I got my HBA2C!

I had a hospital vba2c almost 2 years ago, but moved 6 hours away to the Philly suburbs. Practices here are pretty awful as far as being vba2c supportive, so homebirth it was! You can see my other birth stories, my issues with PROM, & my 2 CS for failure to progress, including one traumatic out of hospital transfer.

Evie’s Birth

On Wednesday night at 38+1, my water started leaking after & evening of curb walking & prodromal labor.

Thursday night tried castor oil & things got intense, the birth assistant came but it fizzled out.

Friday: Did acupuncture, herbal tinctures, miles circuit x3, ALL THE THINGS but no change

Saturday: Did an amazing acupuncture session & NST to check on babe in the afternoon, but decided to spend the rest of the day pretending nothing was going on.

Made the decision that if baby didn’t come by the end of the weekend, I would transfer to one of the only VBA2C friendly hospitals in the area an hour away for an induction Monday morning. We packed hospital bags Saturday night, and I had a good cry mourning my dream birth, and for fear of the unknown.

Sunday morning I woke up to some strong contractions, but super far apart. Nate made a Trader Joe’s run with the big girls for hospital snacks, and me and Lucy went Marshall’s for baby boy socks and pacis.

At 1130 I did a castor oil milkshake with a full 4oz of castor oil, and went about my day.

Contractions picked up again, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. I relaxed in my rocking chair in the baby’s nursery listening to political podcasts, vacuuming, doing laundry etc.

At 2:30 I had bloody show & texted my midwife as contractions increased in intensity.

Active labor really started at 4/4:30, and I quickly had trouble coping. I was still thinking they’d fizzle out & I’d be heading to the hospital. Nate called my midwife at 4:30, and she sent over her sweet birth assistant. She got to our house at 5:30 and I could barely greet her.

She checked on me and the babe, and told me my midwife would be heading over from another birth.

The next hour, things intensified. The only way I could labor was hanging over a stack of pillows on the bed with Nate doing counter pressure. I still had the poops from the castor oil, and contractions on the toilet pulling Nate’s hands were awful. On top of that, I couldn’t get my Christian Hypnobirthing tracks to work which was making me SO MAD.

My midwife got here at 6:30 and checked me(for the first time in my pregnancy btw!), and I was a six. I was glad that I was in active labor, but also frustrated as I figured it could be another 4-5 hours before I met my baby. In the back of my mind, I still wondered if I would need to transfer to the hospital for pitocin to get this baby out.

A little before 7 I started laboring on the toilet, and felt something in my vagina. I checked myself, and it was soft and squishy… a bulging sack of waters.

Contractions were still intense, but very spaced out which was a sweet break. I wasn’t quite pushing, but started breathing the sack of waters down which was so odd. My almost two year old daughter was standing beside me, so sweet and curious.

I spent maybe fifteen minutes doing that, when they were bulging out several inches outside of my body! When they broke with my next contraction at 7:21, it was an out of body experience. I looked at my midwife with big eyes and said “the baby is coming out.” It was the craziest sensation to feel this little body just travel down through my pelvis and down the birth canal.

7:22 baby’s head was out without a push, 7:23 shoulders were delivered with a breath. I don’t even remember feeling a ring of fire.

As I snuggled my new babe, my midwife asked me if I wanted to see what we had. I peeked under the towel expecting to see little boy parts, but instead discovered we had a fourth, precious daughter.

Moments later her big sisters were in to meet her (they missed the birth since they had to use the bathroom at our neighbors house since I was occupying the only toilet in our hous).

I waddled over to bed with the cord still hanging, and got to spend a golden hour of her on my chest, still attached to her placenta. Her sisters oogled over her, and eventually got in the birth pool that I ended up going unused.