Birth of Berkeley Bobbie

A first time moms home birth story

As a Doula, I spend a lot of time educating first time moms about techniques for coping with labor. I inform them that they are likely to go past their estimated due dates, I stress the fact that labor is a marathon not a sprint and I help them prepare for the expected, and the unexpected. So, as I envisioned our birth, I made a lot of plans. I bought ingredients to bake a birthday cake for our little one in the early stages of labor, as an attempt to distract myself. I located our wedding video to have playing in the background to bring on calm and positive emotions during the long hard stretches (my husband had to special order a new power adaptor last minute for our hard drive to make this happen as we’d lost it in our recent move). I had a list of what essential oils to use at each stage. I stocked the fridge with snacks and drinks that I knew I would enjoy while laboring. I was so excited to talk, laugh and enjoy the company of our birth team (my midwives, doula, mother and sister), as we all anticipated progress and change in my body along the way. I made birth affirmation cards to place all around the house to keep me focused. I planned to lay out the birth supplies all neat and organized for our midwife when she came. Basically, I had A LOT of plans for my labor. 

But instead, here is what actually happened. 

On October 23rd 2019, 41 weeks and 3 days pregnant, I was due for a non-stress test. Having been under midwife care for our whole pregnancy, I had a lot of anxiety about going into the hospital for this test. I asked my midwife to perform an alternative fetal heart tones check first, if I agreed to schedule an NST for two days later and/or go in right away if her findings were the least bit concerning. So, on Wednesday morning at 10:30am, I met with my midwife and heard baby’s healthy heartbeat. We discussed options for natural induction if I went beyond 42 weeks, and wished to get things moving along - but at the end of the appointment I was comfortable continuing to wait patiently for baby H to decide when they were ready to come. Upon arriving home I was excited to find that I lost my mucus plug (knowing full well that labor could still be days away), I continued with my day as planned. I took passion flower extract to help me relax, put on my wedding video to watch by myself - knowing I would be tearful watching my dad, who passed away a few years prior, walk me down the aisle - and I wanted to process those emotions in private before I shared it with everyone else later on.

By 3:30pm, I started having some really mild cramping, so I decided to take my dog for a walk - I texted my husband (Ed) that I hoped that I could get labor started sometime in the night, or following day. I was home by 4:30pm, and my cramps had progressed to be mild contractions - I took a bath and hung out on the couch to relax and wait for my husband to come home from work. I had not prepared anything for dinner, so around 5:30pm we went to the store to grab a bite to eat from the deli. As we walked about the store, I was having more frequent contractions - I found myself getting a bit irritable and I regretted leaving the house - especially regretting letting Ed run back for an item while I waited in line (I was dreading talking to the cashier if I had another contraction). Thankfully, he came back before it was our turn to checkout. It turned out I was not actually able to stomach eating the dinner we brought home anyways.

I contacted my midwife to know I was having consistent contractions but felt like I was handling everything well and could feel baby moving between them. We spent the evening watching TV, I tried to take a nap (knowing that it could be a long night if things picked up). However, I did not get much rest, at about 8pm, I had to focus on my movement, my breathing and rhythmically slapping my hand on something through each contraction - they started to come every 10-minutes. At this point I texted one of my dear friends and told her, “I feel like such a wimp, it’s so early on and I am having a bit of fear creep in about what is to come.” Fast forward to 9:00pm, I sent a text to my Doula to let her know that I had done a self vaginal exam a bit earlier in the evening to check my cervix, and I believe that I was about 4cm dilated. I let her know that I planned to call her in a few hours, thinking I’d be ready for the extra support so Ed could get some sleep. Knowing I was in for a long night, I decided to take a long hot shower - by the time I was out of the shower at 10:00pm, my contractions had gone from 8 minutes apart to 3 minutes apart - lasting a minute and a half. If you understand how to time contractions, that means I was only getting about 90 seconds to collect myself, and brace for the next rush. At that point, we decided to go ahead and have the doula come, and we were planning to call the midwife a bit later - because I expected that once I had the calm support of my doula, things would plateau. However, Ed decided to set-up and start filling the birth pool, because we thought that getting me into the water would relax my body, and things would slow down significantly. Unfortunately, I had used pretty much all of the hot water taking my shower (oops), so he began boiling water on the stove (in the one large pot we have). I started to walk around the house, timing and waiting for contractions to be consistent for an hour - indicating active labor - but chose to call the midwife to give her an update, she decided to head my way after listening to me go through a contraction over the phone. At this point, each rush took all of my concentration, but I remained in a great headspace and had a rhythm that was working for me, so I felt very much in control.

