficult by the tailbone injury and that seemed to be at its worst about three days postpartum and has been improving since. Owen nurses well and sleeps soundly in between feeds and lovely alert periods where we all oooh and aaah over him and his big eyes. He looks almost identical to Ben as a newborn which is amazing and he has jet black hair and fairly dark skin – completely opposite Lucas who is blonde and very pale.

This birth experience was full of answers to prayer and outright miracles. Here I am, a “geriatric” mother, a woman who has many children, putting me at higher risk of hemorrhage (although I have never hemorrhaged), a woman with two previous cesareans and a history full of inductions and other interventions that have truly made me lose faith in my ability to labour and birth naturally. I have had only one other fully natural labour and all the others had at least one type of undesirable intervention. Many led to the “intervention cascade” that leaves women feeling like they are broken and certainly left me feeling that way at times.

One of the miracles of this birth was that our children got to meet their baby brother immediately after his birth. They have always had to wait at least a few hours but this time, they would not have been allowed to come to the hospital to see us, due to covid policies. Jenny has always wanted to come to a birth and did come when Simon was born but that ended in a cesarean so she missed seeing an actual birth. She didn’t witness Owen’s birth but was there moments later which was so special for her.

Another interesting answer to prayer is that I had half jokingly said that I was praying for a two hour labour. I genuinely did pray for it but when my water broke at four and I didn’t have a baby at six, I decided that one wasn’t being answered. But then when I looked back, I realized that labour was so manageable until around noon that my “real” or active labour was really only two hours long. I’ve had many hours of labour that intense in past births and I was so glad to only have two hours of intensity like that and really less than one hour of the kind of labour that sometimes makes you feel like you can’t actually do it.

Mike and I both knew that an intervention free birth – at home or in the hospital – would minister healing to both of us. He was absolutely amazing throughout this experience and made me feel so loved and blessed to be his wife. He did everything I needed him to do and in the end, we just thanked God over and over and knew that this prayer had been answered – we both feel so healed from the damage done in past birth experiences.

Throughout this pregnancy we have been blessed to have a community of people around us who have truly become family. They have encouraged us and prayed for us all along and have rejoiced with us in welcoming a new son in this incredibly unique way. And since his birth, many have brought food and baking and given generously to us so that we can soak in this time and not be under the pressure that running a large household can bring, particularly in the area of meals. I really believe that we could not have done this so confidently without these beautiful people in our lives.