My home-birth experience.

It's the evening of January the nineteenth. For months I've been asking my Little L to come January 20th. I want to meet my baby so much! We'll be full term then, but it'll cut a week and a half off the pregnancy and Loren and I can meet this tiny person we've been so excited about for so long.

I feel kind of sad, because I haven't felt any signs of labor, and I'm pretty sure I've got ages to go yet, and I'm tired of asking Loren to put my shoes on my feet for me. I'm also tired of the fact that I can't kneel down to say my prayers. This fact is especially apparent to me at the moment since I'm in the middle of them.

"Father in Heaven, I am so incredibly excited and scared for this. I want to meet my baby right now! I ask that he or she may come soon, that I may see my Little L's face, and let Loren share more fully this experience. This beloved son or daughter of Thine that Thou art giving us is such a precious gift. I am so thankful for this amazing opportunity to learn how to be more like Thee. But I'm not sure I'm ready for this. Please Father, I need Thee to be with me when the time comes. I need to have Thee here giving me strength and wisdom. I don't know what giving birth will be like, I've never done this before. I've watched my mother, and she was so strong and peaceful, and I look back at that and I know I can do this. Then I hear other women's stories and I get so scared. I just don't know what's going to happen, and I know I can't control things, and I don't like that. I don't like not knowing. Father, I ask Thee that this birth may be safe, and happy. I pray that my little one may come at a good time, in a good way. I pray that we both may be strong and healthy. I desire so much to be a good mother to this child. Father, I need Thee so much. Please help me to be a good example, to build a home full of Thy spirit, to be wise and kind, to give my Little L the guidance he or she needs. Thou understandest more than I do. I cannot see everthing Thou canst. I am willing to do all that Thou asketh of me, even though it might not be what I think I want or need. I know that Thou wilt provide a way for me. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen"

I flip my scriptures open to a random place, and my finger lands on the words, "Behold, I come quickly."

During the night I begin to feel a little crampy, and by the morning I'm sure I'm having contractions of some sort, especially since there's some bloody show. They're kinda short and far apart and not very regular though. So I call one of the midwives to give them a heads up that SOMEthing's happening, and find out which midwife is on call so that if things pick up I know who to bug.

Until the contractions start getting closer together, I have some errands to run. It occurs to me that I forgot to get an old sheet at the DI to put on the bed, and that I never arranged to pick up the extension cord I'm borrowing for the birth. Oh, and I need bleach. Somewhere in the papers the midwives gave us it says something about bleach, but I never have it because I hate it.

After the errands, we decide that the house needs to be cleaned. Or more precisely I decide the house needs to be cleaned and Loren being the amazing man he is helps me out.

For dinner we eat roast chicken with potatoes and carrots that I had in the crockpot all day. I put it in there in the morning, because I didn't want to finish up having a baby and then wonder what dinner was going to be.

Then we decide to go for a walk, that's supposed to be good. It's a very short walk, since it's cold and dark and rainy. When we get home we drink hot cocoa and watch Remington Steele on Hulu.

As we go to bed I feel kinda sad that the 20th is ending and no baby. But I'm happy things are happening. I'm not sure what to expect, but I know most first time Mom's have long labors, so I'm pretty sure I have several days to go.

During the night the contractions get a little stronger, and closer together, so in the morning I call Michelle, the midwife on call, and let her know. They're getting a little intense, and they're not easy to ignore like the earlier ones. Michelle tells me I need to just go ahead and ignore them though. So I decide to get busy. I make bread, pick over the roast from last night and get some chicken soup going, and take a shower. It's kind of like playing don't think of the pink elephants though. I KNOW they're there.

I decide a nap is a good idea. I ask Loren to come lie down with me. I know he won't take a nap, but I want him there because I know it will help me fall asleep in spite of the contractions. They're not necessarily painful, per se, but they are getting pretty intense.

I wake up at three thirtyish and they're now quite intense. We time them for a while and they're about two minutes apart and minute long, but still pretty irregular. During the really intense ones I lean back against Loren and hang in his arms. It helps a lot. Loren calls Michelle for me, because I am pacing around, stomping my feet and hitting furniture because it's intense and I need to move. Michelle asks to speak to me. I kneel in the child's pose so I can talk easily. She asks me if the contractions are painful all over. I think about it for a second. "That's an interesting question. They're only kinda painful low down, but my uterus is hard all over, I can feel that." She says she's in Idaho Falls, but she's coming now.

