Oscar’s Home Birth
Oscar was born on a Nor’Wester day – a warm, dry wind and my favourite here in a land that the Gods of Air alternately tease and batter depending on their mood, in the middle of the vast expanse of the Southern ocean.
We’d arrived in New Zealand on the 2nd of August when I was almost 35 weeks pregnant, to the cold, fine, dry weather of the Southern Imbolc. August was bitterly cold and our memories of the lack of insulation in Kiwi homes proved all too true as we failed to get the interior of our rental property above fourteen degrees during the day and we slept fully clothed. My body was not going to give birth in that temperature! Reluctantly, and rather desperately we found a warmer alternative on the Cashmere Hill overlooking the city and the long line of the Southern Alps and moved in on 24th August.
After unpacking a second time and getting the birth pool and ‘birth box’ of useful bits and pieces all ready, we sat down on Friday night (31st) on the veranda to watch a stunning sunset of molten gold over the long line of the alps. I uttered the fated words: “Well, if the worst comes to the worst, at least we’ve got all the essentials ready”. It was our first pause in months of organising an international relocation. With 10 days to go before my due date, and with first babies so often being ‘late’, I was looking forward to time to take stock and centre myself and try to integrate all the mixed emotions I was feeling around having left my homeland. My Mum was due to visit and hopefully attend the birth, in a week’s time. The Gods, however, had other ideas. My waters broke at 6 o’clock the next morning.
At first I thought it was stress incontinence – I had a really irritating tickly cough – and I still wonder if my coughing overnight pushed Oscar’s foot through the membranes and broke my waters. In any case, we were off! So much for the trip we had planned to the farmers’ market. Nope. Today we were giving birth. The first thing that hit me was the irony that after all this time exchanging emails and then finally meeting and getting to know our very switched on Homebirth midwife, this was the one weekend she had told me she was off duty. Her back-up colleague, who I’d met just two days before, stepped in to help.
Contractions had begun pretty much straight away but as it was early I made a couple of calls to the UK to let close family and friends know that things had started. I remember even then having to pause my conversations for each contraction, and looking back now I realise that already I was not really ‘with-it’, my consciousness shifting to accommodate the labour. We called our long-time local friends (the homebirth of whose son we had attended 9 months earlier while visiting NZ) to warn them we would be needing them. Once they arrived, the menfolk went off to hire a hot water urn to help in the prep of hot towels. Have you ever wondered why in all the old movies they call for hot water and towels when a woman is birthing? Well we finally discovered why – hot damp towels put on a woman’s belly and low back during a contraction are awesome for natural pain relief. We’d found at my friend’s birth the year before it was amazing how hot she needed the water – we were burning ourselves trying to wring out the towels until we used marigold gloves and just couldn’t keep the water hot enough for long enough. So we thought hiring an urn would be a good plan.
Meanwhile, Andrea stayed home with me and I took the opportunity to focus and to light candles, honouring the spirits of place and the ancestors of this land here in NZ, as well as my British ancestors and Gods, calling for strength, courage and inspiration. In lighting the candles I used a gift received over a year before from a friend in the Craft. She had gifted me a match carefully wrapped up in black card and tied with black cotton. It was time to draw on that Spark of dark inspiration.
For most of the morning, contractions were regular and about 5-6 minutes apart. They were intense enough that I had to move and certainly couldn’t talk though them. Around 12:30 I decided it would be good to get some rest and I lay down for about an hour and a half, during which time the contractions slowed right down to about 15 minutes apart. Our midwife came over for a first visit around 2:30pm and contractions increased(!). She advised us to continue with just a hot water bottle for pain relief for as long as possible and then left us to it.
Around 3:30 in the afternoon I had a strong sense that it was time to get things moving. I knew that a woman’s hormones are naturally organised to promote birth at night, and I just suddenly felt that it was time to take advantage of that approaching window of opportunity. I remember the pain increasing and I found myself getting angry – not with anyone or anything, but just really contacting anger as a force for change and feeling my determination rise. I stomped and growled and it felt gooood! For the most part I had been in our bedroom, on my knees on our bed with a huge pile of cushions to lean my upper body on, swaying my hips side to side into each contraction. Then as things got more intense I was walking back and forth, sometimes stamping my feet as the pain washed through.
