Disclaimer
To friends, family, clients, and future potential clients – this is a personal post that will also share candid images from my own birth story (taken by our incredible birth photographer, Shawna Stanley). So if you wish to NOT see me in the intimate post-birth portion of labor, I would suggest to forego scrolling now or once you get the image area. However, as Shawna so perfectly stated “these stories are so important.” And if my clients trusted in me to share their intimate birth stories over the years, of course I’m also going to share my own.
I would also like to take a minute to mention up front that in sharing my story, perspective, and birth choices, I am in no way saying this is the right way to birth. Navigating pregnancy and birth-related choices and decisions is entirely up to each individual (hopefully with the support of their provider). So whether you chose to have care with an OB or midwife, deliver in-hospital or out-of-hospital, have an epidural or not, try for a vaginal delivery or plan a scheduled a c-section, those choices are YOURS to make. I respect and fully support every woman’s unique decisions made regarding all things birth.
My only hope in sharing and being so transparent in my own story is to potentially help someone who might find themselves in similar shoes to the ones I was in. Hearing about other birth stories in both of my pregnancies was incredibly helpful to me in preparing my own mindset for labor and delivery, so if this post helps even one other person, then my goal has been accomplished. With all of that said, let’s get to it.
A little backstory
A few years before becoming pregnant myself for the first time, I was invited to document the birth of a friend’s third baby in a local hospital. I instantly fell in love with the world of birth and dove into birth photography immediately after. Over the years since, I have been fortunate to document birth stories for families in a variety of birth settings – both in-hospital and out-of-hospital – which opened my eyes to the choices (and also the limitations) available to women in the realm of birth in today’s society. When I became pregnant with my first son back in 2017, I was VERY confident in what I wanted my labor & delivery to be like and after learning my options were much more restrictive (according to “hospital policy”) if I were to deliver with the OB practice I had initial care with, I made the decision to transfer providers and continue my care with Maura Winkler of Fika Midwifery – who I am (spoiler alert) happy to say has now delivered both of our sons.
With my first pregnancy, since both my husband and I were born via c-section, we both felt more comfortable delivering in hospital just in case anything should not go to plan. Luckily for us, Maura had hospital privileges at the time with Oshei, which made our decision to transfer our care to her an incredibly easy one. While we were planning to deliver in-hospital, I still hoped for an experience that was more like that allowed in out-of-hospital births: no IV hooked up to my arm, being able to freely move around and labor as I felt my body needed to, being able to labor in a tub, being able eat actual food and drink fluids as I needed, and most of all: not have an epidural. With Maura by our side, these were things I could have – and did have – in my labor even in the hospital setting, and I was incredibly grateful. I was also grateful to be in-hospital for the birth of our first son, because we did experience some unexpected “complications” at the end: our son was born covered in meconium and I had an issue with the chord to my placenta detaching after birth, requiring my placenta to be manually removed. While these were not major complications at all compared to the complications MILLIONS of women experience, it did open my eyes to the fact that regardless of how much you try and prepare, in birth sometimes things happen that you can’t anticipate or plan for.
Fast forward to my most recent pregnancy, and we now were faced with a tough decision: find care with a different provider (in the middle of a pandemic!) if we wanted to deliver in hospital, or stay with the provider I’ve grown to trust over the years and have an out-of-hospital birth (since hospital policies in our area have changed in recent years and independent midwifery practices are no longer able to deliver in hospital – which is total bullshit if you want my unfiltered opinion). I decided to stay with Fika Midwifery, but as someone with a husband who feels comfortable in hospital settings and as myself who never imagined having a baby outside of a hospital, there were some big fears we had to work through. Well, when I say we, it was mainly me because my husband is a total rockstar and said from the beginning he supported whatever decision I made.
