From a salsa jar conception to the hospital birth we wanted
Three months before the baby was due, my partner Patty and I took the birth class. I’m so glad we took the class together — the yoga teacher taught us a lot about exercises we could do during labor, breathing to help through the contractions, the benefits of avoiding interventions, and how a labor doula could really support our decisions to have the birth we wanted.
I’m happy I’m parenting with my more onbeat partner
After learning I was pregnant in December of last year I immediately embraced the idea of being a radical young mom. I was thrilled about planning a water birth at home, about babywearing, sleep sharing, cloth diapering, maintaining a vegetarian diet, questioning vaccines, etc. Excited about the baby but suddenly thrust into a whole new world of pressure, my partner was much more skeptical than enthusiastic about many of my parenting ideals.
A timeline of a nearly 40-hour preterm Vaginal Birth After a Cesarean
My water breaks while we’re discussing what to cook for dinner (roasted chicken and potatoes!). I call the midwife on-call and tell her what happened and she is pretty convinced that my water did actually break. She tells me to come on in to labor and delivery where they can evaluate me to see if I can hold baby in a little longer or if this is a true water break.
A courageous and victorious birth center water birth
As we began our four-hour drive home with our newborn son, Orean, my husband turned to me and said, “You have so much courage.” When I asked him to explain, he summed it up like this: courage is being afraid, but going forward anyway because you believe it’s right for you.
Three generations bring in a fourth
I looked in the mirror and saw the head and smiled. My midwife was holding the top of my perineum and quickly sloshing me in olive oil. I pushed again and looked down and the head had doubled in size! I pushed again and WOOSH! Sage was born! All of him, all at once!
The questions that defined my daughter’s birth
Paloma’s due date came and went. Nine days later I got my bloody show, and within 30 minutes, full-on labor had begun. I got in the pool. I was biting on a towel, begging for ice cubes and asking for as little other stimulation as possible. I couldn’t be touched. I didn’t want to be talked to. My poor boyfriend was trying to keep it together but was beside himself.
Surrender to what? My three week wait to birth my son
About a week before my due date, I was in the change room at the local pool, and a woman in her sixties told me that each of her three babies were three weeks late. I was mildly appalled and silently certain that she must have had her dates wrong or some deep-seated psychological issues about being a mother. Being the nerd that I am, I had four years of data on my ovulation cycle. I was pretty confident about the dates.
From water to bed: our water-turned-hospital birth story
A sob escaped before the tears had a chance to start flowing in reaction to what my midwife was telling me. My wife, Kate, held my right hand and the nurse held my left while my midwife gave my leg a sympathetic squeeze. I cried bitter tears, agonizing over the hard work I’d done the past 26 hours — intense, induced, pain-med-free labor. As they streamed down my hot cheeks and onto the cool bed sheets, so fell my hopes for The Perfect Birth.