Birth story - Nancy and baby Milad

The Positive Birth Company resources were real game changers for me in this third and final birth. With my first, I went to 42 weeks attempting to have a home birth and was eventually had a non-emergency hospital transfer due to exhaustion. So many things happened to my body in that first birth that left me shaken.

With my second birth, I experienced prodromal labor again, which was so frustrating - and even though I had a beautiful home water birth (in a snow storm!) I didn't feel like I understood what was going on in my body.

This third time, the up and down breathing, Freya app, and birth stories of third time mums all supported me in working with my body and lead to a pretty magical birth.

So this third time around, at 40w+6d I had grown increasingly tired of being pregnant and felt emotionally and energetically ready to meet my baby. Despite multiple membrane sweeps and herbal induction tinctures, this baby wasn't budging much at all. I did everything I could to distract myself as well as try to remain present and surrender - reading the third time mum birth stories on PBC was so helpful in making me feel less lonely in this experience and reminding me how each birth and each baby is their own magical experience that we can't control, but can take charge of. I had determined a few weeks earlier that I really didn't want to go past 41w+3d because of how challenging and uncomfortable this pregnancy had been (more than my other two) and because my older kids had been away at my parent's house for nearly a week in anticipation of baby arriving sooner (and I was ready to have them back home).

So, on the morning of August 1st - six days past my guess date - I spoke with my midwife (who I'd birthed my other two babies with) and we agreed to try one last home induction - the dreaded castor oil - before seriously considering going to the hospital. My partner blended up a somewhat palatable ice cream castor oil smoothie around 11:30 AM on Monday, followed by another smaller dose at 3 PM. Except for some clear upticks in braxton hicks and the absolute worst day of diarrhea I've ever experienced (ughhh, the joys of castor oil) - it didn't feel like much was happening and I continued to feel my moral drop. By early evening, it really didn't seem like I was going to meet my baby that day, so I laid down for a nap while listening to the PBC birth affirmations.

When I woke up from my evening nap, I noticed the braxton hicks were slightly lower in my abdomen, even in my pelvic region, but having waited so long to meet this baby (and having experienced prodromal labor twice before) I wrote it off so as not to get my hopes up. Around 8 PM that evening I texted by two best friends who were going to be my support people/doulas in addition to my partner and told them I might be experiencing contractions, but I was feeling skeptical because the pain from the laxatives was also pretty excruciating. My friends asked if they should pop over and my partner and I agreed it wasn't necessary because, even if this was early labor, we had plenty of time before things got going (foreshadowing). As such, I decided to lay down for another nap.

Then, at 10 PM I called my partner into the bedroom because I was feeling kind of "funny" and asked him to time my contractions (which I still didn't believe were contractions) using the Freya app. He clocked my first contraction at 10:17 PM and by 10:27 PM we were on the phone with my midwife while I she listened to me vocalize. By 10:37 PM - having only tracked 7 contractions - we stopped timing because I was clearly in active labor and we needed to get the house set up for the home birth ASAP!

My partner called everyone over and one of my friends arrived within 10 minutes as I climbed into a shallow bath in our tiny bathroom upstairs. The birth tub was still all packed up, so my partner rushed downstairs to unpack the tub and get it filled. With my second birth, it took over 3 hours to fill the birth tub with our previous home's very small water heater plus a line of seven neighbors running buckets of hot water from their homes (it was very old country and such a sweet act of care from them - especially during a snow storm!). That pervious experience had me very nervous about whether the tub would be filled in time. I was also nervous about the rest of my birth team arriving in time...and probably in shock from how quickly labor was happening. All this to say, I could feel myself panicking and struggling to ride each surge. Eventually (I think within 20 minutes) my whole birth team had arrived and I was able to go downstairs to be closer to the birth tub.

Once downstairs I slung myself over the birth ball and locked eyes with my best friend who had introduced me to PBC and the up and down breathing methods. With each surge, she held me firmly and lovingly and brought me out of my panic through up breathing. It was amazing to connect to this breathing practice with my best friend as an anchor because I could feel how I was moving with my body in each surge. The surges were coming on so strong that in between I kept demanding to get into the birth tub, which wasn't quite ready yet. Eventually, my midwife gave me the green light to hop in the tub and I felt instant and powerful relief wash over me - I remember a huge smile on my face as I stepped into the tub.

Once in the tub, I slung myself over the side and held onto my best friend as she kept me connected to my hypno-breathing. As I got closer to meeting my baby I started to whine and complain, which would pull me away from my breathing. Fortunately, returning to my breath worked every single time in being able to stay on top of each surge. Not more than 20 minutes after getting into the tub, I could feel the shift toward down breathing and within 5 minutes my baby had arrived, en caul in my arms. Baby was born at 12:22 AM on Tuesday, just 2.5 hours after the surges kicked in. My midwife removed baby from his amniotic sack and let me hold him close as I came down from the magical and intense journey we had all just experienced.

A sense of calm and amazement washed over the entire home once baby arrived. My team helped me out of the birth tub, my placenta came away swiftly and without a pitocin shot, and we moved to the couch where we all cooed over baby and waited for the umbilical cord to turn white for delayed cord clamping. My midwife team relaxed outside on our front porch in the cool summer breeze while my partner and I did skin to skin and I eventually got baby latched for his first feed. About an hour after birth, I was escorted upstairs to take a warm shower and climb into bed while baby was looked over. My team made their exit about an hour later and we fell asleep to the sweetest sounds of a little baby by our side.

I cannot thank Siobhan and the PBC resources and space enough for stewarding me in and through my most magical and embodied birth experience yet. Love to all the birthing folks out there building new worlds and doing the hardest work imaginable.