Birth story - Kylie and baby Koa

My water broke early morning Wednesday March 13th so I called my midwife in a bit of a panic because I was only 35 + 6 weeks and I REALLY did not want to go to the hospital (we don’t have any hospitals near us that support natural birth let alone water births). She told me she would head my way to check on things (she lived 3 hours away, but had a midwife in training here in my town). When she arrived, nothing had still happened- no cramps, no contractions so she hung around for a day to see if anything would happen and nothing did. She decided she would head back home and we would wait and see if/when something would start happening.

I took my temperature multiple times a day to check for infection, drank lots of water to replenish my amniotic fluid, and took vitamin c. To be extra safe, I got an ultrasound done and Koa looked great and happy and my amniotic fluid was on the low side, but not too bad.

Fast forward 8 days! I woke up just like any other day just waiting for Koa to be done “cooking” and felt a little crampy around 10:30am. By 11, they were pretty intense cramps, but no surges. Around 12:30pm, I had my first surge. I was surprised by it’s intensity. Within 1 minute I had another one. From that point, they were constant. Some 1 min apart, some on top of each other, but no further than 1 min! I called my midwife who was about 3 hours away and in our 5 min conversation, I had 3-4 surges that I had to stop and breathe through. I found out later on at this point, my midwife knew she wasn’t gonna make it and she called the midwife in training to let her know she’d be delivering her first solo baby. Haha.

My birthing tub wasn’t set up yet, so I went and labored a little in my kids tub, although it wasn’t a huge help because it’s not very big or deep. I stayed in there for a while with the Freya app (best invention EVER!!!) After a while, I came out to help my kids pack up their things to go to MeMaw’s, but my surges were so close I just couldn’t get anything done so I came to labor in my bed. My midwife in training arrived and I let her know I thought I was in transition. She told me I was much too calm to be in transition, but she’d check me after a few more contractions. Her eyes almost popped out of her head when she checked me and sure enough, I was extremely stretchy and 8cm! I just lay in bed and continued to use the Freya app as my midwife and husband hurried to fill my birthing tub. I calmly let her know I could feel him moving down and I knew I would be changing to down breathing soon. Once again, she didn’t quite believe me, but hurried anyway.

Once the tub was almost full, I let her know I was gonna hop in anyway cuz I felt very close to needing to “push”. I was in there for one surge and the up breathing no longer was comfortable so I switched to down breathing. I had 2 surges of down breathing to which his head was almost born and my midwife who thought I still wasn’t that close yelled for my husband to get in there if he wanted to see his son be born. The next surge the urgency to push was too much and so I pushed and out came his head! I reached down and felt his sweet head and with the next surge, he was born! I was so happy!!

He was exactly 37 weeks when he was born and did have some struggles breathing at first, but all ended up well. I’m just glad Koa knew he needed a little longer to grow and develop and waited to come when he was ready. I was able to trust my body because of this course! Yay! My midwife also commented on this being the calmest birth she’d ever been to. It was an awesome experience!