Samantha’s Birth
I knew I was pregnant even before it was time for my period. I could just feel it. I also knew that this time I would not turn my pregnancy over to the medical profession. I would give birth at home. I thought that the CNM’s I had used before would be supportive of this. Wrong! All they could do was tell me everything that could go wrong and offer to induce me a week or two early since I have a history of fast labors. I knew that there was no way I could put my baby through that. We were planning on moving before the baby was due so I started reading everything I could find on homebirth. I would do this with only me and dh there if I had to. Luckily I found a wonderful DEM in the area we were moving to who agreed to take us on. She views birth as a very spiritual thing and is very selective of who she sees. DEM’s are very underground here due to the fact that they can go to jail for doing this. I had a wonderful pregnancy. My dh said this one was the easiest one yet-on him. It totally amazed me that I could go for a prenatal check and it actually last longer than 10 minutes. About three weeks before my due date we realized that the baby was breech and started trying to turn her by visualization and lying with my head lower than my hips. This baby was determined not to move! We decided that we didn’t want to force her to turn because there might be a reason for her being breech. So after much prayer and discussion we decided to go ahead with the homebirth. My midwife asked if it would be okay to tape the birth for her to use as a teaching tool. We thought about it and said okay. So few women even get the chance to deliver a breech that we knew if we could help someone out we should. At my last checkup we talked about how labor would be different, what positions would be best during labor and during the actual delivery. We spent nearly an hour talking about this. Well my due date came and went. I’m seven days over due and we know this is not a small baby so we decide to try coax her out with castor oil that night. Well the next morning about 4:30 I made yet another trip to the bathroom and boy was I hurting! Then when I stood up my water broke. That was when I realized that I was in labor. I told dh to call the midwife and when I talked to her she told me to lay down and not move until she got there. We wanted to slow things down as much as possible! It wasn’t long till I knew she was not going to get there in time. I could feel the baby coming out. So I told dh to get over here and catch this baby cause she was coming now. I delivered standing up holding on to the night stand and bed frame (I managed to throw everything off the nightstand cause it was in the way) and dh was behind me supporting the baby. He wanted to pull her out as soon as he saw the body and I had to tell him NO! I pushed really hard then and could feel myself tearing but her head was out. I sat down and the placenta came right out. About that time the phone rang and it was the midwife saying she was lost-seems someone had moved the road signs. Dh tells her the baby is here and he’ll come get her. He hands me the phone and peels out of the driveway! They were there in just a few minutes. Samantha was breathing on her own but slowly so she got some oxygen for about a minute. We got cleaned up found out that my tear was very small and did not need any stitches and were in bed and eating a huge breakfast in about an hour. I was so hungry! DH started calling people at 6am and telling them HE deliverd his baby. Such a proud daddy! Everyone left shortly after that and dh collapsed - I think he was in shock over delivering a baby and breech at that. We didn’t get to tape the birth, which was disappointing and no one could believe that my labor only lasted about 45 minutes, we forgot to look at the clock right when she was born.
~ Ginger (ginnie)