I’ve ummed and erred about sharing our birth story, and also sharing anything about my labor and delivery. I don’t know why I want to share it and I also don’t know why I wouldn’t share it. Is it because it isn’t my own story to share? Anything I post on here can be anonymized, I can take people out of photos, I can omit their names and I can abide by their wishes to not be on here at all. I can’t do that for our little one, she doesn’t have a voice yet – we are her voice, her advocates, her safety net and her privacy keepers. So should I share or shouldn’t I? As I loved our birth photos so much I gave permission for Nicole to use some for social/marketing/website so I’m willing to share those same photos. I also gave permission for our midwives and Muna our doula too.
My due date was 28th January, and by this point I was really done with being pregnant. Due date came, due date went, new dates were spoken about and then I started to worry. Would I have to go to hospital after all?
I could be one week overdue for a home birth, I had gestational diabetes which restricted how over due you can be because of the size baby might be. Never mind the worries I began to have about wide shoulders and a big head from my husband!
From week 39 we tried some “get the baby out” yoga, spinning babies, natural remedies – you know the ones: walking; side steps; squats; etc
Little one was still high and very little signs of anything happening. By week 40 we did a foley balloon catheter, I had high hopes for this one as it fell out, but nope that wasn’t enough to kickstart anything. I did a lemon verbena and castor oil smoothie (as recommended by midwives – don’t do this unless you have your providers permission) and oh my goodness that was horrific once the second dose had settled. I thought for sure that forced contractions….nope, nadda, zip, nothing.
Between weeks 40 and 41 we spoke with the midwives about what would happen next. We opted for Providence Hospital as our delivery place, I had my scans there and we like the birth class we had there too so I knew the layout of the birthing floor, where to park the car and how delivering there would be. Our midwife booked us for a meet and greet with the nurse midwives there and to have a week 41 scan too. We were on a time crunch, for a home birth I could have until midday on 5th February which was 8 days overdue – our meet the midwives at the hospital was booked for midday. With the hospital they would allow me to go 10 days overdue before inducing me. On the 4th of February I knew we would have our baby within the next 3 days, I just didn’t know where or how.
Despite the horrific affect the lemon verbena and castor oil smoothie had on me, I opted to try it one more time (twice really as it’s a two dose smoothie). I had my 3rd sweep and took the first dose on the 4th feb at 3:30pm. The hours ticked by. I walked, squatted, did spinning babies exercises, tried hard not to stress about things. Went to bed at 9pm after packing mine and babies hospital bag as I was convinced that was the end of the road for us and my home birth.
Then it started to snow. Thankfully only a dusting of snow and then it stopped. I had worried all through January about being snowed in and being unable to be reached!
Sleep came very easily that night, I knew I’d be up at some point – don’t all heavily pregnant women need to be up at least once through the night due to a baby on their bladder?! I woke up at 2:30am, and thought to myself “hmm, this feels different” so I started timing these little cramp like feels and they were very very far apart but I could not get myself back to sleep.
The Gordon's Miscellany 