The HBAC of Adelaide Claire
After the birth of my 1st daughter by c-section, I was told that she was just too big and couldn't have been born any other way. There was no mention of the real reason, a failed induction for a baby suspected to be large, who turned out to be only 7 lbs 6 ozs. My husband and I decided at that moment that our next child would not be born in a sterile OR, where the first person to touch her was a random OR nurse who didn't care about her at all.
Even before we were expecting our second, we interviewed Chris Duffy and decided that she was the right person to help us with the birth of our next child. We wanted to be allowed to enjoy the pregnancy (something that unnecessary and excessive testing took away from us the 1st time around). We wanted to make the decisions regarding my care ourselves and Chris offered exactly that.
Sixteen months after we first met Chris, on the day before my due date, I started having early labor contractions. These continued every ten minutes or so for the next 2 days. I tried to rest as much as I could, but by the second night it was getting difficult to sleep in ten minute stretches. But just going into labor at all was farther than I'd gotten with my 1st delivery, so it was encouraging that something was happening. Finally on the third day, my contractions started to get closer together and when I talked to Chris around 5 pm she said she was heading over.
When Chris and the assistant midwives arrived around 8 pm, my contractions were about 6 minutes apart and I was 4 cm dilated. Around 10 pm, the birthing pool was finally filled (we had bought the wrong connector for the sink so we had to get creative). The water was such a relief, and really seemed to lessen the intensity of the contractions. Over the next 12 hours or so, my contractions stayed around 5 minutes apart (which was great since I got a decent break between them), and I slowly dilated to around 9 cm. At that point, Chris suggested breaking my water to speed things up. Since I was so exhausted already, I eventually agreed. It definitely worked. Within a few minutes of breaking my water, the contractions started coming much closer together and by 11 a.m. I just had a small lip of cervix left. We decided to try to push past the lip, since it felt so much better for me to push at that point. I pushed on the bed for a while, then moved back into the birthing pool (where we intended to have the baby). After pushing in the pool for another couple of hours, I was completely exhausted and didn't think I could push her out. There was a lot of begging to go to the hospital, telling people they weren't helping me, etc. involved at this point.
Thankfully, no one listened to me (I had told my husband not to let me change my mind unless there was something wrong with me or the baby, and I am so glad that he put his foot down). Since pushing in the birth pool wasn't working for me, I moved back to the bed. Once I started pushing on the bed again, I could finally tell that I was really going to push my baby out. Finally, at 3:18 p.m., Adelaide Claire was born. I held her right away and she was nursing within minutes. It was such a gentle and peaceful arrival for her, especially compared to her older sister's birth. She weighed in at 8 lbs 6 ozs (a full pound heavier than her older sister), and had her hand next to her head as well.
After Adelaide was born, Gus went to pick up older sis so that she could meet her new baby. Unfortunately, she fell asleep in the car on the way home and slept straight through until the next morning! So their first meeting was a little delayed, but wonderful just the same.
Adelaide's birth was an amazing experience for our family. It has brought me so far in healing emotionally from my first delivery, which was an extremely traumatic experience for me. During Adelaide's birth, I felt in control and in charge of what was going on. Chris' suggestions were just that, choices offered to me with the option to decline. Of course, she invariably made the right suggestions in order to get me through a long and exhausting labor. My husband jokes that before Adelaide's birth he was so nervous and stressed about it being difficult for me. In the end, he says, the event was calm and relaxed. And he is right, although it was a HBAC, and I feel like superwoman for having done it, it was really just another birth. But it was a birth the way that birth should be.