Orlando's Story
At Home
by Stacy Lewis
I woke up feeling funny. Funny like I was about to get my period. Except, well, I hadn’t had a period in, oh, about 9 months. I wasn’t about to get my period. What I was about to do was give birth.
But before my child arrives on the scene, let’s talk about how I arrived on the scene. My mom gave birth to three children. I grew up knowing our birth stories, and to be honest, well, they were kinda sucky. All my mother’s labors were long – way too long. My sister, her first, was 24 hours. I was 18. And my brother practically killed her after 36 hours. Knowing what I know now, these labors aren’t that long, but in the telling, they were interminable. Not only were they long – somehow my mom always “failed to progress.”
It wasn’t until I was pregnant myself and started learning more specifically about labor and birth that it struck me: “Hey! My mom did not fail to progress … As we stand before you, living and breathing, she certainly did keep progressing. If she hadn’t, we’d still be in there, wouldn’t we?”
The hallmarks of almost all birth stories I have heard are a high sense of drama (“the most amazing thing that I’ve ever done,” “the most painful experience I ever had”), murky details (“I stopped progressing,” “the baby’s rate heart didn’t look good”), and a starring role for someone named “they” (“Then they gave me the epidural,” “They told me I needed to take the blood pressure medicine”).
When my husband, Rom, and I decided to birth at home, my sister-in-law told me she hoped that we had a good experience, and outcome, for our sake, and her own. You see, she was looking for a counterpoint to her mother’s and her sister’s stories of their “horrible” “excruciating” “never-ending” labors. I was, too. While I knew early on that I would not have control over the birth of my child, I also knew that I could (and would) do everything I could to set the stage for a different type of story.
After I gave birth, we saw our neighbor across the street. Her daughter had given birth two weeks after me.
She asked me, “What hospital did you have him at?”
“We had him at home.”
Her eyes popped open.
“Yeah, didn’t you hear me screaming?” I laughed.
Her eyes REALLY popped out of her head. I told her I was kidding, but she didn’t look too sure.
It was not until much later, when Rom told another neighbor while holding our 9 month old son and pointing at our living room window, “Yeah, he was born right there,” and the neighbor sputtered out, “You mean, like, on purpose?” that I realized why peoples’ eyes might be popping out of their heads. Like maybe it was just an emergency or an accident that we had him at home. This shocked me, I guess as much as it shocked them to hear our son was born at home.
I don’t think birth is an emergency, and I believe that the almost every woman can give birth at home. If it were or became necessary, hospital care is available. I believed it before I conceived, and I believed it throughout my pregnancy, that for almost all women, pregnancy and birth are normal, healthy events. They are normal, and they are also spectacular and astonishing.
And I don’t think you should have to give birth squatting under a tree to convince the people attending you that giving birth is something sacred and that as the person doing it, you should be honored. I figured that hiring midwives – Heather and Wendy, specifically -- and setting up a bed in my living room would do the job.
So. Like I said before, I woke up feeling funny... I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat there to rest a minute (yes, at 9 months pregnant, simply sitting up in bed was enough to tire me out!). I did feel funny – like I was about to get my period. I smiled and slid off the bed.
And somehow, that day went by like many others. Rom and I must have eaten dinner, gone for a walk… but I don’t remember now. What I do remember is that (of course) right before bed, my funny feeling started turning into something less funny. Into something painful, in fact. About every six minutes, I would have a practice contraction (Braxton-Hicks). It wasn’t too bad yet – it really did feel a lot like getting my period. Lots of cramps, light sleep, tossing and turning. After a while, I got up to have a cup of tea, hoping it would help me sleep. Rom came downstairs and said, “I can’t sleep. I don’t know why.” I looked at him from my perch on the couch and thought: Uh, maybe you can’t sleep because I AM IN LABOR!
But we were still keeping our cool at this point, so he went downstairs to work on the computer and I drank my tea. I think we eventually found our ways back to bed and slept because there was definitely a morning and a waking up, making breakfast, lah tee da. And more contractions. It wasn’t until I bent over, holding on to the counter, doing some serious breathing that we thought, “Shit! Shouldn’t we be recording these or something?” So Rom got out the book and we started timing. They were erratic, lasting one minute each, sometimes six minutes apart, sometimes longer.
We already had a midwives’ appointment scheduled for late that afternoon, so we called Wendy, who said she could see us at 11 AM. Right before we headed out the door, I was in the bathroom, and the first little bit of blood came out. I thought, WOW! I think this is the mucus plug. Ha ha. Mucus plug, right. Was I ever in for a surprise….
