Guest Post: Nate’s birth story

Today, I’m delighted to feature Nate’s natural, active birth story from Lauren. Thanks for sharing Lauren!

Lauren is a Texan relocated to Dublin and one half of the team raising a hilarious baby boy called Nathaniel. She recently started The Dare Project to keep track of motherhood and hopes it will be a lovely, if not slightly embarrassing, gift for her kid when he’s all grown up.

It is a little hard to know where to begin with the birth story and how much to share. One thing I’ve learned since having Nate is that sharing experiences with other women is a very powerful tool. In the hours before Nate’s birth, I read several birth stories that gave me the courage and strength I needed to endure the labor.

Let’s get some things out of the way first. I had a natural, active birth and loved the experience. I think a lot of people are afraid of the pain, but I kept telling myself that my body was built to take on this challenge and there’s nothing more natural and beautiful than childbirth. And I was right! Luckily, I had a lot of help in getting mentally prepared: I took prenatal yoga and active birth classes with the amazing Lou at Yoga Dublin; I was part of the Community Midwives Scheme at Holles St; and I read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth.

Nate was late. Ten days late. The longest ten days of my life. I was beginning to give up hope that he was going to set up shop permanently in my uterus. For ten days I drank cup after cup of raspberry leaf tea, walked vigorously around the block, bounced on my birthing ball and pleaded with the baby to come out. I ate three pineapples, tons of spicy food, tried reflexology and had two sweeps by the midwives. I also reorganized our home office, sewed three pillow cases, knitted a blanket and played Angry Birds non stop to contain my nervous energy. (In hindsight, I should have slept and read all those books I’d saved up for my maternity leave!)

On Thursday, August 12, I had an appointment with one of the midwives, Kate. She gave me a sweep (again) and went through all the induction process. It was sobering to hear that if the baby didn’t arrive by the following Tuesday, I’d be admitted to the hospital. We scheduled a fetal scan for Saturday morning and I left determined not to make that appointment. That night, Chris made a ridiculously spicy pizza with lethal peppers grown in our garden and I washed it down with several pints of pineapple juice. I felt really nauseous, but chalked it all up to an atrocious diet that day.

At 2:ooam I woke up with terrible stomach cramps. This really made me angry, because for the first time in weeks I had found a comfortable position in the bed. Then I realized, I’m about to have a baby. I called the midwives at about 2:30am and got a really cheery woman at the end of the phone, “Congratulations pet, you’re about to have a baby.” Those were exactly the words I needed to hear to take this from being scary to exhilarating. She told me I still had a long road ahead and to let my husband sleep, and try to get some rest myself. Yeah, right. I tried for about 15 minutes to not tell Chris what was happening, and by 3:00am we were both up and ready for baby!

I spent a good deal of time the rest of the night in the shower to relieve what I thought was intense pain (little did I know what was to come) or being cuddled by my hubby. We read through all the paperwork we got from the antenatal classes and got the hospital bag in order. At some point we moved to the living room and put on Muppets Take Manhattan to distract us. We made toasty sandwiches and waited for a visit from Kate.

At 12:00pm, Kate checked me and I was only 1cm dilated and instructed me to stay home. The cramping had eased off at this point and for the next few hours, it seemed that everything had stopped. The road seemed longer and longer. Chris tried his best to distract me and by 4:00pm the contractions were beginning in earnest. Eventually the shower and back massages weren’t cutting it anymore so we called my brother-in-law to drive us to the hospital. (Holles St annoyingly doesn’t have a parking lot and I didn’t want Chris to miss anything to feed the meter)

I read in Ina May’s book that some women slow down their contractions en route to the hospital. I felt very calm in the car and could feel the pain easing off, but I knew I could get the contractions back on track if I concentrated enough. At 6:30pm, I was formally admitted to the hospital at 2cm. It was a quiet evening and I got the fabled room 9–complete with power shower and birthing ball!

The only pain relief I used was the entinox gas and the shower. I spent lots of time in the shower. So did Chris, who spent most of the evening in wet jeans! Fiona was our amazing midwife for the delivery. She was so sweet and supportive and exactly the type of person I needed in the room with me. At 8:30pm I was still only 2-3cm, so I decided to have my waters artificially broken. What follows is a blurry haze, thanks partly to the entinox and because I didn’t have my glasses on. At some point I remember shutting down. Everything felt so intense, not painful like cut or a burn, but like your muscles are all engaged, running on fuel you didn’t know existed. My head felt like it was going to explode and I wanted tell someone to stop it all, but I couldn’t even make myself talk. I kept thinking about Angry Birds. As each contraction came, I imagined dropping a white egg and exploding the pain. It’s ridiculous, but it worked. I remember tugging at Chris’s plaid shirt. I wanted to rip it off of him, to tear something up just to get rid of all the energy pulsating through my body. But instead I just huffed and puffed on the entinox (and broke my tooth in the process).

Fiona examined me again at 10:30pm and said I was well underway, but had more time to go. I said I felt like I needed to push and she said that I probably could start soon and that we should talk about what position I wanted to be in for the birth. Chris and I had discussed and practiced many positions. I was adement that I would not give birth on my back. I wanted a natural, active birth. But as soon as she said I could think about pushing, I was ready to push. Fiona had turned around to write in my chart, I was laying on my back breathing through contractions after the examination, and suddenly I had to push. I had to have my baby. Fiona turned back around. “You’re ready to go. Do you want to get off the bed or roll over.” As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring my body to move. Within three massive, mind blowing, terrifying pushes, Nate was out. The song playing was “3 is the magic number” by DeLaSoul. 11:08pm. Just in time to be born on Friday the 13th.

Fiona placed Nathaniel, my gift from god, on my chest. He was amazing. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t stop crying. And to be honest, it was about 30 minutes before I remembered to put on my glasses, so I really couldn’t see. Chris cut the cord, which was far bloodier than I expected. I cleaned up a bit, had toast with Marmalade (which tasted amazing, and I hate Marmalade). Eventually we settled down and settled into the room we’d stay in for the night. At one point I woke up to find Chris holding Nate on his chest singing “Build me up buttercup”. That first night was honestly a little scary. I wasn’t sure what to do with the baby, but seeing Chris and Nate together was the most amazing sight I have ever seen.

By 9:45am the next morning we were on our way home from the hospital. Labor was easy, the real work was about to begin.

As you know, I love positive birth stories. When you’re pregnant, people everywhere seem to be intent on filling your mind with the worst of the horror stories, and it can actually be difficult to find the positive stories about childbirth. When I completed the GentleBirth course, one of the first things we learned was to block out the negative and scary stories. Instead we were to concentrate on the positive stories, in an effort to replace the Hollywood-style horror movie of childbirth that most of us have developed after watching dramatic TV and movie depictions of the event for years. It took some time and effort, but eventually I managed to visualise a calm, gentle birth for Little Man, and if you’ve read Little Man’s birth story, you’ll know that luckily, it came to pass.

It can be difficult to find positive birth stories, however, because “bad news travels fast”, and people seem to prefer telling the gorey tales. It’s for that reason that I’m trying to gather a selection of positive stories here on Mama.ie.

If you have a positive birth story of your own that you’d like to share, you can contact me at Lisa[at]mama.ie. Or send me a message on Twitter @Mamadotie, or on Facebook on the Mama.ie page.