For those mamas out there who are creating their birth plans, I see you! When I was finally in the stage of pregnancy where I started to really think about my labor and birth experience, I had so many excited and bubbly expectations. I truly believed that my birthing experience would go exactly how I planned, in hindsight I want to laugh at my previous self for having that expectation. As Covid started to creep into our lives, I realized that I had to let go of control. Having a baby comes with a whole list of excitement and “what ifs.” Now add Covid into the mix and it can feel like too much. All of your feelings are VALID and I want to be a testament that even if your birth plan doesn’t go exactly how you planned, you will adapt and adjust because you are a woman and you are strong!

I knew that things were really changing when I had to switch my place of birth completely. Initially I planned on giving birth at Methodist Hospital with the midwives. I attended the “meet the midwives” event and took a hospital tour. I was so excited for the giant tubs where I planned to have a water birth. I fully envisioned my husband, Johnny, and I welcoming our baby into this world at this hospital. I felt safe. When I was 38 weeks pregnant Covid was becoming more prominent and we heard rumors about hospitals only allowing one person in with delivering mamas. So, I would have had to choose between having my husband or my doula present. Having my birth team present was non-negotiable to me. I needed both in order to keep me feeling empowered and safe. I ended up making the really tough decision to leave the hospital and switch to a birthing center.

I was two weeks shy of my due date and switching my mindset from giving birth at a hospital to a birthing center came with a lot of tears and anxiety. I honestly just hadn’t done enough research on birthing centers to feel safe. I ended up choosing Willow Birthing Center and at my first (and only) prenatal appointment with them I immediately felt at ease with the kind staff, beautiful rooms and giant tubs. My dream of having a water birth could still come true! The appointment was very different from the hospital as my husband was turned away at the entrance, I had to have my temperature taken upon entry and wear a mask the entire time. This is a way of life now but back in mid-march it felt very apocalyptic. After the appointment I fully accepted giving birth at a birthing center.

Later that same week, I went into labor. I was shocked because that same evening I was playing water pong, eating pizza, and dancing around my living room with my husband. We were bored in the house from quarantine, can you blame us? We went to bed around midnight unknowing that that would be our last night as just us. Two hours later my water broke. It is definitely not like it is in the movies. We actually weren’t even sure if it was my water that broke because it was just a little trickle of water, so we called our midwives. Luckily we only lived 3 minutes from Willow so our midwife was kind enough to bring us a test strip to our home (apparently there is a test strip that will turn blue if it comes in contact with amniotic fluid). I think my husband and I both held our breath as we dipped the strip into the fluid and our eyes nearly came out of our heads when it turned blue! Our midwife calmly told us to try and go back to sleep and get as much rest as possible… yeah right! We honestly tried to sleep but both of us were too excited and nervous to get any rest. We were both wide awake in silence until I felt my very first contraction, which came at 5 a.m.

This is the moment we have been waiting for. We planned, we took the birthing classes, we researched and now it was actually happening! We had our bags packed and our birth plan printed. We were ready to get to the birthing center and meet our sweet baby. The contractions felt different than I expected. I think that’s because I experienced a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions throughout my pregnancy, so I assumed it would feel similar to that but these ones were a lot more intense. At first they felt like sharp menstrual cramps, but definitely tolerable. I remember thinking that I wanted to look presentable for when I go into the birthing center so I took a shower and attempted to do my makeup. It was kind of ironic how I wanted to look presentable because I actually only ended up being able to finish one eye before my contractions became too intense to care about my physical appearance. I ended up going the entire day with only one completed eye.

At 7 a.m. I was really uncomfortable and wasn’t able to talk through contractions anymore, so we thought it was time to head to Willow. We gave the midwives a call to let them know and we got hit with some rough news. Our midwife informed us that the birthing center would be having a mandatory power outage that day from 8 a.m. – noon. Mandatory power outage? I didn’t even know that was a thing! My heart sank to my feet. I buried my face into my pillow and bawled with frustration. Why today? Why me? Can keep laboring at home until noon? Then I was hit with another wave of contractions that snapped me back into reality. It’s hard for me to explain, but I felt a surge of womanly power and I knew deep in my gut that everything would be ok. The midwives suggested that I could come to the birthing center, but warned us that when the power goes out that I would have to climb down five flights of stairs. That was a hard no for us, so my husband asked if they would be willing to come to our home to check me out and thankfully they agreed!

