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When I was pregnant, I loved reading other mamas’ positive home birth stories. I think it's amazing how different everyone's experience is. While there are certainly some consistent and reliable patterns, it helped me to realize that “normal” is such a wide range of things when it comes to childbirth. Far wider a range than I ever imagined.

My first labor wasn't easy. It was a bit slow, there were some challenges, but I trusted my body knew what to do, I had a great birth team, and all's well that ends well, as they say. I had a perfect, healthy baby boy in the comfort of my own home.

I'm going to share all the gory details, because when I was pregnant, that's what I wanted to know. In the movies, the water breaks in an unexpected place, the lady rushes to the hospital, and two minutes later she screams and a baby is born. That's not real life. Labor can be a marathon with a lot of challenges and hurdles. There are slow, beautiful parts. There's parts where you want to give up. There's sections where you feel hopeless, annoyed or exhausted. There can be pain, there is triumph. It can cover the full gamut of human emotion and experience in the course of a few hours, or over the course of days. It's an experience like no other, and, for me, it was one of the most empowering and defining moments of this life.

A month before baby came

(For reference, my due date was January 4th, 2022.)

Thanksgiving of 2022, I came down with an awful illness (though I never bothered to get tested, I'm certain now that it was Covid). I felt like I had been hit by a truck. In the thick of exhaustion from being in my third trimester (and carrying around a massive belly) I was not dealing with it well. We canceled my baby shower, we canceled Thanksgiving. I was doing everything I could think of to fight the illness, but it wouldn't relent. I was so congested, it was hard to breathe (being pregnant already makes it hard to breathe) but I wasn't yet willing to go to a doctor or get any kind of medication. I'm stubborn like that.

I decided to try a homeopathic cough syrup called Chestal. It's supposed to be very effective at breaking up mucous. It was effective, alright. The mucous in my throat cleared out. And so did my mucous plug (a month before I was supposed to have my baby)!

I was a little freaked out that I might have done something to induce an early labor. I immediately stopped taking the Chestal and started furiously googling. I quickly learned that although losing your mucous plug can be a sign of early labor, the body can also re-grow the mucous plug if it's lost too early, and that's exactly what happened.

It was also around this time that I changed my plans from going to Yale hospital to have my baby, to having a home birth (you can read about that decision here). At my first appointment with my home birth midwife, she noticed that my baby was VERY low in my pelvis and nearly in optimal position (head down and facing toward my back). He was just shifted a little to my left side (more on this, later). He was measuring big, but otherwise everything looked wonderful.

Due date

I didn't have any uncomfortable braxton hicks contractions up to this point.

When my due date came around, I woke up to a fairly strong contraction. I got up to pee, and found I had lost my mucous plug.

I wrapped up a few things at work, went shopping, got a pedicure and had a relaxing and very pleasant day. Throughout the day I'd had some contractions, and by the evening they were averaging every twenty minutes or so apart. I was feeling some pressure in my pelvis and lower back. I gave my midwife an update as to what was happening and went to bed.

The next morning

I woke up on my thirtieth birthday at 3 am with a contraction. Immediately, I knew this was the real deal. Ten minutes later, another contraction. Lying down was suddenly very uncomfortable so I got on my hands and knees and waited for the next one. My husband woke up. I told him, “I think today's the day! Go back to sleep, I'll wake you if I need you.” Best wife ever, right? Here I am, suffering, and I’m telling him to go to sleep. In reality, I wasn't just being nice. I knew, intuitively, that I would be needing him later on, and that it was in my best interest to let him have as much rest as possible. He wished me a happy birthday, gave me a kiss and went back to sleep.

I continued to labor quietly for the next several hours or so in bed, trying to catch some z's in between contractions. Finally around 9 I got out of bed to take a shower. For some reason, it was very important to me that I shave my legs before having my baby. It's silly. But it had to be done.

At this point my contractions were averaging a minute in duration and about five minutes apart.

This continued for a few more hours without much change. I kept myself hydrated with laborade that we'd made (I had been making it all through my third trimester - you can get my recipe here). My husband applied counter pressure on my hips to ease the pain in my pelvis and back during contractions

The team arrives

Around noon, my parents came over to help. About half an hour later, my midwife came. She was supposed to have her assistant there, but there was some contact with covid so she couldn't make it. I ended up having someone else there who was an experienced labor and delivery nurse and a trained doula (a profession I honestly thought was silly and unnecessary UNTIL I accidentally had one attend my first labor - she made all the difference and now I advocate for first time mamas to have one, if at all possible).

