I reference my first child’s birth frequently in this story. If you want to read that one first, you can find it here.
I have very few talents. One of them is birthing babies relatively quickly, and another is making a long, rambling stories out of very quick events. With that in mind, feel free to read on.
My husband and I were so prepared to recreate the beginning of Charlotte‘s birth story to get our second labor going and give this baby their September 10th, full moon birthday. We knew that wasn’t how it works, but we were still hoping. We made a reservation at Pasta Moon on 9/9, which was the due date I had calculated for myself, even though we had 9/12 in my chart. We had gone to Pasta Moon on Charlotte’s due date, and labor kicked off that night. It would be a fun story if it worked again, AND had another 40+1 birth, AND had a full moon baby, AND had another family birthday on the 10th of the month.
We had our dinner out, and we also had sex that night after Charlotte went to bed. After all, that was part of our story last time too ;). I did start feeling some low belly cramps, and thought, “this might actually be working!” Of course, things ended up fizzling out and it wasn’t baby time.
Sometimes it doesn’t even matter what you know intellectually about how things work, especially in the days after the EDD passes. I had seen it so many times before as a doula, but it started to feel like it was going to be a long time before this baby would arrive, and that we might have to do something to make labor start 😆 We discussed which “natural induction” methods we were willing to do and when. These discussions took place over the weekend, when we weren’t even really past our due date yet.
Our charted due date arrived, and also felt like an acceptable birthday. It also passed, and we waited. It’s funny looking back thinking that it was taking forever. The evening after the EDD, we decided to try having sex and figured we could at least have some fun, even if it didn’t “work” to get labor going. I did start to feel crampy, but wasn’t going to get too excited. At 11:30 or midnight, I decided to try to lay down and get some sleep, even though I suspected things might pick up. Cramps were becoming more distinct, but not particularly painful. I did do some breathing through, and they were about five minutes apart and lasting a minute. I wasn’t sleeping, and was starting to realize this was going to be it.
I knew that I should be contacting Michelle (my midwife). We had had many conversations about letting her know as soon as ANYTHING was happening, because she’d rather be early than miss it. With Charlotte’s birth, my body started involuntarily pushing when I first called Michelle, so my midwife’s position was understandable. And we knew I was unlikely to have a two hour pushing window for everyone to get there like last time. With this second labor, I was timing contractions, not quite believing it was time, and kept thinking to myself, “I’ll get up and call Michelle on the next one.” I started to feel something a little different, so I called her (I think at 12:48?). I let her know that it wasn’t imminent, but that things were happening and I’d like her to come. She knows me well and got moving quickly. I’m sure she knew she was in for a mad dash.
I still waited a little longer to call the rest of my team: Jordan, my dear friend, to come to be Charlotte’s companion (and to hopefully paint an amazing picture of home birth for her upcoming birth); Nicole, our doula; and Robin, our photographer. All of these women had personally experienced very quick labors, but apparently I wanted to really push things. I also started my COVID test so that we could all feel comfortable being maskless at my birth.
As I waited for people to arrive, I was having a pretty internal experience, realizing I wasn’t in a huge amount of pain, but was feeling more pressure. I went pee and felt a strange sense of bulging when I wiped. I didn’t feel like baby’s head was right there, but it felt weird. I turns out that when I’m in labor, I always forget about the bag of waters, haha. Just after 1:00am, I felt like I wanted to sit down on the ball, so I set it up behind the couch so I could lean forward on the couch and rest.
During this whole time, my husband James was being his wonderful self and supporting me, as well as making sure all the logistics were in place. Did we call everyone? Was the front door unlocked? Were supplies in place? He did so much in the background while I did the work that I could do. At some point, he took his COVID test as well.
Charlotte, who had turned three the previous month, was still in her bedroom. She woke up at some point, but stayed in bed, quietly listening.
I probably only had a couple of minutes on the birth ball when I felt a LOT of pressure. I needed to stand up. With a contraction, it felt almost like a head came part way out and then went back in. It was a wild experience. It also wasn’t a head. With the next contraction (1:21, I believe), my bag of waters burst open, drenching the ball and the floor. I knew that baby was really coming soon. I yelled at James that my water broke. I was less than ten feet to the entrance of our bedroom (where we planned for the birth to happen), but it felt SO far away. I didn’t feel safe walking on the wet floor, so I got down on my hands and knees and crawled the few feet to the rug in our living room. (Was I a dog who had to find the soft place to make a mess, or just looking for a soft place to land? ;) ) I yelled to James to bring towels. I might as well have been in a sitcom. He brought towels, but also got Michelle on speaker phone. She was driving in from the city, and was letting us know where she was, and asking pertinent questions. The pressure was strong, and this baby was coming. She could hear my involuntary pushing, and we could hear her giving her location: just got off the freeway. Going through stop signs. ETA 3 min.