At 8 a.m. three midwives and my doula arrived at our home. As soon as my husband led them into our dimly lit bedroom I had the strongest wave yet and everyone sat in silence for about a minute while I was hurled in a ball of pain. It felt strange being in the most vulnerable situation of my life with 2 complete strangers in my bedroom (I had only met one midwife prior to this moment because I switched to the birthing center so late in my pregnancy). This may sound silly because the midwives do this for a living, but I felt so embarrassed and exposed. After my contraction the two midwives introduced themselves and climbed onto my bed with me to check to see how far I was progressing. In my birth plan I stated that I did not want to know how far along I was, so they checked me and went out of the room to speak with Johnny.

I didn’t know at the time, but when they took him out in the hallway they told him that I was progressing very quickly. They asked Johnny for towels, large bowls, trash bags and a tarp because the birth was going to be happening at home. Yep, you read that right. The birth would be happening AT HOME. Thankfully I didn’t know this because I think I would have had a panic attack, which Johnny definitely had. I was just peacefully laboring on my bed assuming that I would make it into the birthing center at noon. What a blissful thought. So I went from planning on having a water birth at a hospital, to having a water birth at a birthing center, to giving birth on my bed at home. Talk about a plot twist!

The midwives turned our little one bedroom apartment into their new birthing center. They used our dresser as their tool station and converted our living room into their office where they would take breaks and answer any calls, because remember the whole birthing center building was out of power. 

The midwives were right, I was progressing quickly and the contractions were getting very intense. It is very miraculous, though, how insane the sensations of contractions are when they are happening but the memory of the pain does fade. As I sit here four months later and write this, I am having a hard time remembering the pain. My doula was an amazing goddess that helped me feel safe and as comfortable as possible. If you are a pregnant mama reading this right now and you don’t have a doula but you’ve been considering it, feel free to reach out to me to chat more about how much my doula helped me. I cannot speak highly enough about my doula and how empowered she made me feel. She reminded me to get up and move my body, which I did not want to do at all. All I wanted to do was lay in a ball on my bed, but there is a popular saying that goes “move mama, move baby” that I kept saying to myself whenever I didn’t want to move. At that point though, I would do anything to get this over with and have my baby in my arms. We took some laps to the living room, did hips circles, and sat in the bath. With each contraction that I felt come on, I had to make sure that either Johnny or my doula was pressing as hard as they could on my low back. I later found out that this was because I was back laboring.

At noon I was checked for my progression again and this time I was 6 cm dilated. This was the time that the birthing center was supposed to be back with power, but I later found out that the center didn’t actually have power again until 3 p.m. Time didn’t feel real to me during labor. The minutes felt like hours and to help with my anxiety I decided to stop checking the time. As I was headed into active labor, I remember looking at my doula and asking her if they had everything needed for my baby because there was no way I could leave the house. She calmly looked at me and reassured me that they had everything that was needed. To me, that was a huge sigh of relief because I knew then that I would be giving birth in the safe comfort of my own home and I could feel my body relax.

I feel like that was the news I needed to hear to prepare my mind and body to bring my baby into this world because after that, things started to escalate. Not long after, I started to feel the urge to bear down and push. There was a point when I was laboring on the toilet, which is a very common laboring position to open up your pelvic floor, and I would just grab onto Johnny and squeeze him as hard as I could while I pushed with all my might. After each wave I would reach down and try to feel for his head but to my disappointment I couldn’t feel anything. I was shocked because I felt like I was pushing him through the birth canal, but the next time the midwives checked me I was informed that he was actually being held snugly in my womb by part of the amniotic sac. Now it all makes sense why I only had a trickle of water come out when my water broke at 2 a.m. The sac that holds the amniotic fluid and surrounds my baby was lodged between my baby’s head and the opening of my birth canal, which was preventing my cervix from dilating anymore and blocking my baby from passing. Apparently it is common and I had two options: A: wait until it passes on its own or B: allow the midwife to stick a rather long rod up in me to pop the sac. Cringe worthy, I know. I felt so discouraged that he hadn’t moved at all and it had been over 10 hours, so I went with option B.

I was shocked at how much gushing fluid came out after she popped the sac, thank goodness for the tarp! At this point I was 8 cm dilated and my contractions felt constant with barely any breaks. My back labor was so painful, so the midwives offered a sterile water solution that they could inject into my low back. This would apparently provide water pockets between each vertebra to help ease the pain. My initial plan was to be drug free, so at first I was pretty skeptical but the midwives reassured me that it was only water. I agreed to do it and they warned me that it would feel like a pack of bees were stinging me and they were not wrong! It felt like a thousand shots all in one area of my back, but as soon as that was over the pain from back labor was gone. I was finally able to relax a little bit. Then it was time to start the final push.

