Yesterday my midwife must have seen into my soul and understood what my mind and body were going through. She offered to stir things up a bit to my relief. I took two homeopathic remedies rotationally (Caulophyllum and Cimicfuga) every hour since our noon visit until 10 at night and she stretched my cervix a bit and performed what is called a “membrane sweep”.http://www.birthingnaturally.net/birthplan/intervention/induction/membranes.html

After this meeting, I experienced some spotting for the rest of the day and some light cramping. I continued to take the homeopathic remedies throughout the day into the evening. At about 6:30 pm, I experienced some pretty strong contractions. These came sporadically at about every hour and a half to every 10-15 minutes apart. At about 8 we put my daughter to bed (she’s 14 months). Strangely enough, when we thought she was fast asleep at about 9:00 she woke up and started crying for her momma. When I went upstairs to cuddle her, she seemed to be aware of what was going on. She usually curls up next to me but that night, she laid her head on my belly and fell asleep cooing “mama”, like she knew it would be our last bedtime together before her sister arrived. It brought me to tears. I think that even though she is so young she had some sort of sixth sense about it all.

After my daughter was securely in bed, my husband and I sat down to watch a movie and I chose to sit on the exercise ball to manage the contractions. My intention was to keep going what had started so I moved around quite frequently throughout the movie. At about 10:30 we went up to bed to try to get some rest and to my dismay, my contractions had quieted down to about 45 minute intervals.

I was in and out of bed, anxious and still experiencing contractions when they grew more intense and started lasting over a minute in which I had to hold my breath through the waves. They were now about ten minutes apart and somehow I knew that I should wake my husband up to start the labor preparations such as blowing up the tub and getting the bed labor-proofed.

I followed him downstairs and while he was blowing up the tub, and getting the bed ready I first attended to him by giving him vitamins and making him tea (he was feeling ill that day and he NEVER gets sick). When my contractions got stronger I was walking around and counting the minutes on the clock. They were still 10 minutes apart but very strong (I was instructed to call the midwife at 5 minutes apart).

During this time, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom, because the toilet with the hole for a seat was the most comfortable since it didn’t put any pressure “down there”. I started bleeding and to me it looked like a great amount. My contractions got to 5 minutes apart and I calmly called my midwife. She said that I seemed so calm on the phone that she’d make herself some tea to wake up and then head over there. I also texted my friend who had agreed to come get my daughter and told her about what was going on.

In a span of about 10 minutes, I yelled at my husband to hurry up and start filling the tub, and to call my midwife back and tell her to come NOW because 1) I was bleeding A LOT and 2) My contractions suddenly were on top of one another with about a half a minute break. He also called my friend and told her to come NOW. I think I said “Call Suzanne, get Ellen OUT of the house! (Because I was screaming at this point through every contraction they were so intense).

Instinctually I thought to myself “I have to get up now and move to the tub because if I don’t I’ll be stuck on this toilet” and I was right. Somehow I managed to lift myself out of the bathroom and into the tub, which was set up in the dining room, which was only a quarter of the way full. Doing awesome tub management, my husband was concerned about the temperature and kept checking it but I really didn’t care if it was too hot, it felt better than being dry and dealing with those waves.

As soon as I got in, I started moaning loudly with the contractions. They were still right on top of one another. After about only 5 minutes I felt something “pop” which was my bag of waters breaking. Right after the pop, I yelled to my husband that she was going to come NOW and that I “don’t want to push”. I was scared. We were alone. What if the baby came out not breathing or what if I was bleeding too much like I thought?

I yelled for him to find the bulb syringe because I knew that if she wasn’t breathing, we might have to suck water/ mucous out of her mouth to help her. He got on that task right away and before he was done washing the syringe, I felt a huge urge to push, screamed that I didn’t want to push but my body had other intentions.

She was out in two pushes, back to back with no break in between. I felt for her head in the water and cupped it while her body slid out. I took her out of the water immediately and onto my chest. I looked at her face and my husband emerged from the bathroom with the clean bulb syringe. We waited for her to cry and she let out a wet little peep. One tiny cry. She opened her eyes and looked around. I held her close to me in the warm tub and instructed my husband to get a towel. I couldn’t really move because she was attached and I didn’t know how long the cord was so I just held her there, close to the water with a towel that got soaked. After a few minutes I said, “I think with this wet towel, she may get cold”. We need to try to get the placenta out and get her detached and warm.” So I carefully stood up onto my knees in the tub and handed her to my husband while I pushed the placenta out. He handed her back to me and got a bowl to put it in so it wouldn’t just be floating around in the tub.