Everyone helped get the room set up and the birth pool assembled while I carried on with my contractions.

The marathon

The next many hours were a blur.

I labored in the pool. I labored out of the pool. I had moments where I was cheerful and chatty between contractions, and others where I just wished it was over already.

My baby was still positioned off to the left side and it was causing me to dilate unevenly. My midwife would check my cervix every now and then and it didn't seem to change a whole lot. We tried lots of different positions, we used ribozo (a long band used to sort of jiggle the baby into position), we tried massage. I was in the pool on all fours, on the floor with my leg up on a peanut ball, I was walking around, I was squatting, I was leaning on the birth ball. I was all over the place.

A note on cervical checks: I had a few. I thought they hurt more than the contractions did. To be honest, they didn't do anything to help get labor moving along and I agreed to them only because I was under the impression that it was something you had to do when in labor. This is not the case. If you want to get checked, by all means, do so. If knowing how much you're dilated helps you, then go for it. But don't feel that it's required. With my second kid, I had ZERO cervical checks (partly because I had told my midwife ahead of time that I was going to opt out of them and partly because my second baby practically flew out of me and by the time my midwife got to my house there wasn't any time to even check my blood pressure, let alone check my dilation). A good midwife can gauge what stage of labor you're at by the way you're behaving. I'm sure there are occasionally actual medical reasons to check. I'm no doctor. But you're allowed to say no and demand a good reason if someone on your birth team is pushing for it.

We finally got my baby into a more centered position, but by this time I was getting exhausted and more than a little bit disheartened. It was evening now. I'd been at it for nearly twenty hours already. My energy was waning. I was nowhere near feeling “pushy”, and I didn't know how to push even if I tried. I didn't know what to do.

The assistant/doula I mentioned before saved the day. She took my hands in hers, got very close and gave me kind and strong reassurance. She told me that my body was built to birth my baby, that I was strong, that I had already done such a good job and that every contraction was purposeful. She told me my feelings of defeat were logical, but that I needed to find the strength to get back up and keep going. She reminded me of the goal, that soon I'd meet my perfect baby and hold him in my arms. But I had to first decide that I was going to get back in the game and go all in.

It was exactly the pep talk I needed. I shook off the feeling of defeat. I decided to go another round, so to speak. My midwife suggested someone get me a tablespoon of honey - I thought this was random - that is, until I accepted said tablespoon of honey and felt a sudden resurgence of energy. It was unreal.

I got out of the tub, my husband held me through my next contraction and suddenly my water broke. It was a literal and figurative floodgate.

At that moment, my “stalled” labor was thoroughly “unstalled”. Every contraction felt productive. I could feel my baby moving down. It was almost time to push and I was nervous, but also very relieved and excited.

Labor continued, and I started trying to push. It took a bit of work to figure out how, and I was finding the water to be too relaxing. It was slowing things down and I wasn't too keen on that, at this stage.

I got out of the pool and onto my living room floor. With my husband sitting in the armchair behind me, holding me up in some kind of squat (and with me squeezing the life out of his hands - poor guy had bruises for days) I pushed my baby down.

Finally, I could feel him crowning. They call this the ring of fire. It's an awfully accurate name.

The moment of truth

In this moment, time slowed. I somehow let go of every remaining fear I had. I found a strength and determination within myself that I did not know I had. I roared my baby out. It was a primal force that took over, and yet I had complete control over every breath, every movement and every sensation. I felt myself tear (something I had been so scared of) and in that moment it didn’t matter. My baby’s head was out, his eyes were open, he was alert, and I heard him cry out.

One minute later, the rest of his body was born.

My midwife placed him on my belly.

NOTHING compares to this moment. Looking down at his perfect little body, his alien shaped head, the impossibly perfect and unbelievably tiny fingernails, it was overwhelming. I was madly in love. I felt no more pain.

I looked up at my husband and, like some sort of crazy person, said, “I could do that again!”

Twenty three hours of labor. Nine pounds and six ounces of baby. It wasn’t easy, but to say that it was worth it is the understatement of the century. I look back on my first home birth with joy and pride.

I went on to have my second baby at home (I’ll write up his birth story next and post it here). It was wildly different from my first, and perfect in its own way.

My hope is that by sharing my birth stories, I can help encourage other mamas who are considering a home birth to take the plunge. If there’s anything I can do to help, please reach out to me.

Positive Home Birth Story - My First Baby