At 10:36pm, after getting off of the phone with my doula, midwife and photographer to update them all on where I was at, I needed to use the restroom. As soon as I sat down, I felt nauseas and had to lean over into the tub to vomit - to my surprise, my water simultaneously broke! Up until this point, I thought for sure that I would be laboring all night long, but when all of this happened - I had an “uh oh!” moment - I recognized immediately that I was in transition and things were about to move fast. My whole body started to shake, and I experienced all kinds of new sensations. At 10:39pm, I called the midwife to update her and thankfully, she was already on her way. I called my mom and sister-in-law and told them to head over quickly. Just shortly after my Doula arrived, she came into the bathroom, where I was leaning over the counter - gripping the faucet and trying with everything in me not to bear down and push with the contractions, because I could feel baby moving down with each rush even without conscious effort. To relieve pressure, my Doula performed hip squeezes, which helped out a lot. My sister was the second to arrive, and only a moment later at 11:00pm, our midwife walked through door - she immediately came in with the doppler to check on baby’s heart rate. It sounded good, but she could tell that baby was far down in the birth canal and encouraged me to get into the pool. While this was happening, my mom pulled into the driveway and Ed hurried to help her inside. By 11:10pm, I was climbing into the lukewarm water that was barely filled a foot deep. Ed climbed in with me to help warm the water, but our midwife was concerned that the water may have been too cold for me to deliver in. I pleaded and promised that I would get out as soon as baby was born - she let me stay in to, and it was the first relief that I felt all day! Thank God she agreed. The team continued to boil water to try and warm the pool for me.

Over the next ten minutes, I worked through several more contractions while our midwife called her assistant. My sister took pictures (the photographer had not yet arrived), my doula was working to get more hot water, and my mom was getting settled into her place to watch it all unfold. I was talking to them in the short moments between contractions, but I was always focused on the encouraging things Ed was whispering into my ear. I focused and relaxed my body the best I could.

At 11:25pm, I was leaned back against Ed in the pool, and without any directed pushing - just grunting through my contractions and trusting my body - baby’s head was born. Both Ed and I reached down to feel the head and said, “It has hair!” I don’t know why this was so surprising to me, haha! Immediately, with the next contraction at 11:26pm, our sweet baby was born! I caught our baby in my hands, and with the midwife’s assistance, baby was brought up to my chest.

Only a moment later, I checked baby’s gender and saw that we had a baby GIRL and my face was truly priceless. It was a huge surprise for everybody (the gender was unknown, and we were convinced that it would be a boy).

As promised, after just a few minutes, I climbed out of the tub and set up camp on the couch to wait for my placenta to deliver - this happened about 10 minutes after baby was born, and without any tugging - just a few gentle pushes on my part. 15-minutes later, I cut her cord.

I did experience a tear, which was a result of how quickly she was born despite my effort to slow things down. I needed a few stitches to close things up, but honest to God - aside from the stinging sensation of the tear (which I was fully aware of, it happened while baby crowned) - the lidocaine shots were the worst pain I experienced during the entire birth experience. I attribute this to that fact that when our body is in pain for a purpose i.e. labor, we cope better. Once my baby had arrived, I was ready for the pain to start diminishing, and the shots were just an unwelcome distraction from my sweet baby. Ha!

It was a whirlwind of a day! In total, I labored for 8 hours - start to finish - and my active labor was less than 2.5 hours (classifying our birth as precipitous). I didn’t have to push baby out - I just relaxed the best I could, and let my body do the work it needed to do (this is referred to at fetal ejection reflex and is what people mean when they say they breathed baby out) I simply trusted that I was made to do this! I truly expected that it would be a long night, and since I was focused so hard on the task at hand. My active labor kicked in so suddenly and without much warning - and because of that, I didn’t make calls sooner. Poor Ed, even though educated on labor, had no idea that things were moving along as fast as they were (he was just following my lead!) I trusted the birth process, my body, and our team of medical and emotional support. We had a birth more beautiful than I ever could have dreamed up.

Left-to-right: Gina (Doula), Sarah (secondary midwife - Hearth and Home Midwifery), Sarah (sister-in-law), Ed (husband), Racheal (me), Sarah (primary midwife - Homespun Midwifery) & Sheri (my mother).

Yes, three Sarahs! Ha!

Berkeley weighed 7lbs 15oz, and was 20 1/4 inches long. Absolutely perfect in every way.

By 2am our new family of three was snuggled into our bed to enjoy the most precious time of bonding, and a little bit of sleep.

Life changed forever, and I wouldn’t change a thing.