I'm going to start by saying I have the greatest amount of respect and adoration for my husband, best friend and partner. We made memories that nobody will understand or can even fathom and connect with....he is my breath. Period.
And now............drum roll .........
Presenting our rainbow girl
Finn Bree Ness
Born March 4, 2017
4:30 PM
in the comfort of our home
We had quite a journey that turned from truly feeling terrifying to absolutely magical. From December onward, my husband took it upon himself to be my most important resource, he helped me and agonized with me. He learned how to give prenatal massages and learned Doula techniques to help me on a daily basis to turn the baby, keep the baby in the correct birthing position and things that helped me to breath and exist. We ended up having an extra amount of fluid that sent me to the emergency room twice with contractions....information we learned with our first visit with our midwife after she studied my medical records. We had not been seeing eye to eye with our ob doctor and many times would get zero answers from her or her office. After a terrifying visit at our local Emergency Room the beginning of February we began to think outside of the box. I just didn't feel safe under the supervision of my doctor and our guts were telling us to do everything in our power to get away from that situation. It was late in the game for that so options in the United States are limited thanks to our laws. I was still under the care of my chiropractor and that office kept a nice eye of us while we made our decisions.
Outside of the box in rural United States looks like, hmmm everybody goes to the hospital to have their babies, so any deviation from an OB or even a hospital is a little extreme in some people's eyes. My friend suggested a midwife for us. After researching that option, we both knew that was exactly the kind of care that I needed. I am a hands-on, take charge of my health kind of girl. I do not like too much medical intervention, I believe in myself and the power and might of my body. With all three of daughters, I had natural childbirths, of which Clayton witnessed none. Even this late in the game, at 35 weeks, this might still be an option. My parents were behind our decision 100 percent...they knew how afraid we both, and basically our children as well, of the care we were receiving. We were terrified. I had been housebound since November and this journey was not a fun or enjoyable experience.
We met our beloved midwife on a sunny afternoon in the comforts of our home, my husband donning his lazy sweatpants and slippers and me mounted and affixed on my birthing ball set up in our living room. I was so uncomfortable and had been for months, this was usually where I was found. She meticulously scanned my medical records for any indication that I would NOT be a good candidate for home birthing. After all, the midwife does not want to nor will be supervising a candidate that is not within her guideline levels or comfort levels. A midwife should be certified and have an extensive background in nursing and child birthing.
People in the medical profession always are astounded with my vital signs...they are always much better than even people that are in their 20s. Medically speaking I was the perfect candidate for home birth. It was also noted in my medical records that I had excess amniotic fluid, which could impede our baby connecting with the birthing canal, I was being kept hyperthyroid instead of inside my thyroid guidelines and that the actual due date of our little one was March 7, not the 12th as the ob office continually told us. We were in the one week window to have a full term baby!
We began talking about the why we wanted this and what we expected from this experience. My husband simply said he wanted his wife to survive and the baby as well. She smiled and gave a chuckle and said that nobody would be dying on her watch. She then suggested I turn toward the exercises on spinningbabies.com to expand my hips since I was extremely fit going into this pregnancy....and I was going to kind of pay for that with super tight ligaments and joints that were not "wet" or flexible. These moves I could have been doing for months in preparation but we didn't know this in time. Time was of the essence. We all decided this was going to be a great union for us and make the birth of our baby a true once in a lifetime experience for us. I really wanted this experience to be different from my other births...always scary, always felt like a ticking time bomb and I really missed my old OB. I had no idea how "midwifery" he was until now.
Our decision to birth at home was met with a wide range of mixed emotions from elation to pure terror from those closest to us. Summer, who still resides at home with us, was behind us but unsure of how this whole home birth "thing" was going to go down. She spent much of her time watching me and waiting for the scary event to occur. When it finally transpired, she had taken a holiday to my parents home saying, "Mom, you do not know how exhausting it is to watch you and wait for the baby. I'm going on a break!" Our oldest daughter, Keira, said she was glad we were being safe about this whole thing and Sydnie expressed how weird this idea was and she hadn't heard of anyone else doing this...complete teenage response. My mother-in-law was very nervous about this plan and a close cousin thought we might be making a possibly deadly mistake. Otherwise, our close circle held smiles for us as and reassured us that we needed to go with our gut feeling as we closed in on our adventure.
We had lots to do. We spent the next days gathering the needed supplies for home birthing...things like towels, Kleenex, garbage bags, hydrogen peroxide and witch hazel. We began learning all we could about what the future held for us, what wanted and needed out of this experience. During our daily walks, we would spend time wondering when this event would happen. We finally felt like we were in the lead of this experience.
