(building off my 25 things about me post, here's a very long elaboration of my #5 point -- more about Morgan's would-be home birth, almost 8 years later.  If birth stories freak you out, move along please... there will be lots of TMI, birthing jargon & fluids, etc)

Prologue:

April  2001 --  Baby is now 1 week late past my due date.  My only real concerns at this point was hoping to be able to go into labour on my own.  With Serena's birth, I was induced at 41 weeks by my OB for "postdates" and without going into the gory specifics, it was a pretty traumatic experience for me.

I also developed Post Partum Depression (PPD), which lasted nearly a year.  My first year with Serena is a big fog, where Brent basically acted as her mother and took care of us both since he worked from home.  I have no idea how we would have survived without him.

Let's just say that when the time came to contemplate having a second child, I had been doing a LOT of thinking and evaluating about birth and pregnancy.   I became aware of the concepts of midwifery care and homebirth, something I'd never really heard of here in Toronto.  I educated myself on it, read as many books as I could get my hands on, talked to other moms who went that route, and realized that THIS is what I wanted for my next birth...THIS made sense to me. 

Brent began reading and learning about it as well, agreed with me 100% and that was that.  We got pregnant after 1 month of trying, found a midwifery practice here in our neighbourhood which supported homebirth, and struggled through the next 9 months of serious morning sickness.  This was to be our last child, and we were praying for a wonderful birth experience for our whole family.  We prepared 3 year old Serena as well as we could throughout the pregnancy as to what she could expect when Mommy had baby at home.  As a final precaution, we also took her on the L&D hospital tour at our local hospital where our midwives practiced so that on the off-chance of there being an emergency, she wouldn't be scared of the hospital either.

ACT 1:  The Labour

On Tuesday, April 10th, I spent the day trying to finish catching up on 2000 in our family scrapbook.  I finally finished it after weeks of steadily working on it, and joked to Brent that only NOW the baby would finally be ready to come.  I was getting anxious as my 41 week MW appointment was the next day, and they would want to start talking induction (unfortunately, standard protocol here in Ontario under the new medicalized model of care..."community standards" and all that jazz) which would rule out a planned homebirth.

At about 4pm, after a few hours of my now usual pattern of 3-5 minutes contractions, I went to the washroom to find I was losing my mucous plug.  This was very exciting to me, since I had had NO signs of labour with Serena's pregnancy whatsoever.  I called my doula Susan, and prayed that maybe MAYBE this meant we would be moving on from this tiresome phase.  The rest of the day passed in usual fashion, and my husband and daughter were both fast asleep by 9pm.  I stayed up reading and pacing a bit, tidying the house absentmindedly, waiting for midnight which is when things usually petered out so I could get some sleep.

All of a sudden, at 12:30am, things changed.  I'm not too sure what happened, they just did.  The contractions just became much more intense, when normally they'd be dying off.  I spent an hour wandering about, having to moan through them, wanting to hold off on waking Brent up for as long as I could.  By 1:30 I went to get him..."I think this is really IT!".  

I gave him my prepared list of what to do when labour came, which consisted of all the things I knew I'd be too spaced to do, like get the bed and birth kit prepared, put on a pot of coffee, call our friend Kathy who would be watching Serena for us should she wake, etc etc.  He wanted me to call the MW's right away which I resisted, saying I wanted to be sure this was real labour first.  I called Susan, who listened to my contractions for a few minutes, and then came right over (arrived 2:15am).  I also called Jennifer, the midwife on call. 

To be honest, of the 3 MW's on my team she was the one who I felt I was least compatible with, in regards to philosophy and personality.  She came from a hospital nursing background, and appeared  to play more of an administrative role in the practice than the other MW's who I loved.  But I knew that my husband and doula would be at my side the whole time, and would really work to help me preserve the integrity of my birth plans as much as possible.  After worrying about it for one minute, I put it out of my mind.