I tell Loren I'm going to feel really silly if she comes and I'm not in labor. I know that first time Mom's have long labors, and that they tend to over-react and think they're further along than they are. I'm pretty sure I'm only just getting started on this journey.

A member of the bishopric stops by the house to let us know we're being released from our calling. Loren answers the door, I feel a contraction coming on and go into the bedroom to lean on the dresser. I work very hard to be quiet so that Loren doesn't have to explain that no, I'm not dying.....

When he leaves, I come out into the living room. Loren goes to do something on his computer. "Please don't get on your computer! I NEED you!" I whine. (yes whine). "Oh Aiden! I wasn't going to stay on! I was just going to get the 'Aiden' playlist I put together when we were dating going. Would you like me to do that?" Loren tells me, putting his arms around me. "NO. I need YOU." I tell him. He closes his laptop.

The contractions start getting REALLY intense. I'm sitting on the hall floor with Loren, crying because it feels so intense already, not so that I can't handle it, but I just KNOW I have days more to go, and I don't know if I can DO that. I start to panic and I'm pretty much crawling all over him trying to escape the contractions and telling him, "I just CAN'T DO DAYS OF THIS!!!!!" and he's telling me "Yes you can! I know you can do this!"

All of a sudden, I have this overwhelming, WONDERFUL feeling. "Loren! I want to PUSH! CALL THE MIDWIFE!" Now I know that the worst part is over and I can TOTALLY do this. Tears are gone, panic's gone, the end is in sight and I am focused. On not pushing until the midwife gets here.

I stand up in the hall and put my back against the wall. I put my hands and feet against the linen cupboard, and I tell myself, you can push all you want, on the cupboard. You aren't allowed to push the baby out until Michelle gets here. Until she gets here, you push on the cupboard. I start a little chant, "Don't push! Don't push! DON'T push! Don't PUSH!" In the back of my head I'm feeling amused and sorry for Loren as he's making up the bed with a shower curtain and talking to the midwife, because I know the only thing he's been worried about this whole pregnancy is that the midwife won't make it in time and he'll have to deliver the baby.

Loren has the phone on speaker as usual, so I hear Michelle talking to him. I hear, "Tell her to breathe!" I shout, "I'm BREATHING!!" I hear, "Tell her to lie down on her side." I shout, "If I MOVE, I'm PUSHING. OkAY??" Loren relays the message about pushing, but he must not have heard my breathing comment because he comes in to tell me to breathe. "I'M BREATHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I yell at him. I feel kinda sorry a couple seconds later, but I'm too busy not pushing to apologize.

Michelle arrives. I go into the bedroom and lay down. "If there's anything you want me to do, tell me now or it's not happening." I tell her. "Well, you might want to take off your pants. I'm pretty sure the baby doesn't want to be born in there." I think that's pretty funny, but I'm too focused to laugh. We get my pants off. "I can push now, right?" I ask. "I'm pretty sure you can." Michelle says. "I'm just checking, I know sometimes you can feel the urge to push when you're not fully dilated." "Aiden, I can see the baby's HEAD. You can push." I can finally PUSH! It's intense, but honestly it's not as intense as the contractions. I'm not really doing it. I'm not making myself push, it just happens. It feels so natural. It feels natural to have my hands on my knees, opeing myself up, pushing this baby out. I can feel the head start to come, and I can feel stretching happening, but it's nowhere near the "ring of fire" I've heard described. Not comfortable, sure, but not bad. I make myself ease back a bit so that I can have a little time to stretch instead of tearing. Michelle asks Loren if the bathroom is nearby. Typically she would have hot ginger tea compresses on my perineum, helping it stretch, but today she's just going to have to settle for hot tap water. Loren's right there helping her, since her assistant hasn't made it yet, and I'm listening to what's going on as I push. I don't want to push as hard and fast as my body wants to, so I'm sending some of the extra energy into deep gutteral groans. I'm pretty sure I sound just as melodramatic as those television births I'm always making fun of.