By 5pm, I called for hot towels and our midwife returned half an hour later by which point contractions were every 2-3 minutes, lasting for over a minute and from my point of view it was getting pretty intense. I was using a combination of long breaths and ‘fire breathing’ – a technique taught to us at antenatal classes. For me, all the pain was focussed in my low back. It felt like someone was driving a hard metal tray backwards into my sacral bone. It made me wonder if perhaps the baby had moved into the dreaded forwards facing position (or occiput posterior as it’s called), but our midwife felt the positioning was still good, as it had been for weeks.
I don’t know if other birthing women have a similar experience, but I found the contractions felt most intense and like they were having most effect when I leaned forwards about thirty degrees from vertical. Standing totally upright or conversely, leaning too far forwards both made contractions less painful but I had the impression that those positions weren’t doing the job so well. Every so often I allowed myself one of these less painful ‘chicken’ contractions, but otherwise I leaned forward a little bit and went for it. My beloved husband had a sore back after the birth, as I found the best way to achieve this forwards leaning position was to hang my arms round his neck and let him take a good bit of my weight. Which I did. Again… and again…. and again. He was literally my rock, bless him, totally solid when most needed.
I found myself in the bathroom for the biggest contractions, probably at least in part because the baby now felt noticeably lower, and I felt pressure low down in the pelvis like I needed to pee or poo, so being near the toilet seemed like a good plan. It was about 7:30pm. The hot towels were no longer enough – we needed more of them and I wanted them hotter! Contractions were now totally consuming, lasting up to two minutes. We had been putting towels on my belly and low back once a contraction got going but now that contractions were lasting so long, the towels were cooling off by the peak, when I needed them most. It seems obvious in retrospect, but our midwife showed us how to keep one really hot towel back for applying during the worst part of the contraction and that helped immensely. It’s funny how little things can make such a difference.
About this time the contractions started rolling into one another so that one wasn’t completely finished before the next one began. It would have been great to get into the birth pool but (unbeknown to me) it had got too hot and was taking time to cool down. I remember distinctly thinking that I had reached my limit and couldn’t do this much longer. I could manage 3 or 4 more contractions, but then I would quite simply have had enough. After one of these, I had a sudden and surprising urge to push but dismissed it as it couldn’t possibly be time yet. Our midwife however, suggested we do a first internal examination and after relocating to the lounge (which looked more inviting for such a procedure than our bathroom floor) I was literally amazed when she said I was fully dilated and would I like to get in the pool?
I will never forget the sensation of slipping into that water. It was like a deep, instinctual wave of relief. And an instantaneous and irresistible urge to push. So I pushed. And met a rather interesting sensation that made me stop pushing! It’s hard to describe the unique feeling that accompanies pushing a baby out through the birth canal. An intense burning is certainly part of it, but doesn’t really do it justice(!). Suffice to say it gave me pause for a couple of contractions… until I remembered that there was only one way forwards, and dug deeper.
So I pushed. After being hot during a contraction and freezing cold between, I was now a little warm in the water, so I munched on our pre-prepared ice cubes of frozen juice (highly recommended) between contractions and hung out in the water, kneeling but still leaning forward with my hands resting on a ledge in the pool floor made by a beanbag we’d positioned under one side of the pool before we filled it. With the midwives’ encouragement I got the hang of focussing and making two long, quiet pushes down with each contraction. The baby made speedy progress, initially sliding back some, but then less so, and after a little over half and hour, its head came to the maximum stretch point while the midwife gently held it back there to allow my tissues to accommodate the stretch. That was tough, having to be still and just ‘be’ with that intensity of sensation, as the seconds ticked past, waiting for the next contraction to come. But come it did, and with it I birthed the baby’s head. An amazing twisting/turning sensation accompanied the arrival of the shoulders and suddenly I was being asked to pick up my newborn baby from the bottom of the pool.