While waiting for her to arrive, I put on my labour music and lit my candles everywhere.  Brent was putting cups of water/apple juice throughout the place for me so I could just stop and sip wherever I was, and not worry about forgetting where I'd left it.  I would have to stop every 3 minutes, and grab a chair or table top to steady myself, and vocalize/visualize "open" in a moan.  Baby had decided that now was a fun time to be posterior, and I had the most awful back labour to cope with.  Susan would just follow me around, rubbing my back and murmuring encouragement.  I'll pause here to say that I firmly believe that ALL LABOURING WOMEN SHOULD BE OFFERED A DOULA!!!!  I absolutely loved mine, and she made all the difference throughout my prenatal period and labour.  I'm just in awe of how she helped me and my family :)

Jennifer arrived at 2:30, and started setting up the equipment in the bedroom as I just tranced out and laboured wherever (I spent most of my time in our office, leaning against the desk while dilating and vocalizing/moaning)   She re-read our birth plan, and commented on what a great place we had and that we had a great vibe happening with the music and candles.  She even looked through some of our family scrapbooks, especially at my daughters birth pages :) 

WE INTERRUPT THIS STORY TO ANSWER:  How did Brent almost kill the midwife?  I know you're waiting for this part.   It's quite silly, actually and has only to do with the fact he tried serving her hazelnut-flavoured coffee andshe had a nut allergy.  OBVIOUSLY we don't think it would really have killed her, but the "how I nearly killed the midwife" story has been passed into our family mythology and we get a nice chuckle about it.  So there...

At this point, Serena woke up and said there was too much noise, and then went back to bed.  Kathy arrived soon after, which was good as Serena had pretty much woken up fully by then (3am) and was excited that Mommy was going to be having "her" baby very soon.  I honestly found her presence a bit distracting, especially through contractions, but she wasn't phased by all the activity and my noises at all, and would come and kiss & hug me, saying everything would be alright.  I guess we had prepped her for the birth really well! 

She mostly stayed in the kitchen with "Auntie" Kathy and made playdough and baked cookies...all in the middle of the night!  She had more energy than the rest of us grownups did:)  We now have a monstrous blue food-colouring stain on our kitchen table from the mess those two made...a permanent reminder of that night!   Serena also managed to steal all my Chuppa Chupp lollipops that were in my labour bag..bummer.

At about 3:50am, Jennifer asked to do an internal exam,  to see how far along I was.  I was thrilled to find myself at 5cm, at which point she ruptured my membranes to verify that my amniotic fluid was meconium-free (one of their homebirth protocols is to do an AROM at 4-7cm for diagnostic purposes to allow time for a hospital transfer should their be heavy mec).  Waters were clear, which had us all cheering while I gushed and gushed everywhere.  Jennifer then called the backup MW Sarilyn to let her know what was happening and to have her come over a.s.a.p., who arrived around 5am.


ACT 2 - Transition

At about 5:15 am we tried using the shower to help me with the pain of back labour, getting both Brent and Susan soaked in the process. This is when I lost the last of my clothes  and just stayed naked.  Poor
Susan had not brought a change of clothes so she borrowed a pair of maternity leggings, which looked pretty darn funny on her. 

I was definitely having a much harder time with the contractions, and did lots of rocking and swaying, moaning "open" and "down".  They've told me since that I was so focused and amazing throughout but I don't remember a lot of it (I was very grateful for both the MW's & doula's notes later on to get a different perspective of the labour)  The shower lasted about 15 minutes, and didn't do much for me... standing, swaying  and puttering about was pretty much it.  My blood pressure and baby's fetal heart rates were being monitored consistenly, both ok.  Serena was in and out of the room constantly, giving hugs and kisses to everyone.

Baby was still posterior so they assisted me with pelvic rocks to try to get this baby to move.  He just get flipping from posterior to anterior and back again the whole time.  By around 6:15 I was willing to have another VE to see how I was progressing, as I had being trying to work through the contractions laying on my side to give my body a rest.  I was at about 9cm with a "melting" cervix, baby still at -2 station.  They encouraged me to start gentle pushes in the hope of   helping the baby descend into
thebirth canal, as Jennifer was trying to push the cervical lip away .

By 8:15 I was fully dilated. I then spent the next 2 hours pushing in every conceivable position: standing up supported, squatting, on a birth ball, on a birthing stool, on hands and knees,  on my side and even on my
back.   We tried some homeopathics to help with the cxts, which were starting to slow down.  The MW's discussed with me the fact that after 3 hours of pushing now,  there was absolutely no change in the baby's station, and now my cervix was getting puffy, and there was some deceleration of fetal heart rate.   

