Butterfly Kisses

One of the neatest things about this pregnancy has been to be on the 'other-side'. Even though I've been pregnant twice before, this time has been really special. It has taught me things that will make me a much better doula and childbirth educator and given me tricks to make me a much better pregnant lady :).

During my journey I've been reminded that as much as I don't frequent ultrasounds these are very difficult to resist, eating 60-80 grams of protein is really difficult, knee-chest position is really difficult at 38 weeks pregnant (and it makes your knees go numb!), telling your health care provider you don't want a test can be really hard to do (even when they support that decision 100%). I could go on and on but I am just so thankful for these lessons!

As I get closer and closer to my birthing time I can't help but think about how blessed and excited I am. I know so many women out there look forward to labor as a means to an end, but I am so very delighted to experience the joy, challenge and anticipation that is childbirth. I however am so looking forward to tapping into the strength of the 33 women whose hands I have held during their birthing times. It is what gives me so much excitement. I remember Drea and her calm disposition after hours upon hours of pushing. Jessica who had weeks and weeks of prodromal labor only to finally have labor start with her water breaking! Megan who labored for three days, never losing her hope and power. Katie who tuned into herself and trusted her body to know exactly what it was doing. I could go on and on and on. Every woman I have stood beside has given me such a gift. I have had the joy of seeing how beautiful labor can be. How strong women can be. How loving partners can be. And how snuggly those babies can be.

Over the last few weeks I have also had my friends giving me empowerment. We had my mother's blessingway a few weeks back. It is a celebration to help give the mom good energy, thoughts and blessings heading into her birthing time. It was my first time having one and it was so beautiful. My friends Jodi and Alicia hosted it and really did a wonderful job of making it symbolic. They gave me bricks to symbolize where the women before me had stood. They put together a tree with their fingerprints on it to remind me of their support during the labor and a bead birthing necklace to give me strength during the birth. Jodi dropped off the necklace last night and sitting there holding it I felt this overwhelming sense of calm and peace. I just know with all of these strong amazing women along my side there is no doubt that I will have an amazing birthing experience.

With my last birth I wanted to keep my laboring a secret. What if I failed at my natural childbirth or even worse my VBAC attempt? I didn't want anyone part of the process except my husband by my side. This time I plan to let my wonderful inner circle of friends in on the secret. Knowing they are out there thinking of me, supporting me, loving me will give me the strength to move mountain.

Baby, I am ready whenever you are!

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words...

