I have four children. The first two were midwife-attended homebirths. The last two were unassisted homebirths (also called free births). The reason I was drawn to unassisted birth is because I do not like being watched, observed, or interfered with during labor. Physiologically, I believe that my body will labor and birth better if left unattended.
This is kind of ironic, that I should choose to birth unattended, when I have such a love affair with homebirth midwives. I even went so far as to film a documentary about them, after all. It’s one the occupations I admire most in the world, that of a homebirth midwife. Yet, unassisted birth is how I choose to birth. One thing that my documentary covers is how women should have choices about where and with whom they choose to birth. In 18 states, homebirth midwifery is still illegal, which is crazy.
My point is, women should be able to birth wherever it is they feel most comfortable. For most women, that is the hospital. For some women, it’s at home. And for some women, like me, it is at home and unattended. These are all valid choices and all should be honored and respected.
If you’re looking for more information about the philosophy behind unassisted birth, Laura Shanley writes about it nicely in her book, Unassisted Childbirth (with a nice foreword by Michel Odent, by the way).
As for me, I’m just going to tell you about my own experiences with unassisted birth, on a personal level.
This is kind of ironic, that I should choose to birth unattended, when I have such a love affair with homebirth midwives. I even went so far as to film a documentary about them, after all. It’s one the occupations I admire most in the world, that of a homebirth midwife. Yet, unassisted birth is how I choose to birth. One thing that my documentary covers is how women should have choices about where and with whom they choose to birth. In 18 states, homebirth midwifery is still illegal, which is crazy.
My point is, women should be able to birth wherever it is they feel most comfortable. For most women, that is the hospital. For some women, it’s at home. And for some women, like me, it is at home and unattended. These are all valid choices and all should be honored and respected.
If you’re looking for more information about the philosophy behind unassisted birth, Laura Shanley writes about it nicely in her book, Unassisted Childbirth (with a nice foreword by Michel Odent, by the way).
As for me, I’m just going to tell you about my own experiences with unassisted birth, on a personal level.
This is the story of my second unassisted birth, with my son Solomon. (You can read about my first unassisted birth here.) Again, it is not so much an “Unassisted Birth Story” as it is a regular old Birth Story.
My birth story with Solomon probably began on Sunday night, July 26, when I decided to scrub the kitchen floor. Ezra, age 9, asked me, “Does this mean that you’re nesting and that you’re going to have the baby tonight?” I told him, “I’ve been nesting for the past four weeks, I usually just have other people do all the work for me.”
But for the past handful of days, I've had more energy and felt better in my body than I've had most of my pregnancy, where I just basically felt like crumpling in on myself at the end of the day. But now I had energy, and I felt like scrubbing the kitchen floor, so I did.
At about 11:00 pm that night, my birthing time probably started. (Vern and I had taken Hypnobabies classes this pregnancy, so I’m going to use the Hypnobabies terms throughout this because I think they’re nice.) I usually don’t pay close attention during the early part of my birthing time because nothing is really happening. But this time, I wanted to stay on top of things with using the Hypnobabies techniques so that the stages of labor didn’t overwhelm me.
So, during this time, while everyone else was sleeping, I went for a walk around the block and listened to the Hypnobabies Fear Clearing track. I probably had about six piddly pressure waves during this hour.
At midnight, I brought some sitz bath herbs to a simmer and steep while listening to the Hypnobabies Birthing Day Affirmations track.
At 12:30 am, I went to the bathroom and had bloody show. For the next hour, I timed the pressure waves and listened to more Hypnobabies tracks (as you can see, I was trying to be a model Hypnobabies mom). They were all mild, lasting about 30 seconds long, and were about 6 minutes apart. At 1:00 am, I had one of those clearing-you-out-for-birth poops.
At 1:45 am, I woke Vernon up. I had him adjust me, and then had him make the herbs into frozen compresses, reserving the liquid to use in my peri bottle. While he did that, I timed more pressure waves (I really enjoy the process of timing pressure waves). They were starting to get more intense, and were now only 2-3 minutes apart, but they still only lasted about 30 seconds long (which is typical for how I birth... they get stronger and closer together, but never last more than 30 seconds each). During this time, I was usually on hands and knees or leaning over and onto something (like the kitchen counter, the table, the couch), and spiraling my hips.
