The following is one woman's very special homebirth after caesarean birth story. Regan submitted some of her beautiful birth photos for the next Wordless Wednesday, one of the photos features her midwife patiently supporting her from the side of the birth pool, Regan mentioned that her midwife showed great patience and that her second stage lasted thirteen and a half hours! I have never heard of such a long pushing phase in a birth before, and have found that pushing beyond a couple of hours tends to pathologised, so I was very interested to hear the full birth story. Regan graciously volunteered to share the full story in her own words here...
After my planned homebirth with my
first child ended in a caesarean, I was determined to do everything I
could to achieve a homebirth with my second child.
I spent my pregnancy reading VBAC birth
stories and watching home birth videos on youtube, and hired a
wonderful truly with-woman midwife, as well as asking my beautiful
friend to be my doula (who had only just homebirthed her 4th
babe 14 weeks earlier).
My biggest fear was that this birth
would go the same way that Sol’s did – that the baby would get in
a bad position and get stuck in my pelvis and the intolerable pain
would be too much for me to handle. But everyone told me that I was
just unlucky the first time around, and that the chances of it
happening again were highly unlikely, which reassured me.
I had a beautiful, nurturing
Blessingway at 38.5 weeks, where I felt the support and wisdom of my
wonderful friends who had birthed their babies at home before me, and
I finally felt ready and confident that I could do it too.
I set up my birthspace in our spare
room, and loved going in there to read the affirmations on the walls
and look at the gorgeous bunting and wall hanging my friends had made
to encourage me during labour.
During the night of Monday 21st
May, at 40.5 weeks, I was woken by a dull ache in the small of my
back. I lay there for a while and realised the pain was coming and
going regularly. I felt a strange mix of peace and excitement as I
knew my body was warming up and that I would be meeting my baby in
the next few days.
The next day my midwife came round for
a prenatal appointment. She took one look at me and knew I was going
to birth very soon. She told me how often women with young children
will go into labour in the evening after they put their other
children to bed, when their bodies feel safe to let go. This made
sense to me and I felt sure tonight would be the night.
All afternoon I busied myself with
final preparations, feeling my body warming up more and more. At
Sol’s bedtime I told Billy we should go to bed and get some sleep
too, as I knew it wouldn’t be long before we were up again.
Sure enough, at 11pm I was woken by a
bitey contraction. I got up and went to the toilet, and Billy woke
and asked if it was happening. I said yes, and told him to go back
to sleep and that I would wake him when I needed him; he was coming
down with a cold and I wanted him to be as well rested as possible
for the birth.
I sat on my fit ball at the computer,
surfing the net and doing hip circles through the contractions. As
first stage had lasted over 24 hours with Sol’s birth, I thought I
was still in very early labour. I texted both my midwife and my
doula to let them know things were happening, but that I didn’t
need them yet.
By 1.30am the contractions were coming
every 4-5 minutes and were pretty intense – I felt I needed to be
in water, so woke Billy and asked him to fill up the birth pool. At
this point I must have really slipped into an oxytocin induced labour
land as I don’t even remember what I did as I waited for the pool
to fill, just the relief as I finally got into the warm water and
felt the pain decrease immediately.
As I laboured in the pool Billy called
our midwife to ask her to come as she lives over an hours drive away.
Unfortunately she was at another birth – she only takes on two
clients a month and we happened to have both gone into labour on the
same night! She said she didn’t think it would be a long birth and
she would come as soon as she had finished there, and in the meantime
offered to send another midwife. I declined, feeling like I still
had a long time to go and that I would be fine until she was able to
get here.
Shortly after Billy put down the phone,
around 3am, I suddenly had a huge urge to push! I felt pressure
building up inside me and with the next contraction there was a pop
as my membranes broke and my waters gushed out into the pool.
Billy freaked out, thinking this meant
that the baby was about to be born! I reassured him that it was
still a long time away but I could see how scared he was so I agreed
to him calling our midwife again and asking her to send the backup
midwife. He also called our doula, who didn’t answer the phone,
and left a message asking her to come as soon as possible.
My doula arrived around 3.45am, with
her sleeping baby strapped to her back, followed soon after by the
backup midwife. My body was well into pushing by this stage, and I
remember my doula sitting beside the birth pool listening to me
grunting and telling me it sounded like it wouldn’t be long now –
little did she know what lay ahead!
Just after 4am I heard Sol cry out from
our bedroom – I had woken him with all the noise I was making.
Billy went and got him and brought him into the birth room to see me.
He smiled at me, obviously excited that the time we had been talking
about for months had finally come. He got into the spare bed next to
the birth pool and watched me, smirking every time I moaned through a
contraction. After a few he got bored and wandered off to the living
room where Billy put Play School on TV for him.
The pain intensified as my baby moved
down into my pelvis. My hips and sacrum felt like they were being
torn apart, it was excruciating, and there was no break – the pain
was even there between contractions. It brought my labour with Sol
flooding back to me, where I had pushed in agony for 5 hours before
transferring to hospital. He had been stuck at a certain point for
most of that time, where I could easily feel his head only around an
inch inside my vagina.
I reached a finger inside myself to see
if I could feel this babies head, and to my horror there it was, at
the exact point where Sol had been stuck. I had been pushing for
around 3 hours now and was terrified that this baby had got into the
same position Sol had. The backup midwife suggested I get out of the
pool and try some contractions on the bed with my head down and bum
in the air to help the baby realign itself. I tried but the pain
intensified even more and I felt completely out of control. I had to
get back into the water.