I knew Michelle was almost there, and I knew it was a race: who would arrive first- the midwife or the baby? I knew there wasn’t anything I could do to affect the outcome. The baby’s head began to emerge, and after a contraction, decided to hang out just to the ears. I was on hands and knees, and once again greeted Michelle with my bare bum, plus a little extra. Michelle arrived mask on, gloves off (1:31). It didn’t seem there would be time to put any gloves on. We all assumed baby would be out with the next contraction, but just the head came. I called to James to take a video, as this was something I was hoping for this time around. The next contraction came, and I was prepared for baby to slide out like good second time babies do. Yes, I always have to laugh at myself looking back. It was only a couple of minutes, but it felt like a long time, and a LOT more effort than I was expecting. It was super intense, but our baby finally (after two minutes) came all the way out (1:34am). Michelle got James to come over and help catch (that’s where the video ends). I took a breather, and then they helped pass my baby through my legs. I found myself saying, “come here, baby girl,” and then checking myself because we didn’t know the sex. But I looked, and yes, our baby had a vulva.
Our second midwife, Sue, must have arrived right at that moment, because she took photos of me holding Violet that are timestamped 1:35am. The midwives got me to lay down on the living room floor, stacked some pillows behind me, and I held Violet underneath the Happy Birthday banner that we had left up on the mantle since Charlotte’s birthday the month before.
James asked Charlotte if she wanted to meet her baby sister, and she was excited to come out and see her. She was wearing her lion pajamas and her star mask, and was just the absolute sweetest.
The timeline of everything else is a bit fuzzy: our photographer arrived, and so did Jordan. Michelle’s student midwife Maria also arrived. It turned out that in a fluke, our doula Nicole hadn’t gotten my calls until later and felt awful. But it worked out so beautifully, because I had the support I needed for the birth and the immediate postpartum, and Nicole came later in the day and supported us in so many ways, anticipating our needs perfectly.
While I was laying on the floor, propped up on pillows, hardly believing what had just happened, I heard some commotion about changing masks and James came close and I realized he was wearing one of Michelle’s green N95 masks. I felt a little alarmed and asked if my test came back positive. It turned out mine had been negative, but his came back positive. I couldn’t believe it. We had made it 2.5 years without COVID, and now we had a minutes-old baby and had a positive test? I started to imagine what that would mean for our early postpartum period, and tears came to my eyes. He ended up taking several more tests and they were all negative, so we figured he was fine and it was a false positive. He got a PCR later in the day, and it was also negative, but that was not a fun way to start things off. Because of the speed of the labor, and the uncertainty around the results, the rest of my team remained masked, which was a bummer.
My team helped me and Violet to the bedroom, where we got to be a little more comfortable and could work on latching and bonding. Charlotte got to spend some time checking out our new baby and was so sweet, touching Violet’s hands and encouraging me to do the same. She brought her baby doll to the bed as well.
Someone made us scrambled eggs and toast with avocado. James, Charlotte, and I ate in our bed just as we had when Charlotte was born. It’s always nice to have someone else cook for you, but this felt like the most amazing care we could possibly have, and it was such a cool moment for our new little family of four to experience together.
We got lots of photos, both posed and candid. We were able to get photos of Violet attached to her placenta, which we had forgotten to do with Charlotte. In the 5:00 hour, Charlotte and James cut Violet’s umbilical cord, and we did the newborn exam. Violet was wonderful, though she did have a severe tongue tie (which we ended up having released when she was 30 hours old). She also had a low forehead temp, even though she was doing fine. She wore a hat for a bit, and was fine later in the day.
It was wild how the hours flew by. The midwives stayed for a long time, and left in the 8:00 hour. Poor Charlotte had been up since 1:00, and finally conked out. We all napped for a bit before “starting” our day again in a couple of hours.
TL;DR:
11:30pm: Cramping
12:30am: Contractions 5 mins apart, I should probably call
12:48am: call Michelle
1:21am: Rupture of Membranes
1:31am: Michelle arrives, head part way out
1:34am: Violet is born