I went upstairs to get the birth space ready, which was our bedroom. I lit candles, blessed the room with sage, lit some resin incense. The smoke detectors went off because I made the room too smokey.
Vern finished with the herb stuff and then started filling the tub. I put some Holy Water in the tub, and then I went into the bathroom to experience my pressure waves. The Hypnobabies Easy First Stage was now playing continuously.
At 2:45 am, I started dry heaving. Nothing was coming out except acidy saliva. I would continue to dry heave throughout the rest of first stage (at least 20 or so more times). I wasn’t particularly bothered by it though. I felt like it gave me something to do.
Vern and I moved through this birth like a well-oiled machine. Each with our task to do. Each doing it easily and with precision. It was all kind of rote and uninteresting.
After everything was ready, we started moving through the pressure waves together. It was about 3:00 am. I stopped timing the waves and had Vern rub my belly through some, I hung on him for others. He gave me Hypnobabies cues. It was sweet and nice and probably the most we've worked together during a birth since Ocean.
Peace, age 6, woke up around this time (probably because of my dry heaving noises). She asked if I was in my birthing time. She observed things for a bit. Ezra woke up shortly after. We told them to go back to bed. Then Vern woke Ocean, age 12, up to help Peace go to sleep. But that didn’t pan out, so now all three kids went downstairs to play on the computer.
At 3:20 am, I got into the tub. Vern had his swimming trunks on in case I wanted him to come in, but he stayed outside the tub, handing me the throw up bucket when I needed it, and handing me coconut water to drink.
Before the birth, we had brought the clock from the bathroom into the bedroom, so we could see what time it was during the birth. I noticed it was gone and asked Vern where it was. He said he put it away. I just said, “Oh,” but I actually wanted to look at the clock because I like clocks and timing things. In my head, I was comparing this birth to Peace’s (because they were very similar, with the timing of things being almost identical), and so I had an idea of how long each stage would last and about when things would change or be over with. But now I didn't have a clock. Oh well.
At one point in the tub, I got bored with everything... going through these orchestrated movements of birth. I just wanted to be done with it, all the movements, all the positions... I’d been shifting from one position to another for the past four hours, which was more time on my feet and more movement than I’d had in a long time (not counting the energy I had put into scrubbing the floor earlier). I was tired of it. I didn’t want to do it anymore.
As I thought this, it entered my head that “this is a thought of transformation” and it actually felt authentic and observed, not like I was trying to force something.
For some reason, I felt like getting out of the tub, and going back into the bathroom.
I don’t know why I kept going into the bathroom, instead of staying in the beautiful, candlelit birth environment I had created in the bedroom. But there I was, on the floor (which hadn’t been scrubbed in who knows how long), in our tiny little bathroom again. Other than the dry heaving and some low moaning, I was actually very quiet throughout first stage. It was all quite boring and manageable.
I had a couple more first stage, dry heaving pressure waves, and then I said, “I think that one may have been pushy. Was it? I’m not sure.” And then water comes out of me and onto our green bathmat, and I say, “I think my water just broke" and "I should get back in the tub.”
So, back into the tub I go. I told Vern to put on the Hypnobabies Pushing Baby Out track.
And then, wait for it...
I proceeded to have the most uncomfortable pushing stage of my life. Again, it felt pretty much exactly like it did with Peace, except maybe this time even stronger. It seemed like it lasted a long time. The thing is (which I found out later), it only lasted less than 3 minutes. Such a short amount of time, but, oh, how an eternity is wrapped up into those 3 minutes, and how that tends to color the whole birth experience. Those 3 minutes are what keep me from saying the birth was peaceful and wonderful to “the birth was fine”.
Of course, I couldn’t tell it was only 3 minutes at the time because SOMEBODY took away my clock. (We know it was less than 3 minutes because Vern turned the video camera on right when I got back into the tub. So, other than the I’m-not-sure-if-I’m-pushing-water-breaking thing that happened in the bathroom, we captured the entire second stage on camera.)
I kept my eyes closed as the pressure raced through me. So pummeling. So forceful. So all-encompassing. I was simultaneously trying to escape from my body and push with it at the same time.
