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 21st and a weekend tent meeting we’ve been to three times previously that would start August 3rd. So we began declaring that our baby would come early, and then more specifically on July 1st . 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 10th, 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 15th, 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 5th, two days before my assumed due date of the 7th. After my 21 week ultrasound, because baby was measuring a bit small, the clinic changed their date to July 11th, 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 19th, 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 18th, 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 18th) 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 19th I 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 25th, 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.