The Birth of IvY
We learned of her presence in early April, from a pink line so faint I thought I’d imagined it. My mind swirled with excitement and panic as I envisioned my life changing in 8 short months. But the faintness of the following day’s pregnancy test prompted me to ask for an HCG draw. It was 3 days past my expected period and the test showed a mere ghost of a second line… shouldn’t it be darker?
The HCG number was technically within normal range, but barely. And so, a vicious cycle of blood draws and obsessively tracking HCG numbers began. I believe I got 6 draws in total. And the numbers always doubled, but barely. Rather than enjoying the beautiful beginnings of pregnancy, I was drowning in anxiety, convinced I would lose this baby. My work in the bereavement and pregnancy loss space had taken a toll on me, making me hyper-aware that loss can and does happen, and no one is immune. One can only hold and photograph so many stillborn babies before their brain chemistry is altered forever.
Despite this crippling fear and anxiety, the numbers continued to double, the weeks continued to pass, and her heart began to beat. We were able to see it fluttering away at an 8 week scan. I allowed myself to become hopeful as the anxiety melted away and the nausea quickly crept in. My mom flew out to help take care of me and Charlotte, since a good bit of my typical day was spent leaning over the toilet bowl. The vomiting wasn’t the hyperemesis gravidarum I experienced with my first pregnancy, but it was still happening several times a day and difficult to cope with.
As the weeks went on, I was able to relax into the pregnancy. This also meant that I needed to make plans for the birth of my baby.
I so desperately, deep in my bones, wanted to give birth at home. Whenever I envisioned bringing this baby to my chest for the first time, it was in a birth pool next to my Christmas tree. But, I had planned for this exact scenario three years prior for my first birth, and I didn’t get it.
For those who aren’t familiar with my first birth story: I was transferred out of home birth care two days before my due date, induced at the hospital for hypertension, and had every medical intervention under the sun aside from a cesarean. My daughter had several issues including jaundice and low O2, and had supplemental oxygen for 3 weeks. I was readmitted to the hospital 10 days postpartum for preeclampsia. The whole thing was a mess.
Additionally, shortly after my first daughter was born, I attended a home birth that went sideways and shook me to my core. It involved complications with meconium aspiration (this is important to my story later). Between my blood pressure leading to my hospital induction, my daughter needing extra medical support after birth, and the secondhand trauma I was grappling with after witnessing the home birth emergency, it would be insane to try for a home birth again… even if that’s what I desperately wanted. Right?
So, I settled for hospital care. After all, you can’t be disappointed if you set the bar low, right? I’ll admit, there was a level of comfort knowing regardless of how my birth unfolded, I couldn’t “risk out” since I was already in the hospital. We were working with a wonderful certified nurse midwife, the same one who attended Charlotte’s birth. I trusted her, and she was the one and only reason I felt comfortable proceeding with hospital birth.
And then, during my 15th week, my midwife announced she was leaving. It felt like the rug had been pulled from under me. I had finally reached a level of peace with birthing in the hospital, but immediately knew that wasn’t an option anymore. So we went back to the drawing board, but this time a bit more frantic and frustrated.
Despite my resistance, the universe was pushing me towards home birth. Finances were a concern, since home birth isn’t covered by insurance. The wonderful midwife we ended up choosing, Jen, worked out a plan with us to bring home birth within our means. At 24 weeks, I officially made the switch into home birth care!
Rachel Weber Photography
There is a misconception that doulas must be really good at giving birth. Because doulas trust the process of birth, they have no fear of giving birth, right? For me, that could not be further from the truth. I had a lot of baggage to work through. My confidence in my ability to handle unmedicated childbirth was shaken. I received an epidural that I didn’t want in my first birth, what if I needed one again? Would I end up transferring for pain relief? I trust women, and I trust birth, but I found it difficult to trust myself. I also felt self-conscious that I was having these fears at all. What were these underlying fears saying about me as a doula?
Thank goodness for Jen Grieco. That saint of a midwife helped me process through all of these feelings and more. She held space for me to step into my power, my womanhood. Her unwavering belief in me felt like permission to believe in myself. I talked through each of my fears and anxieties, and through the logistics of medical emergencies. All of my “what-ifs” were answered with patient, reassuring words that put my heart and mind at ease. Over the course of my prenatal care, I felt my energy shift from nervousness to excitement when thinking about my upcoming birth.
Third trimester was physically and mentally trying. My body was begging for me to slow down and rest starting around 28 weeks, but unfortunately that wasn’t an option during the fall months (aka the height of photography “busy season”).
