Noah's Birth
Noah Michael was born at home at 12:05 p.m. on Friday, September 14, 2007. He weighed 8 lbs 13 oz and was 21 ¼" long. For anyone who likes to read birth stories, ours is below complete with details about me imbibing nasty concoctions, a call to 911, and how Noah almost bounced off of our hardwood floors.
Thank you Hypnobabies and all of the fellow hypnomoms for giving me the
strength and the
courage to allow my body to do what it was designed to do. I'm already amazed
by the difference between this birth and my first one. Because I was able to
give birth this time without pitocin, narcotics, an epidural, etc. Noah is so
much more alert than my first son was. Subsequently, he started off nursing
more often, my milk came in faster, he's much more content, and I physically
feel a lot better a lot sooner than I did the first time. I'm recommending
Hypnobabies to all of my friends!
Brigitte
P.S. just a warning, there is mention in the birth story of things getting a
little hairy for a short period of time but everything worked out perfectly
for us in the end and both my son and I are doing just fine!
------
My blood pressure had been steadily eeking up towards the end of my pregnancy
and my midwife had sent bloodwork, etc. off to the lab on Thursday (September
13th) to check for signs of preeclampsia. I developed preeclampsia with my
previous pregnancy and had been following all of the protocol this time to
keep it from happening again but apparently it wasn't working. My
midwife said that things didn't look good and that I had until Monday to go
into labor on my own. If I didn't and any of the lab work came back out of
the normal
range, not only would we not be able to have a homebirth but I would have to
go to the hospital to be induced. Remembering the induction with my son,
followed by continuous fetal monitoring, and laboring stuck in bed, and
finally an epidural, I knew that was the last thing I wanted so I allowed her
to strip my membranes that Thursday and went home and began telling our baby
that we now had a time limit and it was time to come out!
I started having pressure waves at about 3 am on Friday morning. Mike called
our doula (Bobbie) a few hours later. When she got to the house, she said
that my pressure waves were still a little irregular so she had me drink some
castor oil per the midwife's recommendation. That made them settle down into
more of a pattern but unfortunately my blood pressure continued to climb. At
one point, Bobbie took my blood pressure but wouldn't tell me what the reading
was. She just said that it was "alarming" and called our
midwife. On the midwife's recommendation, she and Mike prepared a shake in
the blender that was designed to lower my readings. This *extremely*
delicious beverage consisted of milk, 3 raw eggs, and Epsom salt (and a little
bit of honey and vanilla extract for flavor as *if* you could cover up the
taste of Epsom salt with honey and vanilla) and there was a lot of it – it
looked like about 20 ounces. The only way I managed to drink it and keep it
down was to chant over and over in my mind "stay at home, stay at home, stay
at home" because I knew that that drink being successful was the key to me
being able to stay at home and have the baby. I was supposed to drink one of
these shakes every hour from that point on to keep my blood pressure from
climbing.
It worked and my labor continued to progress. We predicted that I would
probably deliver by that evening so at about 10 am, Mike biked our son Nick to
a playground nearby. I had experienced a lot of false labor over the
preceding weeks and we really needed to keep
things going so at about 11 am I had another dose of castor oil and got into
the tub to relax a little.
At this point things began to speed up at an alarming rate. Maybe it was the second dose of castor oil or maybe it was the revulsion I felt when I saw Bobbie bring in another one of those disgusting shakes for me to drink (which I never got around to drinking) but my pressure waves got really intense while in the bathtub and I began to feel the need to push. Bobbie made a quick call to our midwife and birth assistant and told them that there was a change in plans and that they needed to come immediately. My mother called Mike and told him to pedal back as fast as he could. Mike ended up making it home about 10 minutes before the baby was born; the midwife and birth assistant didn't make it in time.
I should interject, at this point that our doula is awesome and really
over-qualified – she's a certified L&D nurse, has worked in the ICU, and has
been a volunteer fire fighter/EMT for over a decade. So when she told me that
I could push if I felt the need to and I realized that she might be the only
member of my birthing team when the baby arrived, I felt completely
comfortable with that.
I got out of the bathtub and kneeled on the bed over a birth ball. Mike
arrived. I pushed a few times and my water broke. Then I pushed a few more
times and our son's head came out...and because nothing is ever simple in the
Jacobson household, this is where things began to go downhill. I pushed a few
more times but apparently the baby was stuck and beginning to turn blue.
Bobby told me to get on my back immediately so that we could try to get my
pelvis opened up wider and she and Mike each grabbed one of my legs and I
swear it seemed like they were trying to replicate positions that I had seen
in Cirque de Solei acts. And they both kept telling me that I had to "push
hard NOW".
Unfortunately as soon as I got on my back, all of my urge to push vanished
and although I tried and tried, I couldn't feel anything that resembled
pushing like I had before. I could tell by the sound of their voices that
things were starting to get ugly. Mike and Bobbie told my mom to call 911.
It seemed like everything slowed down in my mind and got really quiet at this
point and I remember thinking calmly to myself that we hadn't gone through all
of this to end up with a dead baby. I had taken the Hypnobabies home study
course for childbirth preparation and I really credit it with helping me to
remain centered and focused when things "hit the fan" because it had been
drummed into my head over and over again for months that my baby knew how to
be born and that my body knew exactly how to give birth.
I felt the overwhelming urge to stand up and I kept telling Mike and Bobbie
that I needed to do so. I finally insisted and they helped me up and the baby
fell out. I mean he FLEW out and would have landed on the floor if Bobbie
hadn't miraculously caught him. I fell back on the bed. She lay him down
next to me and began trying to get him to breathe. He started
crying almost immediately and then she noticed that the umbilical cord had
severed when he came flying out.
The paramedics arrived shortly after that, saw that everyone was visibly
shaken up but that we were all okay, and then left. The midwife and birth
assistant arrived at about the same time as the paramedics. A very healthy
Noah Michael was born at home at 12:05 p.m. on Friday, September 14, 2007. He
weighed 8 lbs 13 oz and was 21 ¼" long.