I hear Michelle ask Loren if he wants to catch. He sounds a little uncertain, until she explains that they'll do it together, and then he's pretty gung ho. I hear her talking him through it, and in just a couple pushes he's putting our baby on my belly. "I love you!" I gasp. I say it over and over again. "I love you! I love you! I love you!" I'm mostly saying it to the precious pink baby making tiny, half-hearted cries on my belly, but I'm also saying it to Loren. I'm surprised at how pink the skin is, I've seen babies be born, and usually at least their hands and feet are blueish. Michelle puts a warm towel over my Little L and tells me the cord is long enough I can pull the baby up closer, and I bring my beautiful, beautiful baby up so I can kiss the little head. Michelle asks if it's a boy or a girl, I don't know. I'm too busy loving my Baby. Loren's sitting up next to my head and looking down at the baby now. Both of us are wondering if we have a boy or a girl, and finally I try to look, but it's a funny angle. Michelle looks and tells us we have a boy. "Levi!" I say. "Oh Levi! I love you so much! Loren! Little L is a Levi!"

We get Levi latched on and he's nursing right away. I'm so proud of him! And Loren's right there with me. I am so thankful for this wonderful man who was so calm and sure and steady through this. I'm so in love with him, with our baby, with everything!

Levi was born at 4:55, sixteen minutes after Michelle arrived. I am so glad we decided to have a home birth. I'm glad I was able to labor in my own home, with just my beloved Sweetheart with me. It was nice to only have him there watching me freak out, and helping me stay calmish. I'm glad we didn't have to drive anywhere, because I would have waited so long, and the birth was so fast, Levi would have been born roadside. And it's cold here in January. I'm glad I had such amazing midwives, who were so wonderful and helped me prepare so well for this birth. They were so knowledgable and helped me make informed decisions. I'm glad I was able to eat my favorite almond cookies while Levi was nursing for the first time. I'm glad I got to hold him and nurse him for over an hour before they weighed him and measured him. I'm glad we got to skype our parents while the midwives were finishing doing their thing, and let them see their new grandson. I'm glad Loren and I spent our first night with our baby alone, even if I was paranoid about Levi getting cold and spent the whole night checking his temperature every half hour and changing the thermostat all over the place. I'm glad I had a heart-shaped placenta. It was very fitting that a baby made of love, loved from the moment his existence was known, born into a home full of love, should have been nourished by the symbol of love.

Challenge the status quo.

Some things that have been ingrained into our systems have been good, are good, and always will be good. Like looking both ways before we cross the street, or that making an effort to eat at least a few veggies is good for us.

Some things we take for granted aren't good for us though. I wish more people would stop saying "Of course it's good! That's how it's done!" and get out and educate themselves.

I want to tell you at the very beginning here that I am not out to make you believe what I believe. I don't want you to be a blind follower. I want you to get out there and ask your own questions and form your own opinions. Read studies, compare philosophies, take what you deem good and reject the bad. I've cobbled together my own idea of what's right from a lot of different sources, but I'm quick to reject any part of a philosophy that doesn't jive with my research or my common sense.

In the tips I'm including some examples of opinions I've formed and some of the information behind them. I don't want you to just accept what I say (I could be wrong and I don't want that kind of power!), or reject it. I want you to say "huh, I wonder?" and go find out things for yourself. You might come to a completely different conclusion that me. And that's fine. But you will have gone out and actually made an informed decision that I can respect. I can't take seriously the opinion of people who blindly say, "but that's normal." Just because it is doesn't mean it SHOULD be.

Tips:

1. Studies can help you get more solid proof than just people's opinions. However, studies CAN be skewed to get desired results. When reading studies, look at who was included, how many were included, what factors were controlled for, things like that. A blatantly skewed study from the seventies concluded that home-birth was dangerous. If you actually look at the study itself, you find that their definition of home-birth was any out-of-hospital birth. Included were planned hospital births that didn't make it on time, unattended home-births by drug addicts and such, and even MISCARRIAGES!!! A different study from the 70's that compared the perinatal mortality rate of 1,046 planned home-births to 1,046 planned hospital births, all the mothers from both groups being low-risk, concluded this: "'The hospital-birth women were more likely than the planned home birth mothers to have had the following: five times more likely to have high blood pressure in labor, nine times more likely to have a severe perineal tear, three times more likely to have had postpartum hemorrhage, and three times more likely to have had a Cesarean.' The babies born to the hospital birth women also had a higher complication rate than the babies born to home birth women. In the hospitals, the infants were six times more likely to have had fetal distress before birth, four times more likely to have needed assistance to start breathing, and four times more likely to have developed an infection. There were no birth injuries at home, but thirty infants in the hospital suffered birth injuries." - quoted from Birthing From Within by Pam England CNM, MA, and Rob Horowitz PHD.

