{Becoming Mother} A Home Birth Story
I've gotten quite a few questions about my hospital birth with Cannon, my birthing center birth with Cason, why I choose those locations and why I wanted a natural birth. I thought it might be fun to do a blog series on women who have had different birthing experiences and what they've liked about them. I'll be back at the end of the series to share what we liked about our hospital birth and what we liked about our birthing center birth.
This is not a promo for a particular type of birth, in fact I've tried to cover as many types of births as possible from natural at home to c-section in the hospital. This is more of a "what can you expect" if you were to have one of these types of birth. Hopefully they will encourage you, help you make a birth decision that's right for your family, and most of simply rejoice in the way God creates life.
Let me introduce you to my friend, Jessica. We initially met at a weeklong photography workshop when Cannon was just a few weeks old and she was still pregnant with her first. Never expecting to see me again, she shared the gender and name of her unborn child, which, unbeknownst to me was a big secret. Little did we know that through various circumstances, home groups, play dates and circles of mutual acquaintances, that we'd become friends and enjoy play dates with our back-to-back boys.
My first thoughts about birth happened long before I was
pregnant. Surprisingly, it was
during the season eight finale of “Friends”,
The One Where Rachel Has a Baby. I
was finishing my senior year of college and a husband, much less childbirth,
was nowhere in sight. What I
remember about that episode though, whatever else was going on medically,
unlike any other depiction of childbirth I’d seen before, Rachel wasn’t pushing
on her back. She was sitting up,
hugging her knees to her body and that made sense.
Five years, marriage and four homes later, I happened across
the birth story of an acquaintance.
She described how challenging the birth of her first child had been,
because of the medical staff that she had and the interventions that they
insisted on. She had determined to
do it differently the second time around, and although still at a hospital, basically
labored on her own and was able to birth her child naturally, with minimal
support from the hospital staff.
This gave me pause, as the only people that I really knew who had had
children did things “normally”: in a hospital, with a scheduled induction and
an epidural.
Somewhere around there, while taking some photographs for a
friend from high school who had twins, I found out that she had not only had
them naturally, but at a birth center.
Which naturally led to more questions, more Internet digging, and a
bewildered husband who was discovering what my mom had known for years, that I
often take my people where they had never planned to go.
When we became pregnant, I knew that I wanted to
investigate different types of care.
I chose the birth center in Dallas where my friend had delivered her
twins. In part, I chose a midwife
because, being relationally driven, I wanted to be more than a number in the
docket. It was a good birth,
uncomplicated, if not easy. It
turned out, however, that I was annoyed with the process of laboring at
home. And then in the car. And then in a room that was
unfamiliar. But the biggest hassle
was gathering up all of our belongings, and our newborn babe, and heading home
at midnight, because the birth center only retains you for six hours after the
birth. Don't get me wrong, I was HAPPY to head home, and sleep in my very
own bed, but it was ANNOYING to pack everything up to do so. So, when we
learned that number two was on the way, we knew that, given the likelihood of
another uncomplicated labor and delivery, we would welcome him at home.
There is a feeling that, at a birth center, that is
a safety net for “just in case”.
The midwives have the ability to manage most emergency measures in-house
and can help you transfer to a hospital, should the need arise. I was fairly certain that we wanted to
birth at home, but I had questions:
What special equipment would I need? What about the mess?
What if things didn’t go as planned? What I learned was that everything that can be managed well
at a birth center can be managed just as well at home. The midwives bring any equipment that
they would need –all I had to provide were towels!
I chose a different midwifery practice for my second
birth. In their practice I was
loved, challenged, encouraged and prayed for every step of the way. I adore those women.
One of my lingering fears during my second pregnancy was
about how the birth would go. With
Beckett, the birth center decided to induce me with Cytotec, and I knew how
that birth had gone (5.5 hours, fast and furious, like a train that couldn’t
stop). Because labor hadn’t
started on its own, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to recognize it and
that it would take twice as long without the drug. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to handle the pain
again.
As it turns out, my body knew just what to do. At midnight on May 6th, I
called my midwife to let her know that I… wasn’t in labor, but that it was
coming. She told me to relax, take
a warm bath and to go to bed!
7:00am - I asked Josh to get out of bed (and insisted that
he vacuum), then alerted my birth photographer, midwife, my parents, and the
friends who were going to keep Beckett during my labor and delivery. I labored in the hallway, on the birthing
ball and put on mascara.
8:30am - We woke Beckett up and trundled him out the door,
still laboring, still trying to clean my house, and Josh started getting the
birth tub ready in our living room.
9:30am - My primary midwife, Joyce, arrived and I was
still very, very chatty. We were
all discussing what this baby’s name was going to be – we had a list of three,
but Josh and I had different frontrunners. I thought his name would be “Rhys”.
10:00am – Things got hard. I was trying to labor in the tub but the baby wasn’t
dropping, I wasn’t progressing, and after 30 minutes of this, baby’s heart
tones suggested that a change was in order. Joyce proposed a change of venue and a different position.
10:30ish am - We moved to the guest room, our back-up
birthing spot. I was pushing by
the time we got there. The baby
was still having some trouble descending.
The best that I can understand is that he was caught in my pelvis and my cervical lip was also being nipped against my pubic
bone. Something similar had
happened with Beckett. Josh and Joyce started encouraging me to push harder –
though no one seemed panicked, it was evident to me that he needed to get
out! As I was pushing, I had a
sudden thought: “This is Tate. I am
pushing out Tate!”
10:56 – Finally born! His cord was wrapped around his neck
three times – a likely reason that he was having trouble descending.
Josh pulled him out and laid
him on my chest and we waited for the cord to stop pulsing before Josh cut it
and then he took the baby to wrap him up.
When he brought him back to me, he said, “Jes, this is Tate!” I love that we both knew his name as if
it has been written on our hearts – Tate Stanford Nokes.
When you have a second child,
you never quite know what to expect from your first-born. Beckett meeting Tate will likely be one
of my all-time favorite memories.
He looked at Tate like he was the best gift he’d ever received, and for
the most part, that is how it remains.
Having Tate at home was a
great decision for our family – we were comfortable and cared for in the place
that we love most. Between our
birth photographer, Keri Duckett who not only captured the birth for us, but
also made sure that I was appropriately fed and hydrated afterwards, my midwife
team who managed our care and cleaned everything up afterwards and an awesome
husband who did more than I probably even know, it was a great day. And I can’t wait to do it again.
About Jessica:
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