I then asked him to get some scissors to cut the cord since the placenta was out and it had been about 5 minutes. He found some kitchen scissors and again, cleaned them off the best we could in limited time and then he cut her cord.

This is the time my midwife and my friend arrived. I was sitting in the tub; holding her, cord freshly cut. We explained what had just happened and that we had just cut the cord. “Did you clamp it?” she said. “No I didn’t even think about that, I just thought we needed to get her warm and in a dry clean towel.

So my midwife, a bit stunned that this had all just happened in the 15 minutes she was in route, quickly dug into her bag, found a clamp, put it on, and then cut the cord to a proper length (we were smart for cutting it long).

I told my friend thank you for coming but our daughter had slept through the whole thing.

My midwife then took on the grandmotherly role helping us manage self- care, and we passed the baby to daddy so that I could get out of the tub and we could get her bundled.

I arose from the tub dazed. Did that all just really happen? Did I deliver my own baby?

I was not bleeding profusely as I had believed, I have two TINY hairline tears that stitches would cause more damage to then good, so it’s not needed, and the baby latched on right away and is rosy cheeked and healthy as an ox.

Certainly if I was not planning to give birth at home, she would have been born in the car on the way to the birth center or the hospital.

Thank god for my husband, my birthing tub, my daughter for sleeping through the whole thing, and my baby for entering this world so swiftly.

It was a crazy ride and I’m so glad that I was on it.

Oh AND while I’m blogging away because I’m still high on love hormones, can’t sleep, and want to record this to the best of my memory, my husband made me breakfast in bed (banana pancakes, and bacon), is cleaning up all of the mess, and taking care of our older daughter. Life is good.

It is Tuesday, at 10pm while I settle in after getting my little ones to bed. I flip through the channels and settle on discovery healthy which is a personal favorite of mine, but it really has only recently become a favorite because of shows like I didn’t know I was pregnant. It fascinates me that women could make it though a full term pregnancy and not know they were pregnant, but that is just me, and the experiences that I had with my children is what makes me wonder how the heck women could not know they were pregnant.  But that is completely besides my point today.
So as I watch this show, I am noticing a trend. High risk, high risk, high risk, previous cesarean section, scheduled cesarean section, high risk, healthy first time mother, scheduled cesarean, high risk. Well I mean, that is how it is in Los Angeles right?  You would think so!  But apparently because only these crazy, scary, uncommon births make something called ratings, that is all they are going to feature on TV. Because in reality, no one wants to watch a natural birth or a home birth because no one is running around with a scalpel screaming about the emergency that childbirth is. Nor is the mother screaming for her epidural because she just cant deal with the pain of the 3 hours of labor so far.
But what we should be thinking about most importantly is the message this is sending. What is this teaching first time mothers or even young women that may not be planning on having children soon but will some day?  It is teaching them how scary, dangerous, and medical birth is supposed to be. But is that really how birth is? Of course not. Anyone who has taken the time to read the studies, and just not follow what mainstream society thinks is the right way to handle pregnancy will know that birth is not scary or dangerous or a huge emergency. While it can be in some cases, in most cases it can and will be beautiful when just left alone.

When a woman becomes pregnant today, if they do not already have an Obstetrician they have been seeing for well women care since 16, or whatever age their parent decided it was the right them for them, what is the first thing that they do? They ask around their circle of female friends for the best Doctor out there because isn’t that what we all want? We want the one who is the BMW of pre natal care. Little do women know that they are really going to end up with the 1990 Dodge Dynasty when they take this route because hands off is better.
But because our society has told us this is the way things should be, they run off like lemmings right off the cliff of medical interventions landing in the valley of cesarean sections.