Because I was so tight, I had hard pre labor contractions that would come and go. We ended up having these for a few weeks as I did the required things to open my hips and relax my round ligaments. We owe a ton of gratitude to Clayton's boss and coworkers who were also on call for weeks as we waited for our natural childbirth to begin. Anybody out there who has done it, knows the true art of patience. Natural childbirth starts and stops to give both momma and baby the breaks they need to endure the big journey. We also are indebted to my friends and family who would text me daily so I wasn't going crazy while I basically waited for Finn to tell us when it was time. My asthma made it impossible some days to even hold a verbal conversation. I love you, my village people.
Now onto the big event...................
I had been coming off of a two day stretch of contractions followed by a good day of rest and awoke to a deep pressure feeling and the baby had again dropped further into placement of the birthing canal. But, we've been here before so who knew what the day held for us. The sun was shining and I was wishing I was more mobile to enjoy such days in the winter. I started the day with stretches to help me get mobile and make myself feel good. Clayton was tired...tired of this seemingly endless cycle and his baby was never going to reveal and his worst nightmare would happen of losing both momma and child.
"Well what's going on today," he asked me. I told him I wasn't sure but I wasn't quite feeling good. He ran out to do some errands and contractions started so I put on my favorite playlist of Ed Sheeran and began dancing in the living room. While he was gone, I started getting harder ones. As soon as he opened the door, he joined me on the dance floor of our living room being my perfect and entertaining dance partner. Slow dancing to Ed Sheeran's "I See Fire" and shaking it out to "Fresh Eyes" by Andy Grammer will forever take me back to this time. Soon Clayton again sent out the alert to his work that maybe it was happening. "Should I get a hold of Cassie (our midwife)," he asked. I thought yes we should. Before I knew it, I had gone to our room to relax and keep focused on what would be happening in the next few hours. Cassie soon appeared with her bag and a smile on her face. Our contractions were stronger requiring more focus. I used my Monet print as a focal point...it had a big letter O on it that reminded me to relax and open to bring our baby into this world. I met every contraction with the same outlook in mind and the minutes blended. All I could hear were Clayton's words of encouragements, our baby's heartbeat when Cassie would listen and make sure no emergencies were unfolding and Cassie telling me how amazing I was doing and how strong I was. Each wave of intensity brought us closer to seeing our little one. I could feel our baby working within my body and squirming around inside of me. I could feel the unseasonably warm breeze from our open bedroom window...that was perfect for me.
The letter O was my focus and half way through a contraction, my bag of waters broke and the intensity shot up by 1000 percent. I remember telling them my water broke...which is laughable now because I had excess so everyone heard the big popping sound. Each high intensity wave rolled into the next without breaks. That's how my body rolls. I was on my hands and knees and then back on my side. Pushing...pushing....the urge to do such an act is overwhelming and besides a few syllables, that is all you can simply focus on. Soon I could hear Cassie and Clayton talking about seeing our baby's head....FINALLY THANK THE GODS! Clayton really cheered me on and I could hear Cassie and another voice (her assistant had arrived just in time) telling me to really push because our baby was ready to see us and reminding me of how strong I am.
This delivery I was in every moment. Previously, I would have out of body experiences that I could describe to people it was as if I was hovering over my body. I really wanted to be present for this birth. I wanted to take it all in. Because of my body's position, I couldn't see her come into our world immediately, but within a second I saw the little body of the person I had shared a space with for 39 weeks and 4 days. I thanked Clayton who
had been my doula, my coach and I learned had been the midwife's assistant because our baby had arrived in two hours and 10 minutes from when the midwife arrived. Our active labor had rushed by and her assistant arrived about 10 minutes before Finn came into our world.
Finn was on my chest immediately and we waited for the placenta to arrive. The placenta was placed in a bowl beside us, still nourishing Finn and Clayton took his position beside us on the bed and the visitors began packing up their things from the downstairs. I asked him questions and Clayton told me his version of the miracle that we had just been a part of. We laughed, we cried, we marveled and held this miracle that we had waited and waited to meet. After about 20 minutes, Cassie returned again to take our vitals and to help Clayton cut the cord. We stayed covered up skin to skin and took all the features of our little one in and just came into the realization of what we had done that Saturday afternoon in March.The assistant came in and introduced herself to me because I was completely preoccupied when she arrived. She thanked me for allowing her to be a part of our birth experience and also gave me a personal thank you. She has seven years between her children and is expecting in May. She had been second guessing if she was strong enough for this and after seeing me with a 13 year gap between our daughter Summer and Finn, she was inspired. Haha I'm glad I could give her some piece of mind. The female body is such an amazing thing.
