Sharing My Home-Birth Story: Part 3
Pushing, Birthing, and Meeting Baby
*This is part of an ongoing series. Start with parts 1 & 2!*
The Pool and Pushing
One of my friends had an amazing experience in birth: when she got in the pool, her pain completely vanished. I thought of her at that moment, when I sunk into the water, holding onto a small sliver of hope that the pain would disappear.
It didn’t. Fortunately, there was still some relief. I was starting to feel my body bearing down. After four hours of laboring, I was pushing. For some, pushing is worse, but for me, there was a bit of relief. Not because pushing was easy — it was hard work — but because I had a longer break between urges. Instead of a minute, I now had about three minutes to catch my breath. I was amazed by the difference it made.
Pushing was also more active; it no longer felt like I was being ridden by the waves. I was participating in them. Somehow, that was more tolerable, even though the intensity remained high, and it wasn’t painless.
Strands of twinkle lights gave the room a soft glow. Electric candles flickered. My birth playlist sang quietly from my phone. We never did manage to get it connected to the speaker.
By the time my birth photographer arrived from an hour away, I was already in the pool, turned towards the wall and in the darkest corner I could find. Not because I was hiding, but because there were two handles on that side, and I was folded over the pool, gripping them with everything I had when the waves roared through me.
It was an interesting pattern: the urge to push would approach and I perked up from where I’d folded over the edge of the pool, getting into position. I would have four or five big pushes. For some reason, the last push felt optional. The urge was waning, and I could either optimize the opportunity or let it fade and rest. I once tried pushing without that innate urge; it felt counterproductive.
I wondered ahead of time if I would need coaching when pushing. Some have described it as an awkward skill their body needs help navigating. There are so many different directions regarding how to breathe, what position to be in, how to correctly engage your muscles. From the beginning, my body took over completely. My uterus was contracting, performing the fetal ejection reflex, directing my efforts. I was just along following its lead.
The space was held beautifully by my birth team and partner. Everything was quiet. Everyone was present and at ease, like the sleepiness of the night kept us in a suspended space where time wasn’t real and the outside world didn’t exist. I was distantly aware of the faint clicking of a camera, but I didn’t mind. My partner once held a camera right in my face, and my midwife said she was waiting for me to knock it out of his hand, but I had no opinion on the matter, just faint awareness. And of course now, I’m grateful for the footage.
Once again, I didn’t want comfort measures. Only two things called to me: sips of water between contractions and the occasional brush of a cold cloth against my forehead. I don’t know if it was the temperature of the water or the effort I was exerting (probably both), but I was running warm.
My partner sat beside me. He breathed with me, and I followed the cadence between contractions. He meditated, holding his hands out to wrap me in love. I’m amazed by how serene he stayed through it all. There was never an ounce of fear, only trust, and I have no doubt that atmosphere had an impact.
I yelled so much that my throat was sore for days (and a neighbor heard when taking the trash out at 2 AM. Their text to me the next day read We felt a disturbance in the forcefield last night…is there a new being in the neighborhood?). Sometimes I cried once a wave passed, almost like a release valve for the intensity of it.
Once or twice I asked my midwife if everything was going okay. She reassured me that I was doing fine, that things were progressing well. She listened to the baby’s heartbeat between contractions and said the same phrase when we heard that steady thumping. “Smart baby. You know what to do.”
It’s funny, the expectations you unknowingly cultivate. For some reason, when I heard that some people push for hours and others only three times, I decided that my pushing would be fast. I mean, the vaginal canal isn’t that long, right? We’re talking inches, not feet. Surely I could make sufficient progress with each push and keep this whole thing brief.
What I didn’t expect was to be pushing for three hours and crowning for one of those hour. Even for a first-time mom, those numbers are on the larger side. (I’ll explain why in the “postpartum” section, where I’ll share my complications. If you want to skip that, please do!)