During my 36th week, my village of women came together for a blessingway celebration, hosted by my lovely friend Arika. They took turns sharing uplifting words and encouraging stories, and truly just poured their love into me. Before each woman left, she took a candle to keep and light when my labor started, as a symbol of holding space or prayer.
Over the course of my 39th week, I had several bouts of timable Braxton-Hicks contractions, coming every 10 minutes and lasting for hours, only to fizzle out. In order to practice for labor, I would greet each of them in my head: “Hello, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you for bringing my baby.”
My sacrum felt as though it were on fire, and despite regular chiropractic care, walking was becoming excruciating. Fear began to creep back in…. If I couldn’t even walk, how was I supposed to labor and birth?
On the night of December 9th (39+5), I hit a mental wall. I was done. Overcooked. Stick a fork in me.
I sobbed. Told my husband he had to start paternity leave early, that I couldn’t survive another day of solo parenting a toddler while being pregnant. After my little mental breakdown, I went to bed.
I awoke at 4 am to a contraction.
“Here we go again,” I thought. Those dang Braxton Hicks that cause discomfort but get you nowhere.
But wait. This one felt different. It was lower, and deeper, right on my cervix. Huh. It melted away and I went back to sleep, just to wake up 9 minutes later to another. I groaned and breathed through it. “Fuck,” I thought, “These don’t exactly feel easy. If this is false labor again, how in the world am I going to handle real labor?”
Spoiler alert: It was not false labor.
I drifted off in between, but the surges continued to come. 9 minutes apart, then 8, then 6. They felt nothing like the pitocin-fueled, nightmarish contractions I had experienced during my first birth. They felt… kind. Natural. The sensation of the surge was very concentrated on my cervix, and I could feel myself stretching, opening. Just as I’d practiced, I greeted each one: “Hello, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you for bringing my baby.”
By 6am I had to focus on breathing through the waves, and could no longer lay in bed. I needed to move. We let my team know that things were likely starting, and they suggested waiting an hour and checking in with them again, but 45 minutes later I knew it was time. The surges were building in intensity and coming every 3-5 minutes (My midwife lives about an hour away, and my doula Lindsey almost 2 hours away, so we had to factor in drive time for them).
One of my best friends, Sydney, who is a student midwife, arrived before anyone else around 8am. She came in and found me on my knees, leaning over the bed. “What if this isn’t real?” I sheepishly asked her, worried that I jumped the gun and called everyone too early. She stayed silent and calm as she witnessed me work through another surge. “It’s real,” she said with such confidence, I had no choice but to believe her.
I was laboring on the birth ball in my kitchen when the rest of my team arrived around 9am. Seeing everyone together in my house, with gear in their hands and excitement in their eyes, made me realize that I was, in fact, really having a baby today. I was suddenly flooded with emotion. Tears flowed from my eyes as I surrendered, allowing myself to get lost in my labor for the first time. My team was here and I could let go.
Despite feeling lucid and present in my body, time lost meaning. At some point in the late morning, the birth pool was ready and I eagerly entered. The warmth and pressure from the water radiated into my cells, and brought me an immense amount of comfort. The extreme cervical pressure I was experiencing during the contractions was hard to cope with on land…. But in the water? I could allow the contraction to be there, without resisting. “Hello, surge, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you for bringing my baby.”
I continued riding the waves. A few hours passed in the tub, and doing “horse lips” through contractions became my saving grace. It was the only way I could keep my breathing slow, and blow the pain away. My daughter and my friend/sibling doula, Arika, sat a few feet away from me watching Charlie Brown Christmas on the TV. My husband sat quietly by my side, periodically offering me sips of orange Body Armor as I labored beside the warm glow of the Christmas tree.
At the end of a big, long surge, a guttural grunt escaped from my throat (the sound of bearing down that birthworkers know all too well). “What the heck?” I thought. There is no way it was already time to push… I intuitively knew my cervix had not melted away, and that I had not transitioned.
Despite not wanting cervical checks initially, I did ask Jen to check me, because the urge to push continued to grow. “You’ve made great progress,” she told me after checking me right there in the pool. “You’re at a 7.” I was unsurprised by this news, but also frustrated and confused at my body’s need to bear down.
I continued to labor, while trying not to push, as my timeline and thoughts grew fuzzy and began to blend together. Sydney, Jen, and Lindsey took turns over the next hour trying to gently convince me to get out of the water and incorporate movement and gravity into my labor. As a doula, I know the importance of position changes and gravity. I know movement would absolutely, without a doubt, progress my labor and bring my baby into my arms sooner. But as a mom, I really wanted them to leave me the hell alone. The water felt SO good, and things were starting to feel very intense. I couldn’t leave the one thing making the sensations bearable. And despite starting to believe birth was imminent because of my growing need to push, my team clearly didn’t think so.
