02 May Welcoming baby A!

Thank you to this amazing TCM mama for sharing her birth story with us!  It was such an honor to be present for such a peaceful and powerful birth! So many congratulations to this wonderful family of 4!

Thank you to their doula, Jess Quinn, for capturing these beautiful moments!

At 40 weeks and 4 days, around 3:00 am, I awoke to very intense tightening and cramping, with a little bit of fluid leaking. I was so excited! This baby was coming! I woke up my husband and we started timing the waves. They were 15 minutes apart. I got up to get things ready and the waves became more intense with gravity, coming every 10 minutes. At 4:00 am, the waves were 5-7 minutes apart. I notified Sarah and doula, Jess Quinn, that birthing time had begun! I called my mom to pick up our toddler when he woke up. I laid back down in bed to attempt to slow things down. My teeth began to chatter but I wasn’t cold – likely from the rush of hormones helping my body bring my baby forth.

At 4:30 am, my husband asked the birth team to make their way over. At this point I asked him to stop getting the birth pool ready and to lay behind me and rub my temples for comfort. I was having to focus and was no longer talking between contractions. I was totally in my own world, moving into different relaxing positions as I lay on my bed. I listened to my birth meditation tracks and squeezed hairbrush combs in each hand during surges. I had a heated rice sock placed on my lower abdomen which helped soothe the cramping sensations during waves.

At 6:00 am, my midwives and doula arrived at our house. My midwife finished setting up the birth pool in our living room and my doula supported me by reminding me to relax my shoulders and to take deep breaths. My husband and doula traded off applying downward sacral pressure during waves, which took the edge off significantly. Jess was such a calming presence for us and supported us so well. I spent most of birth relaxing into different positions in our bed. It was such a luxury to have my birth team come to me this time! Each wave was different. Some I was able to manage without much focus. Some felt so intense, I had to focus really hard to stay calm and relaxed. And a few actually felt pretty pleasurable! Around 7:00 am, relaxing in bed wasn’t helping me cope anymore. Sarah said the birth pool was ready and Jess said now would be a good time to get in if I wanted. I didn’t want to get caught in a surge while standing, so I rushed to the pool and got in, socks, pants, and all (which my birth team helped me remove in the water). The warm water felt very soothing for the intense, low cramps I was feeling at this point. It felt really good to relax and open into the warm, soothing water.

Around 7:15 am, soon after getting into the birth pool, I believe I hit transition. The waves were very close, coming every 1-2 minutes. It took all capacity of my mental energy to focus on staying calm and relaxed during this part. I started having thoughts of “I don’t want to do this anymore” and wondering “how much longer do I have to do this”. I recognized these thoughts as being in transition and reminded myself these thoughts meant the end was getting closer. I trusted my body was doing good, hard work to bring my baby earth-side in its own time and wisdom. I struggled to keep my composure during some of the waves in transition. But I told myself, “That wave is done. You don’t have to do that one again. Gather your calm so the next one will be better. Don’t brace for the waves, embrace them”.

At this point our 2 year old came downstairs for breakfast. He looked so curious seeing everyone in our home and seeing me in the birth pool. He said, “Mama in water! I get in water?”. He played with my hair combs for a bit and seemed to think the whole situation was amusing. There was one particularly big wave I needed to vocalize through and my 2 year old thought I was being funny and started making monkey noises back to me. He happily left with his grandma around 7:35 am. My husband came back inside and provided constant counter pressure to my low back, God bless him, getting into the pool with me.

At 7:50 am, there was a big bursting sensation within me. It was the rest of my water breaking. When that happened, I felt the craziest stretching and opening sensation as I felt my baby rapidly move down the birth canal and he began crowning. With the incredible speed at which my baby descended through the birth canal, I began yelling with a roar louder than I had ever yelled before from the intensity of it all. With the next surge, I felt the fetal ejection reflex and felt my body trying to push him down. At last! This was the moment I had been waiting for! Transition was over and I would be meeting my baby soon! I had planned to gently breathe my baby out, but I was so eager at this point to be done. With the next surge I pushed and roared with everything I had inside me and his head was born! It felt so relieving to have that part over. With one last surge I easily birthed the rest of his body. He was born at 7:53 am. He floated up between the front of my legs and I was able to pull him up out of the water and onto my chest myself! He had so much vernix on his back! He was initially calm and soon let out a cry. That was the beautiful sound I had been waiting to hear! I did it! It was finished.