Recognizing and Confronting Some Big Birth-Related Fears
Being pregnant is hard enough on its own, let alone being pregnant with a toddler at home to care for, during a pandemic in an election year, with limited social interaction and lack of personal time to do things you need to do for yourself. Needless to say, my anxiety was HIGH this pregnancy, especially in the area of all things health-related for myself and my family. But anxiety aside, I was also carrying some pretty big fears around with me, that I realized toward the end of my pregnancy were sitting with me stuffed down deep in a place where I tried to ignore/avoid them for as long as possible.
As I mentioned above, I never imagined having an out-of-hospital birth, but from my experience I knew the care I wanted and labor options I needed and wanted were only achievable with the midwifery model of care - especially here in Buffalo. (There was one time in summer 2019 that I had a passing thought where I could totally have a home birth, but that thought passed quickly and I always just hoped my second birth would be a better repeat of our first – in hospital with our awesome midwife, just without the complications). Now having the hospital location option out of the equation, I spent any time I did have thinking about our labor/birth during my early-mid pregnancy thinking about potential “what if this happens?” scenarios. In all honesty, it was a lot of time and energy thinking about negative outcomes and thinking about how my husband and I would feel if that scenario played out. What if our baby had meconium and needed to be transferred? What if I had a placenta issue and needed to be transferred? What if our baby died? And stupidest of all: what would people say about our birth choices if something went wrong?
Around 34 weeks, I had some very important conversations – with my husband, our doula, and finally a tear-filled conversation with my midwife. It was through these conversations I discovered I had a fully supportive team by my side, and I just had work to do on my own. My midwife had recommended a podcast to me, and from there I found another podcast, an amazing community on Facebook of like-minded mamas, and from that group connected with a woman who shared a fear-resolving worksheet on her instagram that opened my eyes to what was happening beneath the surface. Once I laid it all out on paper, I realized my fears were all tied to my previous birth experience, and stories I’ve heard of others’ birth experiences that had not gone to plan. Once I acknowledged this and thought through what I would do if faced with each scenario I feared happening, I accepted it was out of my control and let it go. From there, it became incredibly easy to start preparing my mindset for the birth experience I wanted. I listened to podcasts every free minute of every day that I had, and began to visualize the positive instead of the negative.
A Whirlwind of a Labor & Delivery
When I was 38 weeks+2 days, I woke up around 3:30am to go the bathroom and felt a little gush of fluid that stopped when I stood up. I couldn’t go back to sleep after, wondering if it was my water leaking/labor was starting or if I had just peed myself a little (y’all who haven’t been there, don’t judge – it’s a common pregnancy thing, you just wait). Finally around 6:00am I put on a cup of red raspberry leaf tea and called the Fika on-call number to check in. My midwife thought it likely wasn’t the start of labor since I wasn’t having any other fluid leaks, and since I was not yet even 40 weeks (my first born was born at 41 weeks). So I asked my husband to let me sleep in since I had been up all night and peacefully fell back to sleep until 9:30am. When I woke up, I had breakfast, and was feeling some low pelvic pressure, so I still kept wondering if labor was on the close horizon. The weather was really bad in Buffalo that day, and looked only to be getting worse, and since my mom was to be coming in from an hour away to watch our oldest when labor did begin, I decided to call her and see if she could come in that day just in case. Around 11:00am I went outside to play in the snow with my toddler, then I put him down for a nap at noon, and took a shower around 12:30. My mom arrived at 1:00pm, and not long after her arrival I KNEW I was in labor. I called my midwife around 1:40pm and we agreed to meet at her office, the Coit House, in an hour. I called our doula and birth photographer to give them the heads up – at the time fully thinking we had hours to go. But all of a sudden, things really ramped up. Around 2:19 I called my midwife again, and we discussed – through really intense contractions – whether or not we’d end up staying home or if we’d be able to make the drive to the Coit House. In all honesty, I thought for sure we were having a car baby if we left the house. But my husband – fearful of having the baby at home totally unprepared – got me into the car in a hurry and at 2:30pm we left the house with our toddler screaming behind us (he was so worried about me). My husband quickly drove us through Buffalo in incredibly heavy falling snow, passing slow-driving cars on Nottingham, and I’m pretty sure, running a few red lights on Delaware Ave.