They wanted me to consider the possibility of transfering to the hospital  sometime soon if things didn't change.  After talking with my doula and Brent, I told them I wanted to try pushing one last time.  They agreed, and Brent and I went into the bathroom where we turned off the lights (had candles in there), closed the door, and pushed like mad while vocalizing and visualizing "down" for 45 minutes.  At 10 am Jennifer examined me and we were all heartbroken to see that there was still no change, the baby was still at -2 and now the contractions were appreciably milder and spacing out.  Baby just was malpositioned with an wonky head and did not want to descend, despite nearly 4 hours of pushing.  The decision was made to  pack up and go to the hospital after all. 

I don't need to go into detail to tell you how hard that was, I'm sure you can imagine.  The most difficult part was explaining to Serena that Momy and Daddy were going to the hospital now to have the baby, that the baby hadn't been "ready" to come at home after all.   Serena instead stayed with Aunty Kathy while we got ready to move. 

Susan grabbed some of our pillows, her doula bag, our emergency hospital bag and flagged us a cab, as Brent helped me get dressed again and down the stairs. We rode the taxi to the hospital, where I sat on my hands and knees in the back seat with Brent trying to get through the contractions.  Poor Susan sat up in the front trying to assure the cabby that no, I was not about to birth in his cab (much as I would have liked to at this point) and no, an ambulance was not appropriate either, I was just a labouring woman and could he just drive normally please

I whispered to Brent that I was worried I couldn't do anymore,  and that I was so sorry. He just hugged me the whole way there and told me how much he loved me.

ACT 3 - The Hospital

12:00pm    Our MW's had called ahead to L&D to advise them of our
arrival, and they had just gotten there 2 minutes ahead of us anyways.  I was introduced to the OB on staff who was quickly brought up to speed of what had been happening since 12:30am, and he read the MW's labour notes as I changed into the hospital gown.  Another quick exam revealed baby was still at -2 station, no change after all those hours of pushing, and I was pretty tired at this point. 

They got the external fetal monitor on me, where we discovered that the baby was now starting to show some signs of distress.  They quickly flipped me on my side and gave me oxygen to try to help.  The OB told us at this point that a cesarean was medically indicated, and needed to be done pretty much right away.  

Brent and I basically just looked at each other and said, well, I guess it'll be a surgical birth, agreed to ourselves that this was how it would be now, and then informed the doctor of our decision.  I insisted on walking to the OR myself, and Brent went to tell Susan what was happening, then he went to get gowned up.  Our MW had OR privileges, so she prepared to assist in the delivery as well.

Act 4: The Delivery

I met the anaesthesiologist and nurses, and had them administer a spinal while I looked around the OR.  What happened next was pretty interesting.   

I simply made a shift in my thinking and emotions, and rather than allow anything to upset me, or allow disappointment to flood through me, I just became at peace about it all.  I had gone into labour by myself, had laboured at home with my loved ones successfully, and was now just having a surgical delivery of this baby I had fought so hard to bring into the world. 

The spinal took effect and the pain disappeared.  I was able to lay there on the table as people scurried around, and I just went, well, no other way to descibe it but "zen".   Brent was brought in just before delivery and he appeared to be at peace too.  Neither of us were scared, just excited that we would now, in moments, meet our son.  He held my hand as the caesarean birth began, and Jennifer gave a running commentary of what was happening. 

I felt no pain at all, and in fact, all the endorphins that had been working throughout my labour kicked in so that I was actually pretty high for his birth!  They did the incisions, and delivered him at 1:10pm to our great joy and brought him to our MW standing beside us.  He had had his cord pretty tangled about his neck, and had passed thick meconium very recently, but was wonderful!  His APGARS were 9 and 10, and absolutely beautiful and perfect in every way.  Everyone exclaimed at how big he was, and were not at all surprised to learn he was 10lbs 5 oz, and
22 inches long. 

Brent went immediately to him, and brought him up to me to kiss and smell and touch.  I don't remember the surgical team stitching me up at all, I was so entranced with my new baby.  Brent held him through everything, and very soon we were in the recovery room together, the
3 of us. 

Named in honour of my brother, Morgan Pierre was here with us, safe and sound.