I’m not much of a “birth story” person.  Unless there is something exceptionally unusual about a given birth (like the one on YouTube where a mama delivered an unexpected twin!), I have no particular interest in reading birth stories.  Which means it doesn’t typically occur to me to share mine, either.  But in honor of Unassisted Homebirth Week, I am sharing Ariel’s (here in this post) and Sophia’s (on Friday).  (Livia’s was posted previously.  Caleb’s birth was attended by a midwife.)

Please excuse the rambling.  This was written shortly after Ariel was born, and edited here only slightly for clarity and to make adjustments for the passage of time between then and now.  As it was an attempt to get all of my thoughts and memories surrounding the birth down on paper, it doesn’t necessarily flow.

Ariel Ramey
August 1, 2002

Our Journey to Unassisted Birth

In 1995, as a homeschooled high schooler, I had to study pregnancy and childbirth.  Born in Zion was required reading and when I read that book I knew I wanted my babies to be born at home.  At that point I began to study the subject in more depth.  I’m not sure how or at what point I heard of planned unassisted birth as an option, but it appealed to me.  I knew that Unassisted Childbirth (UC) was my first choice.

Fast-forward 6 years.  When my husband and I began courting I asked him to read Born in Zion as well.  (That was the only homebirth book I knew of at the time.)  I wanted to be sure he understood I intended to birth my babies at home and was okay with that before I even married him.  I didn’t broach the subject of UC with him, though – I was afraid he would think it was too crazy.

In November of 2001 I learned that I was pregnant.  We began to look for a midwife, but I wasn’t comfortable with a CNM and lay midwifery was illegal in our state at that time, so I didn’t know where to start.  After a couple of months, Michael asked something along the lines of, “Why do we need a midwife anyway?”  My response – “Well, we don’t.”  For a while we planned to have a friend attend the birth.  She’d had several homebirths, including a couple of UC’s, herself, and Michael wanted someone in the house who knew what was going on.  As the end of my pregnancy drew near, however, and he learned more, he decided that he didn’t need that comfort and we were set to have our baby alone at home.

The Birth

I lost my mucous plug all at once around lunchtime on Monday, July 29.  For about the next day-and-a-half I had mild contractions (just slightly stronger than the Braxton-Hicks I’d had previously) about every 5 minutes and slight spotting, so I assumed that they were doing something to efface or dilate my cervix and figured things would start pretty soon.  Wednesday morning the contractions and the spotting stopped.

At about 10:30 that night I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep because I just couldn’t seem to get comfortable.  An hour later Michael came to bed.  At about ten minutes to twelve, my water broke.  I really couldn’t sleep after that, as contractions started immediately.  A few minutes later I told Michael what was going on, and he asked me what we should do.  I told him to go ahead and sleep if he could, but I was getting up because I was too uncomfortable to sleep.  At that point the contractions were about 2 minutes apart and already strong enough to demand my attention.

Michael decided he couldn’t sleep, either, and he got up.  We called my mom, who wanted to be notified so she could pray, and started getting “set up.”  I realized that we didn’t have the waterbed heater for the pool (due to a recent move), so we couldn’t keep it warm. It seemed like things were moving too quickly for the tub to do much good anyway, by the time we could get it filled, so we didn’t get it out at all.  I put a cushion on the floor beside the bed, covered with a vinyl tablecloth and a Chux pad, and knelt on that with my head on the bed on a pillow.

After about an hour, the contractions were only about half as far apart and so strong that I felt like they were unbearable.  Over the next hour they became even closer together, until they were right on top of each other.  I felt that I must certainly be in transition, as the contractions were nearly continuous, they were absolutely awful (I decided that I now understood the word “anguish”!), I really felt like I couldn’t keep going, and was shaky, lightheaded, etc.

After a while – I’m not sure how long, maybe a half-hour or hour – the contractions backed off.  I wasn’t timing, so I’m not sure by how much, but they were probably only about every four or five minutes.  They were still just as strong and painful, though.  I wasn’t doing a good job at all of working with them; it was all I could do to stand them, and I was praying and moaning and whimpering and yelling my head off.  About the best I could do was to try to keep my vocalizations low-pitched, when possible, so I didn’t tense myself up too much. The thought of going to the hospital crossed my mind once or twice, but I knew it wouldn’t have done any good and would probably have caused all kinds of problems.  The only thing they could have done for me that might have been beneficial in any way is to have given me painkilling drugs, which I’d have been tempted to take and been angry with myself for later.

After several hours, Michael was starting to get a little concerned, as it had seemed to both of us that I was in transition and then everything just sort of stopped and started over.  He called the friend we had previously planned to have present for the birth, told her about what was going on, and asked her what she thought.  She suggested the bathtub to help with the pain.  Well, that just frustrated me because we’d been in that house for about a month, the tub plug didn’t work, and we hadn’t yet bought a new one.  (I really wanted to be in the water, though.)

I reminded Michael that the tub plug didn’t work.  He went to check it anyway and told me it was working.  I went and got in as he started to fill it up.  We ran the water until the hot water ran out, then turned it off.  Once the water was off, it became clear that the tub plug was not actually working, so I asked Michael to stuff a washcloth in the drain.  He then went to heat water on the stove and shuttle it back and forth.  The tub would not fill up far enough to cover my belly because of the location of the overflow protection, so I was dipping a washcloth in the water and laying it on my belly – and still yelling my head off during contractions.  The contractions slowly and gradually worked themselves closer together again.  Finally, sometime mid-to-late morning (around 11:00?), she moved down and I started to push – huge efforts that wracked my entire body, but which I had no control over.  Finally, at 12:25, Ariel was born.  According to our fish scale, she was 5 lbs. 4 oz.

Afterthoughts

I had a couple of “skid marks,” which probably could have been prevented if I’d been a little more patient and waited for one or two more contractions to birth her, but at that point I wanted her OUT more than I wanted to be gentle and not tear.  I pushed extra hard with the last contraction and got her out.

I’m thankful for not having put myself in a situation where I’d have the option of drugs, because I just might have taken them.  I’m also thankful for not being subjected to all the hospital mess in general.

I’m very thankful for the beauty of a peaceful birth with only Michael and myself in the room to welcome Ariel to the world and no one but family in the house.  Sometime in the middle of the morning, Michael told me he was going to call someone to come over – not to help with the birth itself, but to do other stuff, ’cause we were both so exhausted from the labor on top of a general lack of sleep.  He asked me who I wanted him to call and I chose my mom.  She got here about an hour before Ariel was born, I think, but she stayed out of our way and fixed lunch and stuff.  After the birth she helped Michael weigh and dress the baby, did all the laundry, and cleaned the house.  Then she went home and left us to enjoy the baby.  As much as we both needed to sleep, all we could do for an hour or so was look at our beautiful tiny girl.