so... hello blog. long time no see! Like anyone has time to blog with two kids, two direct sales businesses and a crazy painting hobby. but having a new baby is a pretty good reason to fire up the ole keyboard. Especially when it was a home water birth..... with an Amish midwife... at 42 weeks and 3 days. So settle in, this is a long one! I'm going to give you two parts, the back story on why we wanted this so badly, and then the actual experience.
So a little back story here... this third pregnancy was SO much harder on me in several ways. Not because I was 28 this time and not 23 or 21. And not even because of having two other kids,who were 6 and 4 and involved in football, baseball, and every other activity possible. I thought that would make it harder, but in fact they were so much help with things when I couldn't bend or get up from the back pain, etc. First, I suffered from a problem called Pubic Symphysis Dysfunction. In lamen terms- your body is supposed to release a hormone called relaxin towards the end of pregnancy to cause your pubic bones to separate in anticipation of labor. Buuuutt, its not supposed to start separating at 16 weeks! With my last pregnancy I had the same thing, but it didnt start until the last 4-6 weeks, so starting so much earlier this time was a nightmare! So I pretty much literally had a broken vaj for almost the entire pregnancy LOL. There is absolutely nothing that can be done for it, other than trying not to separate your legs when rolling over in bed, getting out of a car, not pushing a shopping cart, and applying heat was supposed to help it. Well one really cant walk around holding their crotch in MJ style all the time, so I was in a lot of pain haha. The other major prob was my severe acid reflux. I've had it for almost ten years, not just during pregnancy, but BOY did it fire up this time, to the point that I couldn't keep any food or liquids down without it refluxing stomach acid and food all the way up into my sinuses. I finally saw a GI doctor in the last month who put me on double doses of TWO meds and got some sweet relief!
Other than those two minor inconveniences, I had a SUPER normal healthy pregnancy. Just like with Camden I craved nothing but fruits, veggies, yogurt, smoothies, and generally healthy food. Couldn't stomach any bread, meat or cheese, so I just knew from day one that this was another boy. Up until well into the last three months, then McDonalds apple pies and plain cheeseburgers were ALL I wanted! LOL. I still could not complain about how pregnancy in general went. So many people don't get to have a full term pregnancy or have a lot more serious problems than I did. I was blessed with a very easy and 1000% picture perfect healthy pregnancy THREE times..
So a little MORE backstory about why we ended up wanting a home water birth this go round....
From the very first pregnancy with Camden I have REALLY wanted to have a water birth. I was an over-researcher when I was pregnant and watched TONS of videos and birth stories. All the water births were just AMAZING. So relaxed looking and easy! And so natural! Early on with him I watched "The Business of Being Born" and I wanted to have an all natural, no drugs birth, and I knew that the water would be an awesome way to manage pain in labor. If you are EVER going to have a baby, I highly suggest you watch it first. Its a freaking awesome film and can be found on Netflix. It's all about how hospitals have their rules and protocols and most are for good reason. BUT the numbers are astounding at how many women are delivered early for a "big baby" or because they are "late" or not progressing on time, or because that's when their doctor will be there. NOT when baby decides he is good and ready! It also discusses how they rush things along when Mom is in labor to get baby out in a certain time frame that's "acceptable". All the things they use to intervene make labor drastically harder and usually cause a cascade of even MORE unncessary interventions. For example:
*Mom is induced on her due date because her baby is measuring large, and her doctor is only on call two days that week, so they ensure she is the one to deliver.
*Mom comes in and is hooked up to a drug called pitocin to induce labor. This often takes quite a while. Some hospitals have a policy that Mom should dilate about 1cm an hour once she is induced. (dont even get me started on this). So most of the time, they come in and the up the level of pitocin she gets every hour or few hours.
*Pitocin causes INSANE contractions. Like instead of a gradual acceleration after stopping at a stop sign, think getting shot out of a circus cannon and hitting a brick wall. YOU'RE IN LABOR!!!! *Because of these type contractions, women who really wanted to avoid drugs often end up getting pain meds and or an epidural.
*On top of the pitocin making labor harder in general, once it is upped and labor is in full swing, its hard to come down, and you dont get the natural rest between contractions like youre supposed to.
*When labor doesnt progress fast enough, or the monitors you are required to stay on constantly while on pitocin show that you or baby is in distress (which the drugs cause in the first place), then they go into even more interventions sometimes ending in a c section. This can also happen if your water breaks or they break it for you and then you dont have the baby in their time frame, usually 12 hours. Lots of times they want to rush to break your water because it WILL speed things up, and that puts baby in a lot of stress. The water is a big cushion for baby as you contract around him in labor and those contractions aren't pushing directly on HIM the whole labor. It shouldnt break until hes really ready to come out!
The film mentions how many babies are born at the end of a doctor's shift, or how many are born perfectly healthy or UNDER weight after being a "too big to deliver" baby. Which for the record, is almost ALL babies. Women very rarely grow babies they can't birth. And almost all babies claimed to be too big on ultrasounds are born UNDER 8 pounds. They are very inaccurate.
All in all, I read up A LOT on all these thoughts and ideas and interventions and wanted to avoid them all. While I had a perfect pregnancy with Camden with one of the best midwives EVER, home birth wasn't really in our thoughts because we had family history of complications and being our first, Kris was afraid of the idea (I can't say it didn't frighten me a bit then too). She was totally on board with my wanting to do everything naturally and gave me lots of ideas on things to do to acheive that. My blood pressure in the last few weeks required bed rest and eventually being induced. My mom had a bad history with both of her kids and blood pressure, so I didnt want to risk anything. He was full term and in no stress, so I reluctantly agreed he needed to come out. I was required to stay on the monitors when induced with him and couldn't come off for more than a half hour. The half hour I got to spend laboring in the water in labor though, was out of this world. The pain was cut in HALF! I ended up having 36 hours of labor with him and did so all natural. Every time I wanted to give up or ask for drugs, she reminded me I was doing great and sat with me almost the entire labor to keep me going. Even though he was stuck awhile and caused me to push for TWO HOURS and had a big cone head for the first day, he was perfect!!