At the midwives’, my labor slowed down to almost stopping and we had our regular appointment, talking through stuff, asking questions, going over what we’d want to happen if we needed to transfer to a hospital, peeing on the stick to check my proteins. It was the peeing on the stick that caused the most excitement. And not exactly the peeing either. When I went to wipe, I got a whole lot of something on that tissue. I mean, A WHOLE LOT OF SOMETHING. Now, THIS is the mucus plug. I brought it back into the office to show Wendy. She smiled, like, Yep, that’s just the start of what’s about to come outta you.
But I was still in early labor, as evidenced by the changing nature of the contractions, and that I could walk and talk without too much trouble. Labor could go away as quickly as it came, so we went home to see what would happen.
What happened is that I headed into active labor pretty quickly, though we didn’t really know it at the time. I just went along doing labor things, like getting on my hands and knees and breathing loudly. Rom and Laura (my best friend) ran around doing get-ready-for-labor things, like going to the store to buy groceries (we had some idea that we could be holed up in the house for days so we thought we better stock up), getting herbs for tea from the natural food store, buying me a nice, long shirt so I’m wasn’t flashing my heiny all over the place the whole time. For a long time in the afternoon, I was alone and doing woman-in-labor things, on my hands and knees. I kept track of contractions. They were strong but not getting closer. When Rom and Laura got back from errands and I ran upstairs and closed the door, acting like a mama-cat in labor, and told Rom, “I need to be alone. I just need to be alone,” we both realized, Hey, something might be happening here. Stacy doesn’t quite seem herself.
The bed set up, the fridge stocked, our candles on the mantle (we never did light them), the herbs steeping, Rom and I went upstairs to watch a movie, to pass the time. Well, no time passed, the movie stayed in the box and I got on (what else?) my hands and knees, breathing loudly, thinking: “Wow, I wish these contractions were different.” And in some dim corner of my brain, I realized… hm, I wish the contractions were different, which means they are different than they were, which means something has changed, which means, CALL THE MIDWIVES!
Rom called and Heather said she would be over in 40 minutes and that we should call the tub lady. I remember thinking, Really, she thinks we need the tub already? The tub lady and Heather arrived around the same time. While the woman set up the tub in our living room (for eventual use for pain relief), Heather talked with Rom and I. We talked about how I was feeling, what had been going on. She asked me if I was interested in an exam.
I was like, “I don’t know, not sure.”
She said, “Well, if we do an exam we can find out where you are and that will give us a better idea of the rest of the night.”
“Oh, okay, but I have to be honest and tell you, I don’t feel like I’m dilating.”
She smiled the midwife smile, like okay, sure, so I won’t spoil it for you. She let the exam do the talking: 4 CM dilated.
Oh. So now we’re talking. Heather left and told us to call again when things changed. I always worried about this “things change” thing, but it works. A few hours later when I felt like pushing, some dim corner of my brain thought “This is different. Something has changed… Hm, something has changed… oh yes, CALL THE MIDWIVES!” We had been waiting for my contractions to get closer together but I guess they just decided to get stronger.
I was on the toilet and Rom called Heather. Rom hung up and said “She’s coming right over.” She got there and said, “Well, you want your friend Laura to be here for the birth, right? You better call her.” I remember Rom saying, “Hi Laura, I think you better come. Something’s starting to happen,” and Heather’s response: “Well, there’s an understatement.”
Somehow before I knew it, Laura and Wendy were all in the bathroom with me and I was pushing. Though I just want to say something about pushing. You are not pushing. Something is pushing, but it is not you. And it really isn’t like pushing, it’s a pulling. Maybe because no one was there yelling “Push!” at me (thank god!) it took me a while to realize that this pulling feeling was what pushing was all about.
At some point, we moved to the bed, and I stood up, somehow I was walking, well, no, I was waddling. Bonafide waddling and I remember saying, “Oh, that must be the baby’s head between my legs!”
I am not sure how long I was on the bed, lying sideways as the pulling kept happening. I remember saying, “I am sorry I am screaming so loud.” Wendy said, “Well, whenever I hear anyone say that, I just tell them, 'You weren’t there when my sister gave birth.'”
And then I remember later, asking Wendy, “Am I louder than your sister yet?”
She reassured me, “Oh, no one can be louder than my sister.”