For the birth itself, I was in a position I never expected to be in and never saw on any of the birthing positions sheets I’ve looked at: I was facing up, my arms were beneath me, holding me up, and my legs were floating out straight in front of me (I can’t remember if they were touching and being supported by the other side of the tub or not). I couldn’t tell when the head was out. I think Vern must have told me. And then he came out with the next pressure wave. My eyes were still closed.
When I opened them, the first thing I remember seeing was the motion of Vern lifting him out of the water. He had a bunch of white blobs of vernix in his hair. Vern said later that he had kept him under the water for a little bit like I asked him to do after seeing the water births in the movie Birth As We Know It. I had forgotten I asked for him to do that. But he said I was reaching for him so then he brought him all the way out.
It’s amazing how quickly the brain switches after birth from acting like a crazy, out of control person to someone who is totally normal (relatively speaking). It was 4:30 am on Monday, July 27.
It seemed like Solomon came out of the water crying. Literally, crying robustly right from the start. His little face was purplish-blue and all scrunched up. Just scrunching, crumply, wrinkly creases all over his face.
About five minutes later, Vern called to the kids to come up. I said, “Let’s see if it’s a boy or a girl.” Ezra was the one to announce that it was a boy. And then, about a minute later, Ezra asks in a really sweet voice, “Mom, you don’t have to say yes, but is it okay if we finish watching our episode of Dog With a Blog?” So, the younger two leave to do that. I get out of the tub and get settled into bed.
I wanted to be a bit more active in getting the placenta out, because last time I just sat around like a moron and it didn’t come out until almost two hours later. So, this time, I would stand up periodically and tell the placenta to detach safely. I would visualize it. I kind of knelt over the placenta bowl and started pushing a little bit, but then I realized that I was just peeing in the bowl. I initially stopped, but then I thought, “What the heck?” and finished peeing.
The placenta released at 5:13 am, so about 43 minutes after the birth.
I don’t think I was bleeding an abnormal amount, but I was making a mess of things everywhere. Blood on the carpet, blood on the sheets, blood all over me. And then, an hour after the birth, Solomon pooped all over me. I said, “I’m a poopy, bloody mess.” Ocean thought I was being hard on myself and wanted to make me feel better, so she said, “No, you’re not.” I said, “Ocean, I have poop and blood all over me.” And she said, “Yeah, but you’re not a mess.” Such a sweet kid, she is.
So, that was the birth. Despite the last 3 minutes being exceptionally hard, I wasn’t traumatized by the birth the way I was with Peace’s. So, it wasn’t all completely lovely? So what. It wasn’t magical, it wasn’t disappointing, it just... was.
My attitude is more matter-of-fact this time around, which seems to sum up the experience of the birth altogether. It was a simple, run-of-the-mill routine of going through the motions of birth. And then I had a baby.
Not exactly magical (like I’ve always wanted my births to be), but I’m surprisingly okay with that this time around. Babies are magic enough.
Post Birth Things I Want To Remember:
• The smell of the top of his head. (Went away after a day or so.)
• Vern listening to heartbeat when I was pregnant, and then listening to Solomon’s heartbeat after the birth and saying, “Yep, that’s it.”
• Peace saying, “I just love Solomon too much.”
• Never being so hungry, and food never tasting so good.
My birth story with Solomon probably began on Sunday night, July 26, when I decided to scrub the kitchen floor. Ezra, age 9, asked me, “Does this mean that you’re nesting and that you’re going to have the baby tonight?” I told him, “I’ve been nesting for the past four weeks, I usually just have other people do all the work for me.”
But for the past handful of days, I've had more energy and felt better in my body than I've had most of my pregnancy, where I just basically felt like crumpling in on myself at the end of the day. But now I had energy, and I felt like scrubbing the kitchen floor, so I did.
At about 11:00 pm that night, my birthing time probably started. (Vern and I had taken Hypnobabies classes this pregnancy, so I’m going to use the Hypnobabies terms throughout this because I think they’re nice.) I usually don’t pay close attention during the early part of my birthing time because nothing is really happening. But this time, I wanted to stay on top of things with using the Hypnobabies techniques so that the stages of labor didn’t overwhelm me.
So, during this time, while everyone else was sleeping, I went for a walk around the block and listened to the Hypnobabies Fear Clearing track. I probably had about six piddly pressure waves during this hour.