Again with Cailee, I had a good midwife and wanted an all natural birth. I really wanted to try for a home birth, but there was NOTHING in terms of options in our area. I was referred to a good midwife that everyone seemed to love. SHE was great but I HATED the hospital and office she was associated with. I was made to see 8 different doctors throughout the pregnancy because of their policy of never knowing who will deliver. I showed my butt and refused to see anyone else but her for the rest of the pregnancy. Totally felt like just another number patient and waited two hours for appts sometimes. At the last appt, I saw an OB at that office, who wanted to do a stress test and ultrasound because she was measuring a week overdue. I was told she was in no stress but was measuring 11 pounds on the ultrasound and was going to be a huge baby. With an ice storm impending and BP getting borderline high, he decided it would be best for us if we induced for her too. So we did. SIGH. I still wanted to have no drugs, and after 24 hours of no labor proressing but DOUBLE the pain I had in labor with Camden, I agreed to get a half dose of Statol to "relax me enough to let the contractions work". *eye roll* I ended up reacting horribly to the half dose of Statol they did give me, and refused any more drugs. I agreed to let them break my water in hopes that it would help speed things up (again, hindsight, eye roll). She sure did kick things into gear and I had one non stop THIRTY MINUTE contraction from hell. I knew something had changed and tried to tell three different nurses that she was coming. They sighed and told me I was only 3cm thirty minutes ago. Finally someone agreed to check things out and lo and behold, HELLO CAILEE. One push, with the midwife barely making it into the room to catch her. She missed her 1/11/11 birthday by 20 minutes because they didnt believe me LOL. And guess what, she wasn't done baking. She was barely 7 lbs!! She also had jaundice really bad that required us to spend an EXTRA day in the hospital with her and lots of extra bloodwork.
With neither kid was I able to eat during labor. I was allowed with Camden to move around as much as the monitors allowed, sat on the bouncy ball, and was able to deliver him NOT flat on my back (which is the WORST possible way to push out a baby). I wasnt able to move much at all with Cailee because the room was really small and they didnt really offer any things like the ball, etc. I had no tearing or downstairs trauma with either kid, which I think is pretty impressive. But I did have what I felt was a normal recovery time/after birth pain.
When we got pregnant this time, I said I would do whatever it took to NOT be induced, even if that meant having this one at home. I was a picture perfect patient for both previous pregnancies and labors, with no complications and I had not one single bit of fear about going that route. I just needed to convince Kris to get on board. He was in agreement that we both hated the experiences we had before in the hospital and how they were just generally stresseful, including the two days recovery time where someone is constantly bothering you and baby.
So fast forward four years...... YAY another baby.. right? LOL
I knew I did NOT want to go back to the same hospital we had Cailee in. I asked around and started out seeing an amazing midwife at a different hospital, with a new birthing suite that boasted about their awesome jetted showers and tubs and one room labor/delivery/recovery. From the very beginning I just LOVED the new midwife and the office staff, and Kris did too. She was super laid back, super supportive of all things natural and water birth. I saw her for EVERY appointment, and when we had a scare that something might be wrong really early on, she was relaxed and settled all our fears. She had mentioned that you can labor in the water at the hospital and "if you accidentally deliver, oops". So she was very board with my desire to have a water birth this time. As pregnancy progressed, I had mentioned every time I saw her that I was thinking about wanting to do this at home, and mentioned all the things I hated about the hospital and their procedures that I hated the last two times. So at my 20 week appointment we brought it up, and asked her if she would deliver us at home. She said as much as she would love to, she hadn't done home births in a few years just because of the volume of patients with home and hospital combined. She told me all the things I hated about the hospital could be my choice to not do/get. She said if you don't want an IV, don't get one! You want to eat, then eat! She truly wanted me to have the labor I hoped to have. Then she gave us the name of her very good friend Mattie, who is an Amish midwife and the person she refers all her patients to for home births. Said she was the only person she would recommend. She said to meet and and then decide, but that she was totally on board with me delivering at home and said I couldnt be a more perfect candidate for it. (Not everyone is!)
So we made an appointment to meet her, and I made myself sick about it for the two weeks until we did. I really wanted to not like her because I just loved who we were seeing, and she had kinda ruined my I hate the hospital defense. I wanted it to be a simple decision. Well too bad, because we instantly fell in love with Mattie. I had no idea what to expect, because I don't guess I've ever met anyone who was Amish. I totally didn't want a hippie type "get in the zooooone with your bodddyyy" person, and she was the polar opposite. She was about as laid back and even a bit snarky as you can get! We loved her. So then we rode home from her house for 45 minutes going craaaaaaaaaaaaaapp, now what do we do. We tried to make a pros and cons list and couldn't come up with any cons... By the time we got home we knew we had made our decision. Even Kris just couldn't find any reason at all to not birth at home. Every concern we had, she had a response and answer for. She had delivered hundreds of babies, tons in the water, and even all but one of her own 8 kids were born at home, and several grandchildren. She had only transported THREE patients to the hospital, and none for emergencies, just precaution or mom changed her mind. I was ecstatic. I was finally going to get to have the amazing home water birth I had wanted for years!
Now we'll fast forward a few months.... and get ready for Part II. :)
