I’m asked often about why I became a Birth Doula. The answer I share in passing is short and sweet, but there’s an extensive story behind it all (isn’t there always?) and, after so many have asked, I’ve decided it’s finally time to share it here.
This story is deep. It’s personal, traumatic, empowering, and hopeful, all rolled into one experience.
And, this story is mine. I’m choosing to share it because 1) I firmly believe every birth story is powerful for other women to hear (because every birth story is unique), 2) I want moms to know that it is okay to feel both joyful and sorrowful over such a life experience, and 3) I want to remind us all that beauty can always be made from ashes.
This is the story of my oldest son’s birth.
Until I was pregnant for the first time, I had never even heard of a “doula.” I couldn’t have defined it and I certainly didn’t know that I’d one day become one. My husband and I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area during this time. My pregnancy was a bit of a surprise, and we were over-the-moon thrilled to meet our baby boy come August 2015. We attended Bradley Method Childbirth Education classes together, I read every (healthy) pregnancy and childbirth book I could get my hands on, practically fell in love with Mama Natural (her website and book are the best resource in my opinion), and did all I could to support a healthy environment for my growing baby.
The setup for care worked differently there than it does here in Rochester, and after a lot of research and interviewing, we chose a midwife (CNM) to be our primary care provider. She owned her own practice and office, where we met for each appointment, and due to a unique relationship with an incredible hospital, supported her clients through delivery there. We felt it was the best of both worlds for the desires we had for our experience.
I know that a lot of people go into birth fearful, but I wasn’t at all afraid of birth – I knew to only listen to voices of truth and encouragement (not fear and non-evidence-based) during my pregnancy – and I was truly excited to experience the delivery of our child. I had faith in the design of my body and wasn’t anxious about his calendar “due date.”
The week I was 39 weeks pregnant, our midwife left town for the weekend and would be off call for a couple of days. Her backup, who we briefly met twice before, would be on call for us Friday and Saturday of that week.
On Friday, July 31st, my husband and I (plus my big ole baby belly) went out for a special date together. Due to family coming to visit the next day, and baby due to arrive sometime soon, we assumed it would be our last date just the two of us. Oh, how bittersweet it all felt. Little did we know just how perfectly we planned that date…
I crawled into bed at midnight that night with a backache (typical for my pregnancy), but couldn’t get comfortable enough to really sleep (abnormal for my pregnancy). At 4:30am, on August 1st, I finally decided I was tired of trying to sleep and got out of bed. I grabbed a book and sat on the living room couch to read – hoping to get my mind off of the annoying fact that I wasn’t sleeping. While reading, I realized my backache wasn’t constant, but rather, was coming and going. I otherwise felt fine, and I didn’t want to get too excited about “nothing,” so I continued to read/doze off until about 7am when my husband woke up.
After eating breakfast together, I stretched a lot (tons of cat/cow yoga pose), but couldn’t shake the backache. We called the backup midwife around 9am to ask if this might be the start of labor. The input we got was that it was probably just a backache due to baby shifting/lowering/positioning, but if things became consistently stronger with any pattern, to call her back. We went about our morning, cleaning the apartment in preparation for company, snacking (because I eat all.the.food. when pregnant), and stretching/bouncing on our birth ball. We checked in with our Doula as well, who advised me to listen to my body, stay hydrated, nourished, and rested, and to keep in touch as the day went on.
Around 11am we timed my backache surges and discovered they were a fairly steady 7 minutes apart. That seemed exciting! And remembering what we learned about early labor, decided to take our dog out for a walk to see if that would make these surges pick up or disappear.
Thirty minutes later we returned home from our walk and my backache actually felt a bit better. But as we made lunch at 12:30, I recognized that I was leaning on our counters each time I’d get a new backache/surge. This now officially seemed like early labor, so I called the midwife just to give her a heads up, and I texted our doula again. They both advised plenty of rest and nourishment, but we all remained very calm in knowing things would likely pick up that night or the next day because, after all, this was my first baby and I was managing this early labor very well so far.
Our company arrived at 1pm – my aunt, uncle, and three cousins from Minnesota. We sat around together for the next two hours, chatting, opening some sweet baby gifts, and enjoying one another’s company. I was growing less comfortable with each contraction as the afternoon went on, and I could tell our family noticed that as well. Around 3pm, they said they’d go out for a walk to scope out dinner options, give us some space to decide what we needed to do that evening, and return a little later.
I laid down on my side on the couch and my husband rubbed my back while I breathed deep and closed my eyes for a bit. The surges were becoming stronger and I was feeling tired. At 3:30pm, I felt an immediate need to use the bathroom. I shot up from the couch, told my husband, “oh my GOSH I have to pee!!” and waddled as quickly as possible to our bathroom. As it turns out, I wouldn’t leave that bathroom without our baby in my arms.