I’ll never forget the feeling of “oh thank goodness this is going to be over soon” when the midwife looked at me and told me to take my biggest breath in, tuck my chin to my chest, and push with all my might. I was surprised at how much less painful pushing was than the actual contractions, but man was it hard! At this point everyone was on the bed with me cheering me on. It was a special and empowering moment. Johnny and my doula were behind me switching roles with putting cool towels on my forehead and chest while the midwives were towards the foot end of the bed. One of the midwives wrapped a scarf around her waist and offered for me to hold onto the ends and pull. I felt like I pushed for hours, but in reality I pushed for an hour total.

I researched all of the different pushing positions, but the one that worked best for me was lying on my back. I tried all fours and in a lunge, but my body just wanted to lie down. I pushed during contractions and I could get three really good deep pushes out of every wave. I was overjoyed when my midwife yelled “he has hair!” because that meant that all of my pregnancy heartburn was worth it and that I was so close to being done. My baby definitely made me work as his head would poke in and out a little bit with every breath. After a while I felt defeated, but there are no breaks in labor. I knew that I just had to keep going. Finally I got to the point where his head wouldn’t get sucked back in anymore but now I was in the infamous “ring of fire” phase. I won’t sugar coat it, this was the most painful part BUT it went very fast and was over after three pushes. Once his head was finally out it was the most relieving feeling ever. I felt a rush of pride in myself for doing it! Then I remembered that I wasn’t done yet, next came the shoulders. They were painful but so much easier than the head. His shoulders were out in like one big push and with that came the rest of his body.

I DID IT!!!! The most rewarding feeling in the world was having my baby placed on my chest for the first time and feeling his warmth. Everyone cheered and cried and waited to hear his cries, but they never came. After a few seconds we realized that something was off because he hadn’t taken his first breath yet. I was filled with terror as the midwives took him and started to resuscitate him with oxygen. It felt like centuries were passing by as my husband and I watched as the midwives tried to get our baby to breathe. My heart swelled when I finally heard his cry. My buddy just needed a little bit of help with his first breath but after that he was as healthy as can be. I cannot explain the feeling of holding my baby for the first time, but it is better than anything I could have ever imagined. I worked hard on creating this little human for 9+ months, spent 14 exhausting hours getting him out into our world and now he was finally here for me to smell, stare at and hold. I’m so excited for all the mamas-to-be who will get to experience this euphoric feeling so soon!

When I was pregnant I read all of the birthing stories and they all usually ended here with a heathy and happy new family. But this is not the end to the birthing experience and I want to be as transparent as possible. After my baby was born I then had to birth the placenta. I don’t think this part of birth is talked about enough because I didn’t know what to expect and I was told it would be easy. False! Sure, it was easy compared to pushing out a little human, but my lady area was so sore and I was so exhausted that I just didn’t want to do anymore work. Luckily I had a cute baby to keep me distracted while the midwives gently tugged on it to come out and I pushed, AGAIN! Once the placenta was born, they put it in one of our salad bowls that we got for a wedding gift. The things that happen during an unplanned home birth! We did not decide to keep it or eat it, but if you do, more power to you! One last important step of childbirth is being stitched back up again. I actually really dreaded tearing and I know that a lot of new moms are worried about that too but I promise that it doesn’t hurt and I didn’t even know that I tore until they said they had to stitch me back up. I let Johnny have some skin-to-skin time with our new baby while I inched my way to the edge of the bed to get put back together. After that I was finally done being poked and prodded.

Around midnight everyone left and Johnny and I were alone with our new baby. We were terrified, excited, and exhausted all at the same time. We couldn’t believe that we were being left alone with a brand new baby. We didn’t feel qualified to care for another human life but here we were. We didn’t sleep that night, or really any night since. We just stared at this little baby that we’ve been dreaming of for months. He is perfect.

This is where my birthing story comes to an end. I will be honest though, it is not the end for the mama. We have weeks of recovery still to endure after birth along with a lot of learning and adapting to this new lifestyle. Look for another blog post all about my postnatal journey soon!

All the mamas out there who are preparing to bring your little ball of sunshine into this world, I am excited for you to experience your own birth story. Whether your plans go exactly how you want them to or things get switched up a bit, you still end up with the love of your life in your arms.