*Insert big exhale here.*

He had such dark hair, unlike his blonde big brother. But I remember thinking, “you look exactly how I imagined!”. It didn’t feel like I was meeting him for the first time, it felt like I had known him all along. He wanted to nurse right away in the water. We did his newborn screening on our bed and Jess made me breakfast in bed. The birth team packed up the birth pool, started our laundry, and even put away some of our dishes! My husband, baby and I were all tucked into our bed and one by one the birth team left. It felt so peaceful to be at home in our own space with no one to disturb us.

We spent the first 24 hours resting and eating in the comfort of our own bed as a family. The home birth I had been planning met my hopes and dreams. I had struggled to cope with sensations in the hospital setting with my firstborn that resulted in requesting an epidural I didn’t end up liking. After learning about physiological birth, I hoped I would cope better with birth sensations in a space I felt safest, at home. And I was able to cope so much better this time! The sensations birthing unmedicated felt similar to the intense muscle strain and ache I experienced when I ran a marathon. But birth was so much better than running a marathon because I got breaks in between surges and I got a baby at the end! Never once did I think, “I want an epidural”, or, “I wish I was in the hospital “. I wanted to intuitively move my body into positions at any given time, I didn’t want cervical checks to know how dilated I was, I didn’t want any time pressure, and I didn’t want anyone to tell me when or how to push. I was able to wait for my body to push out my baby itself, waiting for the fetal ejection reflex.

Birthing at home allowed me to have an undisturbed, physiological birth. I felt like a birthing queen! It felt so right to be in the comfort of my own home and have my birth team come to me and cater to what I needed and wanted. I thought, perhaps, birthing unmedicated would feel like one of my biggest accomplishments. But I came away from this experience feeling like birth is the most normal, natural, everyday occurrence. Completely holy and miraculous, of course, but not something to be feared. Rather, childbirth can be embraced with joyful anticipation for the journey on which your body and mind will take you. Our bodies truly know how to birth if we let them.

had the undisturbed, physiological birth of my dreams! After a first hospital birth with an epidural that left me feeling more like a spectator, we decided to have our second baby at home with Twin Cities Midwifery. I decided to switch care from a hospital midwives group to TCM around 28 weeks. I had been learning more about physiological birth during my second pregnancy and I wanted to experience more manageable birth sensations the second time around. Late in my pregnancy, I felt a conviction that birthing at home would give me the best birth experience for me and my baby. I’m very thankful the TCM team took me on so late in my pregnancy.

My transfer of care to TCM was seamless. Emily, the office manager, answered all our questions in a very timely manner. Their service policies were easy to understand and they were very transparent. We were able to cover the entire cost of service with our HSA. Emily even took care of billing our insurance for us just in case, and we did receive some reimbursement which was a bonus. We worked with Midwife Sarah and she was so wonderful! She helped talk me through various considerations for home birth and provided amazing care.

I loved being able to bring my 2 year old to my appointments too. Sarah got him involved by letting him turn on the fetal doppler to listen to baby brother’s heartbeat which is a very special memory now. Their care model is so collaborative and I got to be the decision maker for any procedures or tests in pregnancy. I appreciated the online messaging and emergency paging system for consistent/reliable communication. Sarah put together a “home birth kit” that included everything needed to set up and take down a birth pool. I felt so respected and supported. They took all the stress out of planning a home birth, even though I had transferred care in my 3rd trimester. I loved my prenatal care, and I loved my postpartum care all the more. We felt very well taken care of postpartum which included multiple in-home visits for me and baby. Sarah ran all the same newborn tests they do in the hospital. Soon after the birth, when baby and I were assessed as healthy and everyone left, it was AMAZING getting to snuggle in bed with my husband and my new baby undisturbed. This was definitely a highlight of the home birth experience for me.