Unassisted Birth Story

I went into labor Thursday March 13^th five days “early” at about 3am. I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep but was not sure why. After a while, I realized I was having contractions. I thought it was interesting because I had never felt them before. They were beginning to feel like period cramps. After each one, the baby would kick like crazy, so I was able to tell when they were beginning and ending.

At about 5 am, I had gotten up to go to the bathroom a few times and started to think I might be in early labor. David got up then to use the bathroom and I told him I might have the baby that day. He asked if he should stay home from work and I said no. I would call him if I needed anything.

By the time he got up at around 6am to go to work, I still couldn’t sleep, so I got up and had some cereal. I was having real contractions now and they were about 10 minutes apart and one minute long. They didn’t hurt, but it felt like a belt was tightening around my lower back and I enjoyed leaning over the couch for each one. David left for work and I tried going back to sleep. I wanted to have enough energy for the birth.

I lay down and took a short nap, but woke up with stronger contractions at about 8am. They were giving me back pain and the only thing that stopped it was to walk through each contraction. I had really wanted to just rest, but my back was killing me, so I decided to do some light housework to keep my back from getting stiff. I scrubbed the shower so it would be sterile and did the laundry and tidied up the house, setting out all of my birth supplies. I was having a hard time believing I was actually in labor.

Around 2:00, I was sure it was the real thing and called my mother to let her know I was going to have the baby. Contractions were pretty strong by then and I was wondering when I should call David to have him come home. I wanted to wait as long as possible. I called and told him to pick up some things for me on the way. One hour later, the contractions were getting to be heavy and close. I was starting to get a little scared and called David and told him to come home IMMEDIATELY, that I didn’t need that stuff from the store so bad after all.

He came home and we tried to watch something to take my mind off of the contractions, but I couldn’t get through even ten minutes of the show. My contractions were about two to three minutes apart and I couldn’t think through them. They were very painful and I had to stand up and lean against the wall while making cow sounds through each one. Walking was no longer helping.

I went into the house because I couldn’t stand to be in the office anymore. I didn’t want to watch TV. I was in a lot of pain and was ready for it to be over. My lower back was hurting worse than it ever has in my life. I tried every position and every trick in the book to ease the pain a little. No dice. David put pressure on my back, but it only worked for a few seconds, then caused the pain to be even worse, so I made him stop.

By around 5pm, the contractions were one minute apart or less and I couldn’t deal with them anymore. I was crying and whimpering through them. I tried remembering everything I had ever read about helping to get through them. EVERYTHING made it worse. Vocalizing, relaxing my jaw, visualization. For some reason, every single thing I did made the contractions even more terrible. Gritting my teeth, wincing, and squealing wasn’t helping, but it sure was making the contractions shorter, so I continued doing it against what others would have considered better judgment.

By six o’clock, I was looking for a way to stop my labor. I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much. I lay down in bed to rest and tried to nap between contractions. Laying down made them come less often, about five to ten minutes apart again, but when they did come, they were absolutely beyond excruciating and I nearly screamed through some of them. I couldn’t get up while having one, so I would lay there and kick my legs frantically. I was desperate to escape them. I wished that there was some technique that would help. I’ve read of so many in so many books and none of them were helping. It was scary.

I don’t know how I got through the next few hours. Contractions were beyond painful, beyond unbearable. Beyond terrifying. I started telling myself that I just wanted it to stop. I didn’t even want my baby anymore. I just wanted it to go away so I could sleep. If I could just sleep, maybe I could get through it. My nap didn’t come. There were no breaks. I wanted to go to the hospital to get an epidural. Amazingly enough, I was actually coherent enough to reason with myself that even if I went, they wouldn’t give me an epidural this far along. I kept crying to David “I want my baby, I want my baby!” I was on my knees and praying, begging “please, please make it stop!”

I wished to all there is that there was something that could at least take the edge off somewhat, but there was no miracle like in the birth stories I’ve read. I’m not sure why I was in so much pain, but I wasn’t able to cope with contractions at all. I just lay there and suffered through them somehow. I wanted to die. It could be because the baby was backwards and I didn’t know it at the time. I threw up twice after two particularly painful contractions. I LOVED throwing up. It felt pleasurable to me at the time because it completely took my mind off of the contractions. I prayed to throw up with each one, but I wasn’t lucky enough to do it more than twice. The contractions that caused the vomiting were so painful that they made me black out partially and caused my body to shake violently.

At about 10:40, I realized that it was taking so long because I was laying down trying to escape the contractions. I decided that if I wanted it over, I’d better let gravity help. I went and sat on the toilet and had about ten contractions there. With one contraction, I felt a huge wave rush through my body as though I was being pushed through a tight hole and my body made a loud “unnnnngggh!” sound. Relief swept over me. I was pushing! I told David to get the video camera and he came in and looked at me and said “are you going to have it on the toilet?” I looked at him like he was crazy and then yelled “I don’t know!” I got up and moved to the floor by the bed.

Pushing felt so incredibly wonderful! It was the most wonderful feeling in the whole world! I have absolutely no idea what they mean in birth books and birth stories when they say “try not to push” or “hold back until the doctor says it’s okay to push.” My pushes were absolutely NOT voluntary. My whole body took over. It was like being very violently sick when you can’t stop heaving and heaving. My whole body from the top of my head to the end of my toes was heaving and pushing with tremendous power. I wanted to slow it down so I wouldn’t tear, but there was no more controlling it than I could control my own heartbeat. They were incredible!