Part of why I had spent so much time on my hands and knees was because I was having back labor. Lots of back labor. Once Laura arrived, she spent most of her time (if not all of it, since I wouldn’t let her leave my side) applying counter pressure to my lower back. Rom was applying pressure on my upper back and unfortunately turned into a human squeeze cushion toward the end. We still don’t know why the back labor was so much, except maybe it was because my bag of waters didn’t break until the very end.
After I moved to the bed, Heather asked me if I wanted her to break the waters. She explained that the baby was really far down already and that breaking the waters could speed things up and maybe help the baby descend. Okay, sure. And whoooosh! The waters came out. I remember a giant sense of relief. It lasted oh, a few seconds, and the next thing I remember is the in-and-out phase.
In and out, I could feel this little bugger’s head going in and out.
Someone asked, “Wanna see?” And I was like, “No, thanks.” Because in my mind’s eye, the baby’s head was the size of a peach and I didn’t need visual proof that it was really the size of a very large grapefruit.
But it was hard to tell how far the baby was, or rather, how close it was to coming out, so I asked, all casual-like, “So, on the next one, will the baby come out?”
“Uh, no.” Heather informed me gently.
“So, how many more?” Oh, those midwives. They don’t like to tell you anything specific, but Heather said, “At least 5 to 10.”
Since there were multiple in-outs per contraction, and apparently I was feeling in a bargaining mood, I asked, “Five to ten in-outs or contractions?”
“Contractions.”
Oh, shit. Okay, man did I want to see my baby! Not long after this, the baby crowned and set off the infamous “ring-of-fire.” Man, sakes alive. Did I want to see my baby! But mostly I just wanted the little bugger outta there! Like RIGHT NOW! So on the next contraction (number seven), I gave a little push and just like that: a wiggly-worm, squinty-eyed brand new person was among us.
The baby was on my belly and we were looking at each other in a daze. I was surprised to see its eyes. Dark, dark eyes. That baby broke my heart and opened it right up. I still can’t get over how pitiful and sweet it was when it tried to lift its head. And then it cried, startling me, electric-alive. A voice. A new voice. One I would listen to from this moment on. Rom was sitting at my shoulder, crying his eyes out -- even though I can pretty much guarantee you that the birth hurt me more than it did him.
Later, both Laura and Rom told me that the baby was lying on my lap for close to twenty minutes. I swear it felt like a minute. When the cord stopped pulsing, Heather said, “Well, I guess it’s time for the moment of truth.” Someone asked her what she meant, and she said, “It’s time to cut the cord, so we’ll see the baby’s sex.” Oh! I lifted up my baby and announced, “It has a little wee wee!” Heather promptly asked, “What kind?” “Oh, the pointy kind!” Everyone laughed.
I saw the cord as Rom cut it. The cord was otherworldly, a silver-spiral ladder from one life to the next. After I birthed the placenta, Heather showed it to us, all the parts that had been home to our baby.
The midwives and Laura stayed for a few hours, checking the baby and us. Heather helped us breastfeed for the first time, and Wendy showed us how to swaddle the little guy. And then they left. And there we were: a family of three. Me and Rom, and a baby burrito nestled between us on the bed where he was born.
And that, my friends, is my birth story. There was definitely some wailing, there was definitely pain, and accomplishment, but there wasn’t any “they” and there weren’t any “procedures.” It was just a birth. Just one of those astonishing, completely normal life events.
So, for the record, Yes, we did have our baby at home on purpose… We did it on purpose because without having our baby at home, my mom could not have come into our house on the second day of my son’s life and tell me, “It is so beautiful how you brought him into the world. There is just such a sense of peace in this house now.”
We did it on purpose because just by having my baby at home, most of the conditions that cause interventions would not be present.
We did it on purpose because if I had had medical interventions, I wanted them because of mutual agreement, or because they were absolutely necessary.
We did it on purpose because if we hadn’t, my dad (my dad!!) could not have talked on the phone to a friend and told him, “My daughter just had her baby. He was born at home and they had midwives… It was really neat. … I think everyone should do it that way, with midwives.”
We did it on purpose because a friend who asked me about my birth story still tells me today: “It was so great that you said your birth was great.”
We did it on purpose so we can surprise ourselves (and sometimes our guests) as we sit in the corner of our living room, and say, “You were born right here, baby.”
Before my son came, I didn’t know what birth story would be written, but I am glad it is this one.
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