Owen Nicholas Showers -- born at home on December 27th, 2014 after two cesareans
I’ve had a little trouble discerning when labor really started. I had contractions on and off from 3pm on Friday, December 26th, but nothing that hurt or bothered me. Matt and I went to bed around 10pm and they were starting to be hard enough I couldn’t ignore them. I timed for a bit and let my midwife and doula know and tried to rest. Around 11pm, they were consistent, painful and not at all what I expected as far as the pain was concerned. I remember prodromal labor with our first daughter and I suppose I assumed it would be the same. Nope.
I woke Matt and started working through the tough ones. Every now and then they would double up on me but (I think) I had a longer break between those and the following ones. Matt said he called our doula, Steph, around 1:20am and that he felt bad for waking her. I was always afraid I’d have Matt call her too early and we’d waste her time with lame contractions that would eventually stall out. Thankfully, I think we made the right call and I was very glad to have her. After Matt called Steph, we started to fill the birth tub. I wasn’t in so much pain that I couldn’t stand it, but it still felt like it took forever to fill!
While Matt worked on that, I worked through contractions. Steph arrived and we worked through and got a feeling of how things were going. I remember somewhere in there I covered our clock with a washcloth and pulled the blinds. I didn’t want to have a timeline or even know what was going on outside of labor. I got in the tub for a bit as Matt finished filling it and after a while, we decided to move back to our bed to try and get some rest. Steph slept on the floor beside me. I told her we were having a sleepover, but seriously, she rocks for sleeping on the floor! I know I caught some sleep, I remember yelling at Evelyn in my sleep to put her shoes on and then later at Arianna for something else. I guess those dreams felt oddly real? I dunno, but the kids were definitely asleep in real life!
Eventually we got up (not sure whose idea this was) and I moved around for bit. I got back in the tub and I think that’s pretty much where I stayed. Steph was awesome about making sure that I got food and water, even though I wasn’t so awesome at accepting. Things pretty much just moved along at this point. The girls got up around 7am like usual. Arianna came in and gave me hugs and kisses, Evelyn played shy since Steph was in the room. Matt got the girls up, dressed and fed and called his parents to come and take the girls. I had intended to keep them with us until I couldn’t handle it anymore, but we had good timing. I don’t think it was long after they left that I screamed that I was going to puke (and did NOT want that going in the water!) and they scrambled to get the bucket. I could have sworn I puked on Matt, he swears I didn’t.
This is where sh!t got real :-P I remember Steph saying that she thought it was a good time to call Paula. Ah, yup! I knew, logically, that this was transition and it was almost over. I started shaking and the contractions took a turn for insanity. I have no idea how many times I screamed “I just want to be done!” or “I just want a break!” I know I screamed a lot of things. “I can’t do this!” “NO.MORE!” and at one point “Just cut this kid out!” I knew eventually that phrase, in some form, would come out of my mouth. I was disappointed in that one, but hey, first time in labor, third kid, previous experiences grab hold in tough situations! I remember thinking in my head (where I was sorta still logical) that I was really ridiculous, should suck it up and just do it. During all this, I remember three things: Matt saying constantly that I was doing this, wasn’t broken, and was rockin’ it. I remember Steph keeping me strong and grounded (sorry, I’m pretty sure it did seem that way!) and Paula saying “But you ARE doing it!” Each of them still very strong in my head. At some point, we had changed music (I think at the start of transition?) and when Paula got there she said “Can we change the music to something less angry?” Still cracks me up ;-P Legitimately, it helped immensely to change.