At midnight, I brought some sitz bath herbs to a simmer and steep while listening to the Hypnobabies Birthing Day Affirmations track.
At 12:30 am, I went to the bathroom and had bloody show. For the next hour, I timed the pressure waves and listened to more Hypnobabies tracks (as you can see, I was trying to be a model Hypnobabies mom). They were all mild, lasting about 30 seconds long, and were about 6 minutes apart. At 1:00 am, I had one of those clearing-you-out-for-birth poops.
At 1:45 am, I woke Vernon up. I had him adjust me, and then had him make the herbs into frozen compresses, reserving the liquid to use in my peri bottle. While he did that, I timed more pressure waves (I really enjoy the process of timing pressure waves). They were starting to get more intense, and were now only 2-3 minutes apart, but they still only lasted about 30 seconds long (which is typical for how I birth... they get stronger and closer together, but never last more than 30 seconds each). During this time, I was usually on hands and knees or leaning over and onto something (like the kitchen counter, the table, the couch), and spiraling my hips.
I went upstairs to get the birth space ready, which was our bedroom. I lit candles, blessed the room with sage, lit some resin incense. The smoke detectors went off because I made the room too smokey.
Vern finished with the herb stuff and then started filling the tub. I put some Holy Water in the tub, and then I went into the bathroom to experience my pressure waves. The Hypnobabies Easy First Stage was now playing continuously.
At 2:45 am, I started dry heaving. Nothing was coming out except acidy saliva. I would continue to dry heave throughout the rest of first stage (at least 20 or so more times). I wasn’t particularly bothered by it though. I felt like it gave me something to do.
Vern and I moved through this birth like a well-oiled machine. Each with our task to do. Each doing it easily and with precision. It was all kind of rote and uninteresting.
After everything was ready, we started moving through the pressure waves together. It was about 3:00 am. I stopped timing the waves and had Vern rub my belly through some, I hung on him for others. He gave me Hypnobabies cues. It was sweet and nice and probably the most we've worked together during a birth since Ocean.
Peace, age 6, woke up around this time (probably because of my dry heaving noises). She asked if I was in my birthing time. She observed things for a bit. Ezra woke up shortly after. We told them to go back to bed. Then Vern woke Ocean, age 12, up to help Peace go to sleep. But that didn’t pan out, so now all three kids went downstairs to play on the computer.
At 3:20 am, I got into the tub. Vern had his swimming trunks on in case I wanted him to come in, but he stayed outside the tub, handing me the throw up bucket when I needed it, and handing me coconut water to drink.
Before the birth, we had brought the clock from the bathroom into the bedroom, so we could see what time it was during the birth. I noticed it was gone and asked Vern where it was. He said he put it away. I just said, “Oh,” but I actually wanted to look at the clock because I like clocks and timing things. In my head, I was comparing this birth to Peace’s (because they were very similar, with the timing of things being almost identical), and so I had an idea of how long each stage would last and about when things would change or be over with. But now I didn't have a clock. Oh well.
At one point in the tub, I got bored with everything... going through these orchestrated movements of birth. I just wanted to be done with it, all the movements, all the positions... I’d been shifting from one position to another for the past four hours, which was more time on my feet and more movement than I’d had in a long time (not counting the energy I had put into scrubbing the floor earlier). I was tired of it. I didn’t want to do it anymore.
As I thought this, it entered my head that “this is a thought of transformation” and it actually felt authentic and observed, not like I was trying to force something.
For some reason, I felt like getting out of the tub, and going back into the bathroom.
I don’t know why I kept going into the bathroom, instead of staying in the beautiful, candlelit birth environment I had created in the bedroom. But there I was, on the floor (which hadn’t been scrubbed in who knows how long), in our tiny little bathroom again. Other than the dry heaving and some low moaning, I was actually very quiet throughout first stage. It was all quite boring and manageable.
I had a couple more first stage, dry heaving pressure waves, and then I said, “I think that one may have been pushy. Was it? I’m not sure.” And then water comes out of me and onto our green bathmat, and I say, “I think my water just broke" and "I should get back in the tub.”
So, back into the tub I go. I told Vern to put on the Hypnobabies Pushing Baby Out track.
