I do not want any medical procedure done on either myself or my baby unless I have given explicit consent to that procedure. I would like to stay in charge of my own labor, with assistance of the hospital staff as necessary. I am trying for a gentle, unmedicated birth. I want to give my child as gentle an entry into the world as possible. Any (non-emergency) procedure on her/him should be done only with my explicit permission, and in a way that I am comfortable with. I feel very strongly about not being separated from my baby at any point. If it is absolutely necessary for the baby to leave the mother's side, I would like my partner to accompany the child. With your cooperation, I look forward to a positive birth experience.

Homebirth & Midwives: The Safe, Nonviolent Way To Give Birth

Elisabeth’s Home Birth -- at 42 Weeks

I was told that my due date was January 2, 2001, the second day of the millennium. However, I had a feeling my baby would come in her or his own sweet time. For one thing, it was my first baby, and first babies tend to wait just a bit longer than subsequent babies. For another thing, the women in my family tend to have longer than average pregnancies. And for another thing, every baby is different, and they know when they are ready to be born. Therefore, I did not let the nurse-midwives who comprised my back-up team pressure me into having any "non-stress tests," which are standard procedure beginning the day a woman reaches her due date. I was determined not to expose my baby to ultrasound in any form during my pregnancy.

On the Monday following my due date, I woke up to painless contractions which came at regular intervals and then stopped abruptly when my partner left for work (evening shift). On Tuesday, I experienced the same phenomenon. On Wednesday morning we went to a prenatal appointment with the Certified Professional Midwife who would be attending my homebirth, and told her what was happening. "Yes," she said, "I have a feeling this baby is going to come on the weekend, when you know that your partner is going to be home."

Sure enough, that Friday evening, I started having contractions that were not painless. When my partner came home (around midnight), I had been in labor for several hours. I was not concerned - I knew it would be a while - but my partner immediately called the Midwife, waking her up. She told us to go to bed, which we did. I slept between contractions.

The next three days were a blur, and I can’t remember what things happened on what days, so I may get some things a bit out of order. I was in first-stage (non-pushing) labor for 72 hours - although my Midwife says that "only" the last 17 hours was "real" labor, and everything up to that point was "pre-labor." However, I did not notice a difference. It all seemed real to me. I was having painful contractions the whole time - they never stopped coming. They were all over the place - 1/2 hour apart, 2 minutes apart, 15 minutes apart, 1 minute apart, 20 minutes apart - no perceptible pattern. Seemingly random contractions, throughout the entire 3 days.

I believe it was on Saturday that my mother arrived, and I believe it was Sunday when my midwives arrived for the first time. As soon as they arrived, my contractions went from 2 minutes apart to 30 minutes apart, so they eventually went home and came back the next day. If someone watched me too intently during a contraction, and I felt too "observed," the contraction would "peter-out" halfway through.

I had to have someone pressing as hard as they could on my lower back for the duration of each contraction, or the pain was unbearable. My partner and my mother took turns doing this. Oddly, the pain was not in my lower back, but in my lower abdomen, yet somehow I knew that my lower back was where I needed the pressure. I spent most of the contractions sitting in a rocking chair, which seemed to be the most comfortable position for me. I soaked in a warm bath for a while, but it was harder for people to press on my back, so I got out.

When the Midwives arrived on Monday, there was an unavoidable disruption in my progress. They needed me to lie on my back while they listened with a fetoscope and felt my abdomen during a contraction. It was very uncomfortable to have a contraction in that position. This disruption again caused my contractions to go from 1 or 2 minutes apart to 20 or 30 minutes apart. This may be because my mental focus went from inward, before they arrived, to outward, after they arrived and wanted me to do things and have things done to me. I was grateful for their involvement, however, because the baby was not in a very good position, and they needed me to do certain things to get the baby into a better position. One thing they wanted me to do was kneel and lean forward over an exercise ball. At one point I was absolutely exhausted and wanted to try to sleep for a while, and they suggested that I kneel and lie forward over the giant exercise ball and sleep in that position. That is the most uncomfortable I have ever been in my life, and I couldn’t sleep in that position any more than I could sleep standing on one leg.

I finally reached transition, but didn’t know it. I remember screaming through each contraction, and the Midwives telling me to drop my jaw, which lowered the pitch of the sound I was making. I felt like I couldn’t do it any more (the surest sign of transition, but I didn’t recognize it). At one point a contraction hit and I yelled "No!" and my mother corrected me: "YES!" - she wanted me to welcome the contraction. Never have I wanted more to hit someone.

