Samuel's Birth Story

Samuel's labor was the hardest of all of my labors. I went in Saturday afternoon and the midwives gave me some herbs to start contractions. They really worked. I wished I had known about them before now. After contractions were going, the midwife tried to break my water, but the baby had turned and she could not get to it. So I took more herbs and bounced on a ball to bring him back down. An hour later he was in a much better place, so they broke my water. Hard contractions began immediately. I got in the birthing tub. I could feel Samuel's head slide down with every contraction and contractions were coming at about 2 minutes apart. It was not long before I was fully dilated and ready to push. I began pushing on my knees, but after each push, Samuel's head would come down more and then go back up. I tried lying back and pushing with the same results. Then my contractions started to slow down. They may have been as far as 10 minutes apart near the end and we were a little concerned they would just stop. I tried pushing upright and then leaning forward, but it was clear that Samuel was making no progress. The midwife said that it was likely that his head was pushing into my pelvic bone and then going back up. She suggested that I try lying flat on my back to see if that would slide his head under. I did, and then with just two more contractions he came and the midwife delivered him. I had never had to push so much or to change positions so much before. It was harder for sure, though, he was born just two hours after my water was broken, an hour of that was pushing. The midwife handed him to me, and while I looked at his face, John discovered the gender. At that point in time, my contractions had completely stopped. The midwife waited a half hour and then helped my placenta come out without contractions. We were glad that everything turned out as well as it did. My body is older and did not perform as well as it has in the past. It is clear that my muscles are spent after delivering 11 full term babies.

John and I and the baby waited in the birthing center for 6 hours to make sure everything was fine with the baby and me and then we headed home. Samuel was born at 6:23pm and we got home 8 hours later at about 2:20am. In all, we were away from home fir about 14 hours-- 4 of those were spent driving.

In the end, John and I were both very grateful that I chose the birth center even though we had to drive two hours to get there. Because I went to the birth center, I was allowed to try 4 different positions to push the baby out. In the hospital, women are really only allowed to push from one position and if the baby is stuck they will use some kind of medical intervention to get the baby out. We were also very grateful to be able to get home to our own bed and our other children. If I had gone to the hospital, they would have had me stay 48 hours instead of six. We would have had to take the kids into a hospital to meet the baby and that is always hard. In the end, neither John nor I questioned the wisdom of driving two hours to give birth.