June was a stressful month for us. We were supposed to move (and then had paperwork problems) we had the boys' second birthday and their birthday parties and then we had Becca's due date all wrapped together. Becca's due date came on the 23rd of June...and went. Over the next 13 days I analyzed every 'sign' I got that I was in labor. Sadly these were few and far between. On our anniversary June 27 I had contractions that were close together and steady for several hours but eventually they puttered out. I even lost my mucous plug but nothing else. For the next week I did lots of visualizations, 'Come out baby' from hypnobabies, red raspberry leaf tea. We tried sex, pineapple and spicey foods. The only thing I didn't try was castor oil since I felt pitocin was better than castor oil! I would have contractions off and on but nothing really steady or close together until July 4th. That night I had pretty consistent contractions until 3 am, but eventually they once again puttered out and I went to bed. On Sunday July 5th I had contractions pretty much all day but only about 2-3 an hour. Around 3:30 or so in the afternoon they started to get more and more regular however it wasn't until around 10ish that things started to really pick up. It was then that I started to realize this really might happen. Dave was going to go to sleep but I was in enough discomfort that I asked him to stay awake. I took a bath but it really didn't help much. I ate, drank, walked around and tried (unsuccessfully) to sleep. Nothing was helping. Between eleven and twelve I took to lying in bed while Dave just rubbed my lower back. I would say 80-90% of my pain was in this tiny spot in my lower back. Nothing made it feel better but Dave made it bearable. He was the most amazing coach ever! Every contraction hurt so much. They were right on top of eachother with only 2-3 minutes apart. It felt like non-stop pain. He kept massaging and talking to me and assuring me that I could in fact do this. He believed in me long after I stopped believing in myself. Around midnight I started my 'obsession' with the toilet as David later called it. I felt like I had this horrid diarrhea. I was also so nauseous. I never threw up but man I thought I was going to. Sitting on the toilet felt good. It was also during this time I felt like I needed a break from everyone. I was in such intense, never ending pain that I thought to myself there was no way I could make it any longer. I was still convinced these contractions were just going to fizz out like the others had. I thought there was no possible way that I could do this anymore. I even tried to figure out how I could get medication without having to leave the house since I was in too much pain to even do that! Around one I decided that it was time to go to the hospital. Not because I thought it was time for us to go, but because I figured with the intensity of my back labor pains that perhaps I could get some sterile saline injections to help. David, knowing my plan was to stay home as long as possible (and knowing my 'secret' plan to plead with him for drugs) discouraged us from leaving, however I put my foot down so he called his mom to watch the boys and she showed up about 1:30. We left immediately. On the way we called our doula to meet us at the hospital and the midwife's answering service to page her. I somehow wobbled to the car and we made the 20 minute or so drive. It took us forever to get into the building. Since it was after hours it was nearly impossible to get it! Once in the contractions were about a minute apart so we found a wheelchair since that was the only way we could make any time! I still had to stop for every contraction! We got to the L&D floor around 2:30. It took them forever to check us in. They finally took us back to triage. They asked a bunch of questions but I just ignored them and let David answer. He was still doing such a great job of supporting me! He would still massage my lower back for every contraction and continued to praise me the whole time. Once we got to triage they were asking if I wanted an epidural. Everything inside of me was screaming YES but somehow I found the strength to say no. She asked me to rate my pain, I said about an 8...she asked how intense I have ever had pain without taking medication, I told her 'we passed that about three hours ago'. So the brand new fresh outta med school resident wanted to check me for dilation. I made them wait out a contraction and let her go ahead. She took forever feeling around (okay like a minute but it felt like forever since I only had a minute between contractions) then the chief resident wanted to check me also. I told them to wait til after the contraction. Once he was able to check they were shocked (as was I) to find I was between a 7-8. I was so relieved to find out all that pain had been worth it! I could DO this! I didn't need drugs I could handle this! So they paged the midwife and took me to the room. They were telling me how I would be able to use the whirlpool or walk the halls and such (I kept thinking to myself, ummm I am a VBAC I don't think I am allowed to do any of that) but I decided to keep that all to myself! The nurse wanted me to lie on the bed so they could get some baseline measurements and to get my heplock in. For some reason or another the chief resident checked me again and said something about my bulging bag of water. It was about 30 seconds later that I had another contraction and my bad BURST. It was shocking to me just how obvious it was when that happened. Things started moving much faster then. They checked and saw that there was meconium in the fluid so the nurse called down to the NICU to have their staff come up for deep suctioning. The nurse was sounding kind of panicky. She kept telling them to hurry because this baby was coming! I remember thinking: It is?? AWESOME! I am almost done. My doula and my husband were both so encouraging during this time. The nurse told me to let her know if I was feeling 'pushy' so I said okay and then with the next contraction I said "Oh...I'm feeling pushy" that's when things moved into crazy high gear. There was so much movement around me they asked me to stop pushing and I totaly ignored them. They got the chief resident and the other resident gal in the room and made sure I was completely dilated. They were trying to break down the bed and I just kept pushing along with the next contraction. The nurse was paging the NICU staff to report to my room stat to be ready for suctioning. With contraction number three they told me I could start pushing. I pushed throughout that one and her head was almost all the way out. It burned so much but I kept trying to relax as much as I could. To be honest I was feeling kind of panicky. I'm not sure how to explain it, but I felt out of control, my body was just acting instictively without worry or care to what I mentally was contributing. Since everything was happening so fast and because of the meconium they wouldn't let Dave catch the baby or to cut the cord. So he stayed by my side while my doula rubbed my cramped foot. Next contraction came and I pushed with everything I had. I squeeze Dave's hand so hard. He told me 'you are doing it!!' and all of a sudden I felt it! The head came through, I took a deep breath and out came her body. She was all covered in green meconium...they cut the cord and handed her off to get suctioned. Dave went with her. They wanted to start pitocin since I was bleeding 'too much'. I asked if it was necessary (yes) could it wait til after I started nursing (no) did they have to do my stiches at the same time (yes). They then put in an IV for fluids (not really sue why they did that, I started to argue with them about it but decided to pick my battles and let it go). Then Dave carried Becca back in and handed her to me so I could nurse her. It had been a short few minutes but it seemed like forever. It felt so great to nurse my daughter. She took to it so fast. During this time I learned I had a second degree tear that they were stitching up. Eventually it got quiet in the room They checked out the baby mostly while she was in my arms. I refused the eye goop and vit K shot. I asked them to save the placenta (there was a pregnant pause with that question) but they did so. At some point they weighed her 8 pounds 4 ounces. 20.5 inches long. Her apgars were 8 and 9 due to color. It was around then that the midwife showed up and was very apologetic. The call center never called her when we had left the house. They didn't call until we were checked into our room (a little after three) which didn't give much time for her to get across town since she was born at 3:17! I really hate that she wasn't there. I think had she been there Dave could have caught, we could have avoided pit and the unnecessary IV, but in the end it didn't matter. Our baby girl came into this world nearly two weeks late but in a blaze once she decided it was time to get here!

After I made the choice that I wanted a VBAC for the birth of our daughter I had an extremely difficult decision to make. You see our twin boys had been born with an OB and with as often as I saw him, I felt really close to him. I was comfortable and to be honest I really liked him to. However I knew from our previous conversations that he truly didn't understand the whys of natural childbirth (liking it to getting major surgery without anesthesia) and while on paper he was supportive of a VBAC he had so many restrictions (as long as I went into labor by exactly 40 weeks, as long as I stayed on the monitors the entire time, as long as I stayed in bed, as long as I had IV fluids, any irregularities straight to surgery, etc) all things I knew were not conducive to a natural childbirth, but I liked him and I didn't want to hurt his feelings (this makes me laugh now, but it was a real fear at the time).

After much urging by my friends I finally agreed to make an appointment with the only midwife group in town that would see a VBAC, the midwives at UNMC. I met with Heather Ramsey and was just astonished by how non-medical the whole thing was. We talked about VBAC and birth in general. Every single one of their standard policies was exactly what all the research I had been doing supported. I suddenly realized what it would be like to have care providers who actually supported what the most up-to-date birthing research says. What it would be like to have people supporting me, not fighting me. I instantly canceled my next OB appointment and never looked back.

My pregnancy was amazing and so very normal. Becca was born at 41 weeks and 6 days. Long past when my OB would have insisted upon a section. I was able to realize my dream of birthing my baby with the loving support of my husband and my doula. Becca entered the world so calmly and peacefully. This was such a gift to her and to me given to us by the loving care and guidance provided to me throughout my pregnancy by my midwife. So in honor of "International Midwives' Day" I want to say thank you to all those midwives out there doing what they do. As a mother, a childbirth educator and a doula I say thank you for providing researched based choices when so many do not.