How can you ever describe that moment? What blessing. Here was our baby! I held him to my chest while he cried gently for a minute or so. Having been facing me whilst I was pushing, Mark came round to my side and together we welcomed this precious new soul into the world, talking to him gently and stroking his skin. Time stopped.
I will always be grateful for that space we were given to welcome Oscar quietly there in the pool, in peace. I remember the soft light, the awe and honour in the faces of our friends who looked how we felt when we witnessed the birth of their son less than a year before, the candles still burning in the fireplace where I’d made my prayers and lit them at the start of the day, the lights of the city twinkling below, the breath of the ancestors gathered to welcome another member of the tribe.
After 40 or so timeless minutes, we left the pool because the warm water was keeping the umbilical cord pulsing and delaying my delivering the placenta. With help, we got the baby latched onto my breast and after taking a homoeopathic, I birthed the placenta, an hour and a half after delivering the baby. Just wonderful that there was no rush. Mark finally tied the cord with string and I cut it, then a few practicalities followed, some pleasant (examining our beautiful wee boy and the placenta), and some not so pleasant (local anaesthetic injections prior to some stitching). Of all the things I did that day, I truly had to dig deepest to find the courage for those four injections. It’s not so easy when the endorphins are wearing off.
Then it was off to bed. Mark blew out the candles that had burned faithfully all day long, and we tucked ourselves up in bed with this amazing little soul sound asleep on my chest and later, on Mark’s. I made sleepy thanks for the great blessing that was Oscar’s birth, for the honour of welcoming this precious new life, grateful that we had been able to do so consciously, in a calm environment, without the need for intervention or drugs and a little proud of having found courage and strength when needed.
So where are we know? 16 months on, we’re the rather tired, still breast-feeding, bed-sharing, baby-wearing parents of a blond haired, blue eyed cheeky monkey who’s walking, babbling and a great, great joy.
But also, we’re very grateful – first and foremost to the Gods of Blood and Birth for our gentle encounter with that brutal and awesome force. To Christchurch’s Homebirth Midwife team for a fantastic service, and in particular to my main midwife Michelle, whose compassion and sensitivity and sheer good sense when I hit the wall various times in those first 6 weeks I shall never forget. We would have had to pay thousands of pounds in the UK for independent midwifery care had we wanted similar dedicated support and expertise with homebirth.
We also really appreciated the wit and wisdom (and evening meals in the first week) of our fellow homebirthers and the quality of information and reading material in our homebirth antenatal classes.
It was great to receive reading articles before the birth that challenged our acceptance of the ‘norms’ in child-rearing that our society subtly enforces. As a result, we have consciously chosen to allow Oscar to sleep with us and have carried him for many hours in those first few months against our bodies in a fabric sling or pouch. From 3 months he’s been nappy-free when at home, where he pees and poos in response to a cue over a potty (elimination communication as it’s known – it’s great fun). We make a point of sitting down all together to eat as a family and the TV is now in a corner of the garage and brought out for the occasional late evening DVD. I’m also grateful for the advice of a friend and teacher who told me that parenting is all about ‘presence’ – reminding myself of that when I feel I have little left to give has been so helpful. It’s been a real journey of discovery, and one where we have found that each time we put current fashions to one side and reach back to our ancestors for what is simple, low-tech and instinctive, the whole family (and the environment) have benefited. It still amazes me when I walk in a baby gear shop how little ‘stuff’ we’ve actually needed for Oscar’s first year and a bit.
So that was Oscar’s birth. I am still awed by my close encounter with the unstoppable, primal force of opening that is birth. It is truly amazing what a woman’s body can do. I have crossed the threshold into motherhood and, like all those who have gone before me, I am changed. I just feel so very fortunate that our encounter with birth was a gentle one.
Lou