My saint of a doula, Jen of Buffalo Doula Services, called us on the drive there after I sent her an incoherent text mid-contraction, and kept me breathing as calmly as she could on the drive. When we arrived at the Coit House at 2:50pm, she was miraculously already there to help me inside. We took off our shoes at the door and I remember her asking me if I felt I could make it up the stairs, and in between contractions I pulled together all the focus and strength I had and we raced up those stairs. I hopped in a tub Maura had gotten ready for me, and was in the tub for a bit until I knew I needed to get out since the positioning was not right for me. They set up a birthing stool for me beside the tub, and just as our birth photographer walked in the door, I began to actively push. With the next push, at 3:27pm, our son was born covered in vernix (literally a minute after I told everyone in the room I was not able to do it), and I was both shocked and relieved.
After he was born, my midwife and doula moved me to the bed in the next room, where I then got to hold my sticky vernix-covered baby, birth my placenta, nurse our son, eat a hot meal Maura had ordered for me, and take in every moment without any other interruption. Inspired by one of my birth clients, I even asked to cut the umbilical chord this time - which felt very significant to me knowing this is our last. At 6:30pm - just 3 hours after having our son – we left to go home, and by 7:00pm our oldest was meeting his little brother in the comfort of our own living room. It was a whirlwind of a day for my husband who had been trying to clean our basement until I started screaming in pain and we both realized it was go time, but this birth was literally EVERYTHING I needed.
When I imagined our birth story in the weeks leading up to delivery, I pictured it being daytime, and only saw my husband, Jen, Maura, and Shawna there, no one else. And interestingly enough, since my labor progressed so quickly and there was no time to call a birth assistant, that’s all who was there (and it ended up being daytime). Aside from holding onto that vision, in those weeks leading up to our birth, I faced and gave light to some really, really big fears I was harboring. And I am incredibly thankful that I MADE the time to do those things. When asked by a family member just two days prior to our son’s birth if was sure I wanted to have an out-of-hospital birth, I answered “yes” without having a doubt in my mind. And interestingly enough, the very next night, the night before we had our son, was the first night in WEEKS that I had not listened to a birth podcast in my free time before bed. Instead, I put on Netflix and binged a show until 1:30am while sending out emails to all my 2021 wedding clients letting them know I’d be out on maternity leave a few weeks later (little did I realize it’d be the next day). In those last 24 hours, I was confident, clear-headed, and relaxed and I am so, so grateful to have headed into birth feeling such peace with whatever happened. I’m grateful with how our labor and birth experience went, even while it was faster than I ever could have imagined, I know in my soul I needed it to be that way. And I’m so grateful for the days and weeks I had postpartum just being able to hold and bond with our son while my mom stayed to help my husband around the house and help with our toddler.
We are now 2 months in with our little guy and have felt so much love and support from family, friends, and our neighbors and I’m incredibly thankful. For as anxiety- and fear-filled as my pregnancy was, for the first time in a REALLY long time I feel at peace with everything (even Covid!), and if I’m being fully honest, I finally feel like myself again for the first time since before having our first son. My doula had said in the weeks prior to my delivery: “I have lots of faith that this birth will be healing for you” – and it absolutely was.
I am so glad I didn’t let fear get in the way of the birth experience I needed.
Resources I Found Helpful
Happy Homebirth Podcast & Happy Homebirth Facebook group
The Empowered Birth Podcast
Evidence Based Birth Podcast & YouTube Videos
The Birth Hour Podcast
The Autonomy Mommy (https://www.theautonomymommy.com) – I connected with Kyleigh from the Happy Homebirth Facebook group, began to follow her on Instagram (@theautonomymommy), and it is there that I came across her fear worksheet which I truly believe was the greatest tool in helping me address AND overcome my fears about this birth. Without it, I am not sure I would have gotten to the place I did.
All images below ©Shawna Stanley – http://shawnastanley.co