The pushes were causing me to make loud noises. It looks in the video as if I was in pain, but there was no pain with the pushing. It was all gone and I was so happy. Each push felt like the entire universe expanding and expanding a little more. It was as though the horizons of space were a balloon and each push was another breath blowing it bigger and bigger. The whole of space and time opened itself up to me and I just let it take me. My body was bearing down so hard that the air was forced out of my lungs in large burps and roars. I yelled like mad, but never out of pain. In the video, I was smiling and laughing at David and telling him how wonderful pushing felt. The pushing was the part I was afraid of before giving birth, so I was delighted to find that it was nothing at all.

I had about ten contractions with roars and began to get very excited at this point. I was giggling and saying “my baby is coming!” I had a mirror set up so I could watch it be born. I checked after each set of pushes to see how far down the baby was. She never did go in and out. Each push brought her another inch into the world and I watched it all happen. The bag of waters did not break, so once it began to protrude as a little bubble, I popped it with my finger, hoping it would rush the baby down, but it didn’t. Only a little clear water came out. She would have been born in her bag of waters otherwise.

When her head crowned, I was smiling and laughing. I began talking to the baby and playing with her hair. It was very long and very dark. I went back and forth from hands and knees (for the pushing) to squatting (to look in the mirror). I was amazed that there was no pain as the head was coming out. It took two pushes from crowing for me to get her head out. As the head came fully out, I yelled “ouch!” It felt like I tore the teeniest bit toward the front but it was nothing and I didn’t care.

I told David to catch her head and he did. I saw a cord around her neck and asked him if it was tight, but it wasn’t. It was only looped around her neck, but it was a very short cord, so it was preventing her from coming out further than her waist. He handed her to me through my legs and I unlooped her and pulled her the rest of the way out. About half a gallon of water, a blood clot the size of my hand, and one or two cups of blood gushed out of me. She pinked up fast and started hollering. She was very strong and her angry little arms were flailing everywhere.

I was ELATED! I sat back with her in my arms and looked at her. A GIRL! I was so amazed. I had been sure the entire pregnancy that she was a boy. She yelled lustily, but her eyes were open wide and she couldn’t stop looking around her at everything. She sounded a little upset at events, but was obviously too curious about the world around her to care much. Her first act in this world was to pee all over me and I laughed. She didn’t want the breast and refused to try to nurse for a couple of hours. I just held her and smiled and talked to her. “I love her!” I said delightedly. “I love her and she’s mine!”

I sat on the floor with her in my arms for about fifteen or twenty minutes when I felt another contraction. I sat over a bowl and pushed the placenta out. I also was not expecting it to be painful to push out the placenta, but the contraction hurt and the placenta felt huge. I lost about two or three cups of blood into the bowl including a blood clot that was about the size of the placenta itself and suddenly lost my hearing for about one minute, but it came right back. I never felt dizzy, though my legs were shaking a little from the effort of birth. I handed the baby to David and tied and cut the cord. I checked the placenta in the bathroom. It was intact and perfect. I was covered in blood and went into the shower after that to get cleaned up.

I was really worried about the amount of blood I was losing, so I took the baby and lay in bed and tried nursing her. I rubbed my uterus and took a bite out of the placenta and held it under my tongue before swallowing. It tasted just like hard-boiled eggs. The bleeding stopped immediately. I felt wonderful and couldn’t stop staring and my perfect, amazing little baby. She had a lot of mucous in her lungs and I sucked it out with my mouth and spit it out. My perineum felt a little sore, even though I supported it throughout the pushing stage.

We bundled her up in a blanket and lay down to get some rest. I thought I would never stop staring at her there in the dark with her snuggled up between us, but I did. She slept the whole night through. We woke up early to call family and friends and I nursed her. I was amazed at how incredibly strong she could suck. At about noon, I called the midwives and they came over to check us out. They announced that aside from a slight case of jaundice, everything was perfect.

When I asked them to check me for tears, I was surprised to find that I had torn. Badly. There was a tiny first-degree tear in the front which I had felt during the birth, but what I didn’t feel at all was a gigantic one-inch-long, one-inch-deep second-degree tear toward the back of my vagina. My muscles were torn open and my guts were hanging out. It was quite terrifying to look at. I asked the midwife if that was only a second degree tear, how bad was a third-degree. She told me I didn’t want to know. They asked me if I wanted it stitched up and I said yes, so they made a sterile area and gave me about four or five VERY painful stitches. After that, they checked to make sure I was breastfeeding okay and left us. They came back by later with some cream for my nipples, a peri bottle, and some witch hazel.

I am typing this with my little love tucked in her sling in my arms fast asleep. She nurses like a champ and goes about 6 solid hours nursing before stopping. Then she will sleep for 8 hours or more. I can’t tell you how in love I am with her. I can’t stop looking at her. I thought I would know her the moment I saw her, but she’s such a little stranger to me! I don’t recognize her at all. She’s so amazing! Having her here with me and not having anyone take her away or poke her or hurt her has meant more to me than I can say. I would never do it any other way. I’m so happy that it’s over and I couldn’t ask for a more wonderful little treasure.

Aloha!