And then, wait for it...
I proceeded to have the most uncomfortable pushing stage of my life. Again, it felt pretty much exactly like it did with Peace, except maybe this time even stronger. It seemed like it lasted a long time. The thing is (which I found out later), it only lasted less than 3 minutes. Such a short amount of time, but, oh, how an eternity is wrapped up into those 3 minutes, and how that tends to color the whole birth experience. Those 3 minutes are what keep me from saying the birth was peaceful and wonderful to “the birth was fine”.
Of course, I couldn’t tell it was only 3 minutes at the time because SOMEBODY took away my clock. (We know it was less than 3 minutes because Vern turned the video camera on right when I got back into the tub. So, other than the I’m-not-sure-if-I’m-pushing-water-breaking thing that happened in the bathroom, we captured the entire second stage on camera.)
I kept my eyes closed as the pressure raced through me. So pummeling. So forceful. So all-encompassing. I was simultaneously trying to escape from my body and push with it at the same time.
For the birth itself, I was in a position I never expected to be in and never saw on any of the birthing positions sheets I’ve looked at: I was facing up, my arms were beneath me, holding me up, and my legs were floating out straight in front of me (I can’t remember if they were touching and being supported by the other side of the tub or not). I couldn’t tell when the head was out. I think Vern must have told me. And then he came out with the next pressure wave. My eyes were still closed.
When I opened them, the first thing I remember seeing was the motion of Vern lifting him out of the water. He had a bunch of white blobs of vernix in his hair. Vern said later that he had kept him under the water for a little bit like I asked him to do after seeing the water births in the movie Birth As We Know It. I had forgotten I asked for him to do that. But he said I was reaching for him so then he brought him all the way out.
It’s amazing how quickly the brain switches after birth from acting like a crazy, out of control person to someone who is totally normal (relatively speaking). It was 4:30 am on Monday, July 27.
It seemed like Solomon came out of the water crying. Literally, crying robustly right from the start. His little face was purplish-blue and all scrunched up. Just scrunching, crumply, wrinkly creases all over his face.
About five minutes later, Vern called to the kids to come up. I said, “Let’s see if it’s a boy or a girl.” Ezra was the one to announce that it was a boy. And then, about a minute later, Ezra asks in a really sweet voice, “Mom, you don’t have to say yes, but is it okay if we finish watching our episode of Dog With a Blog?” So, the younger two leave to do that. I get out of the tub and get settled into bed.
I wanted to be a bit more active in getting the placenta out, because last time I just sat around like a moron and it didn’t come out until almost two hours later. So, this time, I would stand up periodically and tell the placenta to detach safely. I would visualize it. I kind of knelt over the placenta bowl and started pushing a little bit, but then I realized that I was just peeing in the bowl. I initially stopped, but then I thought, “What the heck?” and finished peeing.
The placenta released at 5:13 am, so about 43 minutes after the birth.
I don’t think I was bleeding an abnormal amount, but I was making a mess of things everywhere. Blood on the carpet, blood on the sheets, blood all over me. And then, an hour after the birth, Solomon pooped all over me. I said, “I’m a poopy, bloody mess.” Ocean thought I was being hard on myself and wanted to make me feel better, so she said, “No, you’re not.” I said, “Ocean, I have poop and blood all over me.” And she said, “Yeah, but you’re not a mess.” Such a sweet kid, she is.
So, that was the birth. Despite the last 3 minutes being exceptionally hard, I wasn’t traumatized by the birth the way I was with Peace’s. So, it wasn’t all completely lovely? So what. It wasn’t magical, it wasn’t disappointing, it just... was.
My attitude is more matter-of-fact this time around, which seems to sum up the experience of the birth altogether. It was a simple, run-of-the-mill routine of going through the motions of birth. And then I had a baby.
Not exactly magical (like I’ve always wanted my births to be), but I’m surprisingly okay with that this time around. Babies are magic enough.
Post Birth Things I Want To Remember:
• The smell of the top of his head. (Went away after a day or so.)
• Vern listening to heartbeat when I was pregnant, and then listening to Solomon’s heartbeat after the birth and saying, “Yep, that’s it.”
• Peace saying, “I just love Solomon too much.”
• Never being so hungry, and food never tasting so good.