As I sat down to pee, I noticed that I was dripping some bright red blood, and when I wiped, I clearly saw that I’d lost my mucus plug. This was simultaneously exciting (“real” labor!), unnerving (bright red blood is not what we learned to be normal in this stage), and intense (active labor suddenly hit hard). I shouted to my husband to come to the bathroom so I could tell him what was going on. I asked him to call the midwife again and update her and turned down his offer to be helped to the couch to rest – my contractions were suddenly radiating up my entire back and I felt like I needed to pee again. I said I wanted to stay in the bathroom until I had a break in that need-to-pee feeling. He called the midwife and updated her on the details – she again said this was early labor and that we needed to get as much rest as we could so that we’d be prepared for more intense labor when it arrived.
Until 5pm, I labored in our bathroom. Sat on the toilet, wiped, flushed, washed hands, leaned over the counter to take deep breaths, repeated, over and over and over again. I’d found a rhythm that met my current needs. All the while, I was still dripping red blood. Just after 5pm, we called our doula and updated her. She asked if we wanted her to come to our house or if we were ready to go to the midwife’s office – we said we’d call the midwife again and let her know our decision after that call. I told her we were feeling like it was time to get to the hospital.
At about 5:15pm, we again called our midwife and updated her, particularly about the blood and practically no break between contractions. She said that I was still talking and that this was early labor – I needed “to eat, drink lots of water, lay down, and get some rest.” You can probably imagine that this phrase was starting to become irritating. We did not feel listened to during this call.
At 5:30pm, we asked our doula to come to our house, and she said she’d be there in about an hour (per our contract).
Around 6pm, I decided we needed to leave our house, no matter what the midwife advised. I was getting absolutely no break in contractions by this point, I was still dripping bright red blood, and I knew, without a doubt, that this was the real deal. There was no more time to waste. I labored very internally and hardly had time during those hours to see the big picture here, and when I finally was able to see the situation in that way – instead of putting 100% of my mental energy toward calmly navigating the next contraction, then the next contraction – I realized we were far from the circumstance we imagined.
My husband called the midwife yet again and told her we were going to grab our bags and head in, and that we’d like her to meet us at the hospital. Her exact response, in an annoyed tone, was, “Listen. You can go ahead and come in. But if you are 5 centimeters or less, we’re going to send you home.”
Around 6:35pm, just as Jesse was telling me it was time to go get in the car, I felt something I learned about in childbirth education – the ring of fire. There was so. much. burning.
Realizing what was happening, I started saying over and over again, “He’s right there. Jesse, he’s right there. He’s coming now!” I asked my husband to check and, sure enough, his response was immediately- “I can see the top of his head.” It was then that I realized our baby was going to be born in our apartment, in our bathroom, without the support team we built – just with my husband and me present.
Jesse ran to get his phone to call 911, I threw down a clean towel in the few seconds I had between contractions, and instinctively got into a squatted position. It was in that moment that I caught a glimpse of the mirror – our baby boy’s head being born.
With the next contraction, our baby boy’s head was out. And seconds later, his whole body squirmed out as my husband assisted our baby’s landing onto the towel I’d laid under me. The biggest emotional and physical relief I’ve ever felt in my life. Our son was born at roughly 6:45pm, unassisted.
I remember looking at his little body and immediately noting how good he looked. Thank you, Lord. I knew that the best thing I could do for him was to get him right onto my chest (skin-to-skin) as quickly as possible. As my husband went to shake a shoelace out of his shoe to tie off the umbilical cord, I held our newborn son on my chest, rocking back and forth, looking into his eyes, while rather calmly shouting repeatedly, “We’re going to be okay. Thank you, God, we’re going to be okay.”
A few minutes later, the EMTs entered our bedroom and calmly assessed the situation. They helped cut the umbilical cord, but everyone knew that, while that was a wild series of events, we were all healthy and safe.
We rode in the ambulance to the nearest hospital for the placenta delivery and to be examined. We called the backup midwife from the ambulance to tell her what happened. Her only comment was, “Wow. You’re going to have to pick my jaw up off of the floor.” Our doula met us at the hospital that night, but we didn’t even get as much as a call back from the backup midwife. We had quite the story to share with our loved ones when we announced baby boy’s birth.
*****
Of course, years later, I can look back and think things like…we should’ve gone in as soon as there was that red blood, or we shouldn’t have trusted that midwife so much, or what if we had gotten in our car and he was born on the freeway instead. But none of that really matters. None of it takes away the way I was treated or the way our care provider made us feel during our experience.
Our story resulted in a healthy baby and (physically, at least) healthy mama. It entailed details I’d hoped and prepared for – unmedicated, very little assistance, and an involved husband. But it also included trauma that I never imagined – not being heard, respected, or cared for by the exact person we trusted to do so in the most raw, vulnerable state I’ve ever been (or ever will be) in. And it was this culmination, of strength and hurt, trust and mistrust, of empowerment and vulnerability, of miracles and mismanagement, that lead me to a career in birth work.
To be continued…