But alas, I eventually agreed to get out of the birth pool after some heavy persuasion from my midwife. I awkwardly waddled to the toilet (aka the dilation station) and stayed there for over an hour. I rested on the toilet in between waves, and stood up and rocked during them. The urge to push became absolutely unbearable, and my body began bearing down on its own. This would have been thrilling…except for the fact that I intuitively knew that I STILL wasn’t fully dilated. What the heck was going on?
A requested cervical exam on my bed confirmed what I already knew. I was still sitting at 8cm. The contraction that overtook me after that cervical exam was powerful, and my body involuntarily pushed with everything it had. I felt something warm and soft slip out from between my legs. “Something is happening!!!” I yelled, totally confused. “Gloves, please! And chux pads!” I heard Jen say. Patrick and Lindsey, who had stepped out momentarily, rushed into the room, thinking we were about to meet a baby.
I reached down to feel what had just emerged from me, knowing it was too soft to be my daughter. It was my water bag, hanging out of me like a balloon, fully intact. A few moments later, I felt warm water pool around me and knew it had released on its own.
I looked at Lindsey, who was also my birth photographer. “Did you get a picture of that?! That was wild. If you have a photo, I want to see it!” There was the slightest, noticeable moment of hesitation from her…. But she held up the camera screen for me to see.
Oh. Fuck.
“Um, is that meconium?” I asked as I stared at the photo of the water bag, cleared filled with greenish brownish liquid (I’ll spare you the photo, it’s kinda gnarly).
Oh no, oh no, oh no. My mind immediately began to race. My thoughts flashed back to the traumatic home birth with meconium aspiration complications that I’d witnessed 3 years prior. Noticing that I was starting to panic, Sydney quickly found the fetal heart tones on the doppler and turned it up so I could hear. My daughter sounded perfect. “She is okay. She is doing great,” my team reassured me.
In the following moments, I noticed a shift in my body, in the energy of the contractions. I knew my cervix was gone, that my baby was engaged and ready to enter the world. There was no stopping the pushing now. She was coming. “Go ahead and push if you want to,” Jen encouraged. “NO NOT HERE” I barked as I rolled off the bed and practically ran back to the birth pool.
The water provided the sweet relief I needed to fully surrender to my body’s uncontrollable urge to bear down. My God, there was so much downward pressure, but it felt so good to push against it. I could feel her moving down, slowly but surely, mere millimeters at a time. Eventually I reached inside and could feel her head a few centimeters away. “Holy shit, I am actually touching my baby!” I thought.
During my pregnancy, I kept telling my husband I wasn’t going to push the baby out. “I’m just going to breathe her out, and let the fetal ejection reflex take care of the rest,” I said proudly (like a damn fool). Well, there was no breathing this baby out. There was only the animalistic, intense, feral, powerful pushing that overtook my body.
“Why. Is. This. Taking. So. LONG?” I thought frantically after about 40 minutes of intense pushing. She was crowning now, but with each powerful push I gave, she barely moved forward. My mind switched from mother mode to doula mode. The only babies I’d witnessed make this slow of a descent in physiological birth had shoulder dystocias. “Please no, no shoulder,” I silently begged the universe. After obtaining my consent, Jen quickly did a sweep around her crowning head to see what was going on, but assured me all was well and to keep going.
Through the intensity, I thought of the women at my blessingway, who were burning their candles at that very moment and holding me in their thoughts. I drew strength from all the women I’ve served in birth, who’d invited me into their sacred space and allowed me to witness this very transformation. They did this, and so will I. A sense of peace washed over me.
Right before the entirety of her head was born, I suddenly HAD to move from the semi-reclined position I was in. I flipped up on my hands and knees and gave a massive push.
“Her head’s out!” I exclaimed, exasperated. The contraction faded away, and I reached down and rubbed my daughter’s head. I felt her hair, and her face. Oh my God, she is right here, literally existing in between worlds. Time seemed to stand still as she slowly restituted, preparing for the birth of her body, still under the water. I waited for what seemed like minutes (although it was probably 30 seconds) for the contraction to start building again.
I felt the surge building, and Jen said “Give me the biggest push you’ve got!” I was overcome by a wave of emotion, knowing I was about to meet my daughter. Her shoulders slipped out, and I birthed the rest of her body into the pool and brought her to my chest. 4:06 pm.
She was perfect. Quiet, like most babies born in water, but looked me right in the eyes as if to say “Hello mama. I am so happy to meet you.”
“I did it! I did it!” I told everyone around me. Leading up to this moment, I had so much fear, and struggled to have confidence in myself, but I really freaking did it.