Out of all the birth stories that I’ve read and watched, I always remember feeling better that everyone said that pushing was a relief. Lies. Pushing was bewildering to me. I can’t even describe the intensity of that. There are just no words. Perhaps this is why my voice was hoarse the following day? Yeah, probably. At some point in all this, I think I just resolved that I.was.done. and got the motivation to make it so. I reached down and felt his head and that’s about all it took for me to know that I was, for real, doing this. As I pushed, I felt him come down and into my hands as the rest of him followed. I pulled him to my chest and felt this immense combination of emotions. I was proud, relieved, exhausted and hurting in a whole new way physically. Once I got myself untwisted from his cord and sat back to hold him, I looked to see if he was a boy or girl. I think my exact words were “Holy sh!t, he has a penis!” I had the feeling he was a boy the whole time, but assumed girl because we already had our two sweet girls. Go with the track record, right?
Not too long after, I pushed the placenta out and moved over to our bed to hold Owen, love him, and try out nursing. He was a pro in comparison to our girls. Easy! After a bit, we did all the weighing and measuring of Owen and it was amazing to do all that in our bedroom with friends in a safe place. We were monitored the whole time but I never had to leave our home. Our baby boy wasn’t poked and prodded, pulled from my uterus surgically or taken from me for the first hour or more of his life like our girls were.
I cannot express the amount of difficulty I had with this process. After being 12 days overdue and getting nervous he wasn’t going to come, we had a beautiful homebirth with one of the chillest babies I’ve known. He and I worked together to prove that I AM NOT BROKEN and birth is beautiful, safe, and life changing. We loved our doula before from Evelyn’s birth, but the amount of love and respect I have for her after Owen’s birth is beyond measure. The amount of care she gave to us, there just aren’t words. She is simply amazing. That’s really all there is to it.
I’m so glad that when Paula arrived, I knew in my head that this was really happening. This baby was coming out the way God intended and this was it. I felt like a psycho by the time she got there. The things I said and the way I acted were less than stellar. At least Steph got to see the ramp up. Paula walked into a battlefield! She stayed calm and did all that she needed to do. She never once touched me or did anything to me (or Owen) that I didn’t approve of or ask for. Her amount of respect for me and her regard for my wishes empowered me to feel confident in my ability to birth my baby. She has been back to our home to care and check on us several times and has been nothing less than superb. I love that her records are clear, her questions are necessary and vital and her touch and care is gentle and loving. Her ability to clearly explain everything to me helped me immensely. Sometimes when she says “Do you have any questions?” I wish I actually did… things went so smoothly that nothing strange has happened. I don’t have anything to question her with and no concerns to express. Definitely good! However, if I did have questions, I know I would get an awesome answer that wouldn’t need clarification.
The amount of recovery from Owen’s birth is like a grain of sand in comparison to my surgeries with the girls. I remember when they were born and friends would complain about how hard their recoveries were from a “normal” birth, it would send me to tears. Recovery from surgery and then the care of newborn afterward is insanely hard, but it’s all about perspective. If you’ve never had to do that, you simply can’t wrap your head around how difficult it is. I am astounded at how good I feel after less than a week. I’m still not totally healed, I’m still resting more than doing, but it is already infinitely better than even 3 weeks after our girls were born.
There really is no way for me to thank Steph and Paula for all the work that they’ve done with me over both the pregnancy and birth. They kept me strong, calmed my fears (of which, there were many) and showed me that I am not broken. If truth were to be told, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without my husband. He never wavered, even when I started to routinely break down after 40 weeks. His trust in my body and ability never faltered. He never questioned that things were going to go just as smoothly as they really did. He was my rock when no one else understood. He was the one that told me all along he believed in me. He knew we had the right team and that baby was safe. And he was right (he usually is, far more than I’d like to admit some days).
The support system I had throughout this pregnancy and birth was astounding. From my husband, to Steph and Paula, to our chiropractor that made sure positioning wasn’t an issue this time. Each of our “professionals” has been to our house since Owen was born, even our wonderful chiropractor to adjust our family in our own home. Cool, right? I received words of assurance from every single one of them routinely.
So many factors attribute to our success. Not only did I birth Owen after two cesareans, I caught him, held him and fed him immediately afterward. Something I’ve never been able to do! My life is forever changed by this sweet boy’s birth and I can only imagine what the rest of his life will bring to our family.