2. Compare both sides of an argument. Really listen. Ask questions. Who has concerns about valid problems? Can those problems be minimized by certain actions? Is either side supported by good information? Is someone just using opinions? Is someone using scare-tactics? Are those scare-tactics well-researched and warranted? Or are they just throwing out a few rare examples? Does either side have a vested interest in a specific outcome for political or economic reasons? Is either side ignoring or obfuscating important evidence against them? Be willing to switch sides if you find you're wrong, or find a balanced middle ground between both camps if your research takes you there. My Mom believes in homeopathy. I don't. I believe in some parts of naturopathy, but not homeopathy. I haven't found any good evidence for it or against it really. I do find that homeopathic companies tend to make rather outlandish claims about their product on what seems to be a whim. This makes me feel that they are snake oil salesmen and I don't trust what they're selling. I am welcome to receiving better information for or against. I think it's a wonderfully cool idea.

3. Take a look at the history and science behind something, in our own culture and others. For example, the routine use of modern circumcision techniques on boys was started in the Victorian era to prevent masturbation. (it doesn't). The original Jewish circumcision only removed the loose tip of the foreskin that extended beyond the glans. Modern circumcision involves forcibly peeling the entire protective foreskin from the mucous membranes of the glans (to which it is naturally adhered to at birth, separating later as the boy matures), turning a sensitive area into a large open wound, and then cutting off the entire foreskin, which normally functions for the glans kind of like the eyelids for the eyes. The cons of this procedure are the risk of infection and surgical error possibly resulting in permanent dysfunction or even death, and to be perfectly honest, you just cut off an area that when intact is responsible for a great deal of sexual pleasure, and the procedure can often reduce the mature size of the penis. (Yeah, they don't know what they're missing, but is it fair to deny them the opportunity to find out?) As for the pros: over the course of the years people keep throwing out ideas as to why circumcision should still be performed. None of the ideas have been substantiated, and almost all of them have been repudiated. Female circumcision (the removal of the clitoris) is done in some third world countries and hailed to be an incredibly cruel and barbaric act by us enlightened societies. I can't see that male circumcision is all that much different. America is the only first world society that still does routine circumcision on boy babies.

Feel free to add any tips I may have missed in the comments section!

Change your perspective.

Last night I found myself scrubbing the tub at 11:30 pm, (that's the middle of my night), tired and miserable and crying. I couldn't sleep so I'd decided scrubbing the tub was a good way to use my extra time. My head hurt, my joints ached, I felt a million years old.
I found myself getting really mad at my husband for being asleep. I asked my sponge, Mr. Bingledorf, "How come HE doesn't ever have to be pregnant???" Whereupon my tired brain spoke for Mr. Bingledorf: "How come YOU don't have to worry about getting good grades in college while supporting a wife and soon-to-be child and never getting enough sleep because unlike SOME people nap-time is not an option???" Touche Mr. Bingledorf. Touche.
I finally gave up on the tub and crawled back into bed hoping to fall asleep. But I couldn't. So I cried instead. Then FINALLY I got comfy and was ALMOST to dreamland, when my fetus started screaming FEED ME!!!!!! Somewhere in the process of getting the bread out to make myself a sandwich or something it was all just too overwhelming and Loren came out to find me sitting on the floor, leaning against the table, sobbing. He lifted me up onto a chair, made me a cheese sandwich, told me I'm beautiful and made me laugh, and then when we went back to bed he held me and hummed until I fell asleep. When he woke up at 2:45 to get ready for work he told me to stay in bed, made his own breakfast, and washed every single dish he used before he left.
The point of this story is, I COULD have woke him up just to tell him how mad I was at him. I was sorely tempted to. I chose to recognize that I was being an idiot though and didn't. Which is good, because when a man will sacrifice his hard-earned sleep to make you a cheese sandwich and a joke in the middle of the night, he really doesn't deserve to be yelled at. And if you yell at him he might not want to do things like make you a cheese sandwich in the middle of the night anymore.