The next couple of hours are a blur, I
was feeling totally over it and demoralised by the thought that this
birth was heading the same way that Sol’s had.
My midwife arrived at 7.30am and I
asked her if she could do a vaginal exam to check the baby’s
position. I do not believe in VE’s to check dilation or progress
but I really felt I needed to know what was happening with this birth
– whether the baby had indeed got into the same position Sol had.
She had a feel and to my utter relief said that he was in the optimal
position for birthing.
This news re-motivated me and I agreed
to get out of the pool to try some different positions as I obviously
wasn’t getting far being in the water. My doula suggested the
shower to help me transition onto dry land. I stood in the shower
and moaned through a few contractions but the pain was too much
standing up so I got out and tried pushing on the toilet.
My midwife tried some Rebozo – a
Mexican technique where a shawl is wrapped around the hips and
jiggled to open up the pelvis and help the baby move down – but I
found it caused a lot of pain in my bladder area. I realised that I
hadn’t urinated since the start of labour, over 9 hours ago. I
tried and tried but it was obvious the baby was blocking my bladder,
so my midwife offered me a catheter.
I lay on the bed and she inserted it
gently; immediately 500mls of urine came gushing out, no wonder I had
felt uncomfortable. We were then able to try more Rebozo without the
bladder pain.
Over the next couple of hours I tried
pushing in various positions – lying on my left hand side,
squatting, standing with one leg up on the bed, and hanging from
Billy’s shoulders. Every contraction sent red hot pain slicing
through my lower back, hips, and bottom, and I yelled to have counter
pressure applied by whoever was standing near – usually Billy, who
was feeling pretty rough with a bad cold and only a couple of hours
sleep!
At around midday I remembered that
sterile water injections into my lower back had been helpful to
reduce some of the pain during my labour with Sol, so I asked my
midwife to administer some. The injections are very painful, like
bee stings, but I hardly noticed them on top of the agony I was
already experiencing. Immediately I felt the pain across my hips
slightly reduce, and was then able to try pushing again in a
squatting position, at the end of the bed with Billy sitting behind
me supporting me.
My midwife and doula sat in front of me
watching and encouraging me, and after every contraction I asked if
they could see anything yet. They couldn’t, and again I started
feeling very demoralised and over it; it just felt like I was pushing
against a brick wall and I started seriously thinking the baby was
never going to come out - that I was going to have to end up with
another caesarean.
My birth team tried to reassure me that
there was no reason to transfer to hospital, my midwife was
monitoring the baby’s heart rate and it was fine, neither of us
were in distress and the baby would be born eventually.
Finally at around 12.30pm my midwife
declared she had seen a glimpse of head during one of my pushes. I
was overjoyed – this meant the baby had got past the point that Sol
had! Again I felt a renewal of energy and pushed thoughts of
transfer out of my mind; I believed I was so close now to meeting my
baby.
Another 3 hours of pushing went by! At
3.25pm I eventually started to feel myself stretching open and
decided to get back into the pool. Billy topped up the hot water and
again I felt such relief as the warm water enveloped me.
I tried pushing on my knees, leaning
forwards, for a while, but didn’t feel much progress so tried lying
back in the water. In this position I felt myself stretching more
and more with every contraction as the baby started to crown. But
after each contraction finished he would slip back inside, it was so
frustrating!
I pushed and pushed with everything I
had, I felt like all my blood vessels were bursting. But he seemed
to get to a certain point, where I felt stretched to the absolute
maximum, that he couldn’t get past. I felt sure he had a hand up
against his face.
Finally he was out up to the top of his
ears and didn’t slide back in when the contraction ended. I felt
an intense burning and knew I was about to tear but I had no choice,
I had to get this baby out – I screamed at the top of my lungs as I
gave one final huge push and felt myself splitting open as the rest
of his head emerged, along with his hand as I had thought!
That last minute of my labour, lying
back in the pool stroking my beautiful babies head whilst feeling his
little body turn inside me was the only bit I enjoyed – it was just
so amazing to feel him instinctively getting into position so that
his shoulders could be born.
At 4.38pm, with a final contraction,
his body swum out of me and my midwife reached down to unravel the
cord from around his neck and pass him to me.
It was so surreal; this beautiful
slippery little baby was finally here, against my chest, and all I
could say was “I did it! I DID IT!!”.
He opened his eyes and gazed right into
mine. I felt that same instant recognition I had felt when I first
looked into Sol’s eyes, the most amazing feeling of true
unconditional love.
We sat in the birth pool for a while,
being showered with kisses by Sol and Billy, and then climbed into
bed together where Eidris latched on to the breast like a pro and fed
for 2 hours!
My midwife asked if I felt like pushing
out the placenta, and I said “Seriously?! I never want to push
again in my life!”. But at 7.30pm I finally forced myself to give
a few pushes and the placenta was born. I had a good look at it,
which was beautiful and somewhat healing, as I never got to see Sol’s
placenta due to the hospital disposing of it despite me requesting it
be kept.
My doula brought me herbal tea and
toast and I proudly sent out announcements that I had done it; my
baby boy had been born, at home, in water.
Now Eidris is 11 days old and we have
been having a wonderful babymoon, getting to know our new addition
and enjoying being a family of four.
My poor body still has a lot of
recovering to do after that epic second stage – I have yet to hear
of anyone even coming close to pushing for 13.5 hours! To be totally
honest it was hell, but I look down at the sleeping babe on my breast
and I know it was absolutely worth it.
I am the proud mother of 3 children with a 4th on the way. The last of my children is now 4 ½ years old and still proudly breastfed, her name is Peyton.
