Birth of Harper Frances
A Precipitous homebirth story
Moments captured by Lauren Labarre Photography
At 40 weeks + 4 days pregnant I visited my midwife for a routine check-up and requested to have her sweep my membranes to see if my body would respond to a gentle push to get labor started. For the remainder of the day, I had some light cramping on occasion but nothing more.
That evening after getting our little one down to bed my husband and I sat down with a glass of wine and watched our wedding video. The best way to encourage the onset of labor is high levels of oxytocin. aka our love hormone. low light, snuggles, and reminiscing on our love story made for such a sweet evening.
The next morning, at 3:30am while I was rocking out toddler back to sleep I had a mild contraction. I got her back to bed but she woke again soon after and it was then my husband turn to get her back down. He took her out to the couch and lay with her since she was teething and having a tough time settling again. I went back to bed but couldn’t fall asleep and over the next 45 minutes had a couple more contractions at which point I decided to time them and see if things were going to build or slow down while I lay resting. I timed six contractions and they all came about 6 minutes apart and lasted approximately a minute and a half each. The app told me it was “time to go to the hospital” which made me chuckle since it had only been an hour and a handful of contractions. Plus, we were having a home birth, so it just meant I needed to let my midwife know I was in labor.
Upon getting up and going to the restroom I lost my mucus plug and began to feel shakey followed by my water breaking on the next contraction at 4:43 am while on the toilet. Thankfully I had brought my phone in with me to time contractions so I called my midwife. Things felt manageable and she told me to call back if things intensified. I stood up, had another contraction without the cushion on amniotic fluid the intensity grew exponentially and I immediately called her back and asked her to come.
I got myself cleaned up and at 5:00 am I went out to the living room and woke up my husband asking him to transfer our toddler back to her crib. He was confused as to why I would disturb them when they were both finally sleeping. I simply said, “I’ve been having contractions for an hour and my water just broke. Oh, and the midwife is on her way!”. I then ran to the bathroom to vomit at which point my husband asked “how did we get here so fast? This (read transition) meant you were really close with Berkeley!” to which I did simply answered, “I don’t know”.
He started getting the birth pool set up for me to labor and deliver in while I went back to lay down in bed since that’s where I had been comfortably managing labor so far. Our midwife arrived at 5:21 am and came back to check on me and listen to the baby’s heartbeat, which sounded great. She left me to keep peacefully laboring in the quiet back room while she got her supplies set up and they filled the pool for me.
I lay in bed breathing through contractions that were now coming back to back with low vocalizing and moaning. With one of the contractions, I felt sudden pressure and called out “I need someone!”. My midwife hurried in and with just a glance at my face asked “are you pushing?” To which I’m pretty sure I answered “I think so” with a questioning tone in my voice because I was not consciously choosing to push but my body was definitely bearing down. My husband and midwife quickly help me remove my sweatpants and my midwife simply said, “Racheal, you’re having the baby right here in bed”. The secondary midwife quickly brought supplies from the other room while my husband tried to move the hose that was laid out in the hallways to fill the pool so no one would trip. While that was happening the baby’s head was already crowning and they had to call for Ed to get back in the room! He came in and held my leg up for me and with the next contraction at 5:38 am our sweet baby girl was in my arms.
An absolutely surreal experience. Just moments after she was born I was laughing and asking “did that really just happen?” and saying “I really need to stop praying for fast labors” all with a smile on my face because holy smokes I just labored and delivered a baby in two hours flat and pain-free!
Harper Frances Hanson Born at home May 21st 2021 5:38am 9 lbs 2 oz 21 inches long.
(The 21st Day in 21st week of 21st Year of the 21st Century) so odd and cool!