Maybe if the television channels like Discovery health followed a dozen home births or even aired The Business of Being Born they could get a popular, and controversial other side to what they are constantly airing. Maybe it will boost their ratings even more, maybe not?  But what it will do is give the other side of the whole issue. Let’s get Marsden Wagner to do a half hour special on Birth in The United States and see how many women run off to the midwives.  Instead they air these disgustingly inaccurate “Freebirthing” shows. They find the one idiot who is going to make women who choose unassisted birth look like a bunch of uneducated yokels.  Which is exactly what they did with their special on Unassisted birth.

I guess in the end, like anything else the television airs, it is biased and we shouldn’t expect much different.

]]> http://www.birthactivist.com/2009/12/why-our-women-are-afraid-of-birth/feed/ 7 http://www.birthactivist.com/2009/11/no-intervention-necessary-woman-has-surprise-hbac/ http://www.birthactivist.com/2009/11/no-intervention-necessary-woman-has-surprise-hbac/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:36:21 +0000 Unnecesarean http://www.birthactivist.com/?p=1100 Continue reading →]]> This surprise out-of-hospital birth story focused on the toddler-as-midwife angle. Just as interesting, however, was the fact that this woman avoided surgery. She was scheduled for her fourth cesarean on December 6, 2009.

Congratulations to the family.

Two-year-old Jeremiha Taylor doesn’t have to ask his mother where babies come from — he helped deliver his little brother at the foot of his family’s living room couch.

“He’s my little hero,” Jeremiha’s mom, Bobbye Favazza, 27, of Olive Branch, said Tuesday. “It was like he knew what to do.”

Favazza gave birth to a 7-pound, 4-ounce baby boy, Kamron Taylor, on Friday morning. Firefighters arrived moments later to cut the umbilical cord.

Greg Mynatt, an emergency services supervisor with the city, said the 911 call about Favazza was probably the third this year about a woman in labor, but usually the mother makes it to the hospital before delivery.

Even rarer is a child assisting with delivery. Mynatt did not recall it ever happening here.

“This would probably be the first,” he said.

Jeremiha can count to five, feed himself and go to the potty himself. He communicates in short sentences.

Of course, nothing about his brief childhood had prepared him to assist in delivering a baby, but Favazza said that of her four children, Jeremiha is the bold one, the one who “will try anything.”

Favazza had made proper plans. Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto was expecting her — on Dec. 6, for her fourth caesarian section — not on Friday the 13th.

Looking back, Favazza realized she was in labor all through the night before the birth, but she did not realize it at the time. The discomfort was minor compared to the labor pains she remembered before giving birth to her sons, ages 2 and 3, and daughter, 5.

On Friday morning, Favazza complained to her mother, Leigh Favazza, about the pain, but neither woman believed delivery was imminent.

Leigh Favazza considered taking the day off from her sales job if indeed her daughter was going to give birth, but first she had to get her granddaughter, Keely Taylor, settled at school.

Leigh Favazza left the house to take the 5-year-old to the bus stop at the end of Maury Drive, then she headed for Olive Branch Elementary School to drop off snacks for her granddaughter’s classroom. While en route, Bobbye Favazza called.

“Mom, I’m having the baby,” Bobbye Favazza said.

Leigh Favazza hung up and called 911. It was 8:26 a.m. She was frantic. Her daughter was alone in the house with a 2-year-old, a 3-year-old, a bull mastiff and a poodle and her water had just broken.

Bobbye Favazza’s oldest son, 3-year-old Jamison Taylor, had awakened to discover his mother bleeding and in pain.

“He sat on the couch right here and cried,” Bobbye Favazza said. “He was terrified. He’s my emotional one.”

The 2-year-old was calm.

“I laid on the couch and he went and got a towel,” Bobbye Favazza said. “He grabbed a towel on his own.

“It happened so fast. My water broke and the baby came two to three minutes later. I just pushed and he caught him.”

Bobbye Favazza said she held her baby, still attached to her by the cord, as she walked a few feet to unlock the front door for emergency personnel. They cut the cord.

Jeremiha, quizzed about the birth of his brother, can point to the spot at the end of the couch where Kamron Taylor was born.

“Over there,” he said.

“Sometimes these things happen, especially to mothers who’ve had multiple births,” said Mynatt, the city’s emergency services supervisor. “The time gets less and less with each delivery.”

Mother and son were discharged from Baptist-DeSoto. Neither suffered any complications.

“I’ve had three,” said Leigh Favazza, the proud grandmother, “and I can’t imagine having any of them like this.”