I remember saying "I just need a break!" (I had tried, the two previous nights, to give myself a break by soaking in a hot tub and drinking some wine so that I could sleep a little during the night - it slowed it down the first night, but didn’t stop the contractions from coming. It didn’t even slow them down the second night. It was impossible to sleep through the contractions.) I started babbling incoherently: something about "everyone deserves a break!"

I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed. The Midwives suggested that they check my dilation, and if I was no where near 10 centimeters, I might want to go to the hospital just so that they could give me something to let me sleep. I actually started to consider it. I told the Midwives that my partner and I would discuss it, and they realized that the two of us needed to be left alone. My mother was sleeping in the spare room. The Midwives left me and my partner alone in our bedroom and closed the door. Instead of discussing the Midwives’ suggestion, my partner and I laid down on our sides on the bed. My partner promptly fell asleep. I, myself, went into complete denial. "All right, forget it. I’m not having a baby. There’s nothing I have to deal with. There’s no decision I have to make. I’m just going to go to sleep!" (Yeah, right.) I basically just gave up, and closed my eyes. I stopped trying to "do it." I stopped trying to "deal with it" or handle it or think through it.

As it turned out, this is exactly what I needed to do. My Midwives had told me that I shouldn’t try to control labor or intellectualize it, and I had agreed with them, but I thought that just trying to deal with it - just "taking" it, without collapsing into a sobbing heap or something -- was passive enough not to interfere with labor. It wasn’t. I needed to mentally let go. I needed to "give up" and just let my body do its thing.

Almost immediately, I had a pushing contraction. I sat bolt-upright. "Did I just have a pushing contraction?" I couldn’t believe it. I waited for the next one, and when it came, I pushed with it a little. I felt something move - I felt something give - I felt my water break! "Did my water just break? I think my water just broke!" I poked my partner awake. I showed him the wet pad I was sitting on. "Go get the Midwives!" I said. I have never been so relieved in my entire life. I felt a rush of energy. I had been completely exhausted, but now I was wide awake, and alert, and excited. It felt so good to actually be able to do something with the contractions - to work with them - to push, and feel movement - feel myself make progress. I remembered my mother describing pushing contractions as feeling "wonderful." I had thought that she meant "painless," and when she came in the room with the Midwives, I promptly informed her that they were not painless. However, I didn’t care about the pain. The pushing contractions WERE wonderful, because I didn’t have to just "take" them. That was what she had meant.

The Midwives went into high gear. They worked together like a well-oiled machine, getting everything prepared and positioning themselves on the floor in front of me. I squatted on a birthing stool, with my partner behind me. He put his arms around me and we held hands. The pushing stage took 45 minutes, but it felt like 15 to me. When I pushed, I roared like a lion and pushed forward with my arms, still holding hands with my partner. I pulled on his arms so hard, he probably felt like they were being ripped from their sockets. I needed resistance to push against.

After each push, the Midwives told me I was doing great; I was doing beautifully. They told me to reach in and feel the head, which I tried to do, but I couldn’t feel anything. They held warm compresses against me, which felt absolutely wonderful. I would be roaring like a lion, and they would hold a warm compress against me, and I would actually stop to say, "ooh… my… that feels WONderful." People kept handing me herbal teas to drink and sticking orange slices in my mouth, and I remember thinking I was a little too busy for that and it was distracting me. Nothing impeded my progress, however - I kept pushing and roaring and straining my partner’s arms.

I felt a stretching - a burning - a stinging - the baby’s head came out. My mother says the baby’s eyes were open and looking around even before the rest of the body was out. My mother thought I was supposed to wait at that point, but the Midwives told me to go ahead and push, so, victorious and triumphant, I felt the rest of my baby’s body leave my own body. Almost at once, my baby was in my arms - all squishy and beautiful. I had warned my partner that newborns are sometimes purple and wrinkled, but there had been no need. Our baby was absolutely gorgeous from the first moment. The Apgars were 9 and 10. I whispered that everything was all right now - and I just held my baby for 10 or 15 minutes, without checking the gender. My mother was going crazy, but she held her tongue.

Finally, I let the Midwife look. She was a girl. "Hello, Elisabeth Jane," I said. I birthed the placenta, which was a wonderful feeling of release, and only then did I allow the Midwife to cut the cord. I didn’t have a tear, just a skid. Elisabeth never cried once, that whole first day. The first time she cried was when we gave her her first bath. She was born on Monday afternoon, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Before she was an hour old, I was lying on my side, breastfeeding her.

That night, Elisabeth slept between her father and me in our bed. When I woke up the next morning, she was lying there, looking at me, still not crying. She is three years old now, still breastfeeding, and still sleeping in our bed.

Alexander -- another successful home birth

~~have not written my son's home birth story~~