I was ecstatic, flooded with hormones and truly experiencing a post-birth high. “That wasn’t that bad! I could totally do that again,” I said like a crazy person, deliriously happy with a perfect baby in my arms.
“Really?” asked Jen. “Because…. She was OP.”
“When she came out?!” I asked in disbelief. Occiput posterior, or OP, is a difficult presentation where a baby is born “sunny side up” rather than facing the maternal spine. Not once did I suspect I was birthing an OP baby (I didn’t have the classic painful back labor or double peaking contractions that OP babies often bring), but that would explain my premature urge to push.
Her cord continued to pulse for 13 minutes. After waiting in the pool to see if the placenta would make its appearance, I decided I was ready to get on my bed, where I easily birthed it later.
The following hours were beautiful and raw and tender. Nothing was a rush. Patrick held Ivy for the first time, and eventually cut her cord around 1.5 hours after birth. My first daughter, Charlotte, was over the moon to meet her new sister and witness her birth. I got cleaned up, inspected my soft and empty belly, and got tucked into bed with a big bowl of spiced rice porridge made by Lindsey. The meconium I had been so worried about earlier was a nonissue, and Ivy was splendidly healthy and doing well.
I attempted to latch her, but she was incredibly tired, so we let her sleep. She eventually nursed about 5 hours after she was born, and we syringe-fed her colostrum through the night in the hours she was too tired to latch. She got the hang of nursing at the breast within the first two days.
I later learned that I sustained a back injury when I pushed Ivy out (an L5 nerve root injury, according to my chiropractor), which resulted in tingling, numbness, and slight loss of motor function in my right leg and foot. Thankfully it healed rather quickly, and I was back to 100% function and feeling after about 3 weeks.
Overall, this entire birth and postpartum experience has been blissful. I am proud of myself for bringing my sweet baby into the world on my terms, and for taking a leap of faith into home birth care. I wouldn’t change anything if I could. I found a renewed belief in my body, a belief that had faltered for some time. I feel transformed by this experience in a way that is difficult to clearly articulate with words.
Final thoughts and reflections:
If I ever experience another pregnancy, I will never do HCG draws again. I ruined my first trimester by focusing on numbers instead of the joy of growing new life. I will instead live by “I am pregnant with a healthy baby until someone tells me otherwise.”
If you have even the slightest interest in home birth, honor it. Explore it. Make your decisions out of empowerment, not fear. I feel so angry with myself knowing I almost missed out on this life-changing, transformative home birth experience out of fear. Home birth isn’t right for everyone, but it is absolutely right for more than the 2% of American women who are currently giving birth at home.
Don’t be afraid to have your older children witness birth. Children trust birth. It will forever lay the foundation for how they view life and parenting. I am convinced that involving Charlotte so heavily in our prenatal care and birth are the reasons this transition has been smooth for her.
My epiduralized birth was far more painful and unpleasant than my unmedicated home birth. Yes, really. The sensations of physiological birth made more sense in my body and I was able to work alongside the surges effectively and with control.
Midwives are the key to changing the world. My care was incredible from start to finish, and I have never felt so seen and so heard from a “medical” provider before. I feel the pull to midwifery deep in my bones, and I cannot wait to serve at the feet of women in this role in the future.
Emily June Photography
Important Thank Yous:
To my husband, Patrick, Thank you for believing in me, trusting me, and trusting birth. Many partners try to deter a woman from birthing at home, but you’ve never had anything but faith in me. You are the most incredible father and provider to our family. I love you so much.
To my midwife, Jen, You are changing the world, one family at a time. Thank you for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Thank you for your kindness, patience, and support as I slowly found my way back to home birth. I can only hope to one day be even half the midwife you are.
To my friend, Sydney, Thank you for holding me, emotionally and physically, through my pregnancy and birth. I cannot wait to see you blossom as a midwife in the very near future. Your birth was the first I ever witnessed and it changed my life in so many ways. It was an honor to come full circle and have you present at mine.
To my friend Arika, Thank you for loving and caring for my daughter as though she were your own. Having you present with me for this experience was unforgettable, and I can’t wait to be by your side when you welcome your son in a few short months.
To my photographer and doula, Lindsey, Thank you for being a listening ear and a source of strength. Thank you for documenting this experience so perfectly, and for the stunning photographs that I will look back on for the rest of my days. This story will forever be brought to life through your imagery.
And last but not least, to my daughters, Ivy and Charlotte:Thank you for choosing me to be your mama. May you always know your worth. I love you.
Birth Photography: Lindsey Eden Photography
Midwife: Jen Grieco Midwifery and Wellness