It was work. With every push I visualized the baby descending and my body stretching around him, like Gumby. I encouraged him along, telling him I was ready. There was a burning sensation while he was crowning, but I leaned into it. I certainly hoped to avoid tearing, reading about different ways to minimize the risk, but I’d held that lightly my whole pregnancy. I’d told my midwife that if that’s how things went for my body, I would accept it (though I did not anticipate how things actually unfolded).
I struggled to rest between contractions. My body wanted to stay locked up and rigid, waiting for the next wave of pushes. My partner encouraged me over and over to rest, rest, rest.
“He’s coming,” I said at one point when I felt his head engage in my birth canal. But the back-and-forth progress continued. He descended, then retreated, and over again.
I tried to feel for his head, but I wasn’t sure what I was touching. Once, my midwife listened to his heartbeat and it was unnervingly slow before recovering. I was feeling discouraged. When would this end? What if his heartbeat dipped again and I couldn’t push him out fast enough before things took a turn for the worse?
A Change of Scenery
Finally, he was crowning, and I could feel a sliver of his head. I was so, so excited, but also wondered how in the world he was going to fit. I kept waiting for my big pushes to pop him right out.
When sharing her birth stories, Teresa Palmer often talks about a specific breathing technique she does when the baby is crowning to slow progress and allow the vagina to stretch. But there was nothing for me to slow down; I was still putting in maximum effort, giving everything I had — my knees pulled up off the bottom of the pool, my hands gripped the handles until my fingers were stiff. With each push, I roared.
Instead of progress, the water was starting to feel like it was working against me. Like when you hold an air-filled toy under the pool and it tries to spring up. (We soon discovered that there was a reason for this, which I’ll share in the “postpartum” section.)
I told my team that I think I needed to move, even though it sounded nearly impossible. My midwife said to follow my instincts. The couch was closer, but the bed was already prepared.
My first attempt at standing failed. My legs gave out. I waited through another contraction, then let my partner haul me up and usher me to the bed. Let me tell you, it was much harder than I would have anticipated, walking with a baby’s head between my legs!
I started out on hands and knees, trying to grip the headboard, but my midwife encouraged me to be on my side, with my partner and doula holding my leg and bracing my foot. I was glad I’d made the move; the bed felt like the right location, and it gave my midwife the opportunity to assess what was going on.
I wasn’t there for long, maybe twenty minutes. Someone grabbed a warm compress for my perineum. With help from my midwife, our baby’s head was born. He made noises right away. I was so unaware of my body that I didn’t know if I was done or not. It took two more pushes to get past his shoulders, then his hips. The cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, but he was fine, and once my midwife uncoiled it…
He was in my arms.
Our sweet boy was born in the early morning hours of his due date.
A New Being
Those immediate moments are the best part of a home birth. We laid in bed. I told my baby over and over how glad I was that he was here, how hard he’d worked with me, how we’d been waiting for him.
That I was his mama.
I cut the cord myself when it stopped pulsing and was amazed by how thick it was. My midwife helped me birth the placenta — I didn’t have the strength to squat, so I remained reclined. She commented on how healthy and thick the placenta was, and how the cord was probably the longest she’d ever seen. It’s small things like that that make you feel disproportionately proud of yourself in the post-birth glow.
Mostly, I got to hold my baby, relaxing into my pillows and marveling with my partner at the life we’d created.
“Who are you?” I wondered as I looked at this little being, taking in his tiny fingers, his head of hair. I didn’t yet know, but it felt like the privilege of my life that would get to answer that question; that I would get to love him.
Another thing I was grateful for? The powerful circle of women around me. My doula helped me navigate that first, tender exploration in breastfeeding. She also made breakfast, and my birth photographer fed me, as I didn’t yet know how to hold this baby with one hand and eat. Nor did I want to — both arms yearned to envelop him.
My partner helped me out of my swimsuit top so I could have uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact. And finally, after we’d had our golden hour, my midwife had the baby on the bed beside me and did the appropriate medical checks. She also tended to me. I tore and required sutures.
I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I couldn’t believe he was here. I’d had my home birth. My baby was in my arms. And now, we have our whole lives ahead of us.
