My Birth Story | Vancouver Newborn Photographer's Personal Experience
9 months after having our baby boy, I am finally getting around to sharing my birth story. This is one of my longer posts, but there is really no way to keep it short since I was in labour for 3 days! I want to paint a very real picture of what it was like, for those who are interested or perhaps preparing for their own upcoming births. I also want to document it for myself since Mother Nature has a way of making us forget the nitty gritty details. Thank you to the Birth Hour podcast, and to my friends and clients who shared their own stories, for inspiring me to share my own!
In the interest of keeping it real, I will illustrate with some very mediocre (and less than flattering) but real life snapshots from my phone taken around the time of the birth. My nice camera never made its way into my personal life during this time.
I will start with my husband’s words after we had our little boy: “Women should legit rule the world!” He’s right – women are so strong, we are WARRIORS, and I truly felt like one after going through childbirth. Whether a woman has given birth with or without drugs, surgically or not, at home or at a hospital, she has brought life into this world and how incredible is that? I will not lie, birth was HARD work for me…I was in labour for 3 DAYS, 2 of those 3 days spent in active labour with long, intense contractions that had me using every coping strategy I knew of. But I felt extremely fortunate to have been able to experience it as I know many women are not able to, and incredibly empowered, like there’s nothing I can’t handle now.
My birth plan was to labour at home with the support of my husband Ed and our doula, to head to BC Women’s Hospital for the delivery by one of our midwives from Pomegranate Community Midwives, and to avoid medical intervention altogether or for as long as I felt I could. I hoped to go the more natural route, not because I have anything against pain relief in labour, but because the thought of being hooked up to machines and birthing flat on my back with limited control was quite scary to me. Well, the actual birth didn’t go quite as planned (does it ever really?), but it wasn’t so bad, and I was beyond grateful for all the support I had.
DAY 1
Labour kicked off in the middle of the night when I realized the pains I’d been having for weeks were no longer Braxton Hicks contractions, but the real deal. That next day, I wanted to carry on as usual to help things move along, so I encouraged my husband to go to work and just keep his phone on loud, and I walked the dog, cooked, packed my hospital bag, and finished up some editing. The contractions weren’t bad at all, and really just a chance to mentally prepare myself. By that evening, I had to get in the bath because I needed some pain relief, and overnight, things really picked up. I found that rocking back and forth while on my knees somehow felt the best. I couldn’t talk through my contractions anymore, and needed to deep breathe and visualize each contraction as a wave that I was riding. My husband Ed was right there with me putting counter-pressure on my lower back – thank you Childbearing Society’s prenatal classes for all of your wisdom. We were waiting to meet the 3-2-1 criteria before calling the midwives: consistent contractions every 3 minutes for over 2 hours that are over 1 minute long. Well, we were exceeding the second two criteria, with long contractions for many hours on end, but not meeting the first one since the contractions were anywhere from 3-15 minutes apart. By the middle of the night, I was pretty desperate to have this baby because I had been having long, 2-3 minute contractions, for several hours in a row. By 7am, we had the phone out ready to call the midwife because the contractions were FINALLY consistently close enough together. And then – NOTHING. Labour completely stalled. I was rightfully pretty frustrated and disheartened after working so hard all night and feeling the end was near.
Day 2
This whole day was spent bouncing on a yoga ball and zapping myself with the TENS machine when the odd contraction would hit, and Ed kept me fed and hydrated. By the evening, I was back to having long and intense contractions, but again, they were inconsistently spaced apart. Our doula Leslie Dowler came over and ran me through the circuit of positions that are supposed to help move things along. And WOW did they work! By later that night I was begging to go to the hospital, and although the contractions were still not close enough together, the midwife suggested we meet at the hospital since it had been days and I was struggling to cope. The car ride over felt like one long, 20-minute contraction, which I realize now was likely several contractions back-to-back. Once we arrived our wonderful midwife Clare was waiting for us and examined me right away. Clare has such a warm, calming presence about her, and I was beyond grateful for her guidance. Because if it were anyone else telling me “Kim, you’re 2 cm dilated”, I would have wanted to punch them! But Clare’s kind eyes reassured me that I was doing an amazing job, so off we went home with morphine and Gravol to try to catch some sleep, even though I wanted to crumple in a ball of tears and have this baby cut out of me!
DAY 3
Sleep? Hah! The morphine and Gravol simply made me feel a little loopy, and every moment my heavy exhausted body gave in to sleep, I felt like I was being shaken awake by a volcano erupting from inside my body. I was mostly kneeling on our bed or on the floor hanging onto the side of it, and was making these deep animal like sounds, feeling like I had left my own body and was looking down on myself from above. I realize now that I had entered “Labourland” that I had heard about. At one point I felt a weird sense of euphoria and adrenaline that made me think “I can do this. I AM doing this!” It took the whole night for the contractions to get close enough together, and then suddenly around 5am, they were hitting me so hard that it’s like they were stacking together and creating several long contractions… one of them brought me to the ground and I couldn’t get up to walk to the car, and the other one lasted the entire ride to the hospital (an even crazier repeat of the drive the night before). Once we checked in at BC Women’s, it was all a blur. I was 6cm dilated and progressing quickly. I was sucking back laughing gas like it was oxygen and bouncing on the edge of the bed, and I can’t recall whether I was yelling or completely silent as I breathed and searched within myself for more strength. After 3 nights of no sleep, I couldn’t fathom having any more strength to push him out, so I opted for the epidural which now I know was the best decision for myself.
By the time we got upstairs and about an hour later when the anesthesiologist arrived, I’m pretty sure I was in transition and likely closer to 8cm dilated, which is the stage of active labour that is said to be the hardest, and for many people, the point at which you start to think you can’t go on. I had already gone through the worst of it, but let me just say.. the epidural was amazing! I was very very fortunate to have a “walking epidural”, which meant I could use the bathroom unassisted, walk around and try every different position I wanted to, and didn’t need to be hooked up to monitoring as I had feared. I still felt the contractions, especially as the epidural wore off (you can choose to keep pushing a button for more of the anesthesia) which was perfect for me because I could still feel what I was doing but without as much pain.
I wasn’t able to get any sleep after getting the epidural, but Ed and I both rested a little bit, and before we knew it midwife Clare was telling us it was time for this baby to come out – I was 10 cm! I thought the hardest part was behind me, but the pushing stage took 2 hours, and was a true test of endurance. I was giving it everything I had to get this baby out, and made really good progress, but his head was stuck behind my pelvic bone. We found out later that this was probably because of the large circumference of his head, combined possibly with the way he was positioned. My husband Ed, midwife Clare, and doula Leslie were in the room, and were cheering me on and an incredible support, but baby’s heart rate was going up and Clare had to give me my options after 2 hours had passed. One option was to keep pushing but possibly make no further progress, and the other was to get the OB team into the room. My eyes filled with tears as the previous 3 days flashed through my mind and I felt so defeated.
Because BC Women’s Hospital has an incredible team of OBs who are skilled in forceps assisted deliveries, which I later learned is a highly specialized area of expertise, I was in good hands and Clare reassured me that this would likely help bring my baby out and we wouldn’t need to do a cesarean. Our incredibly warm, skillful OB introduced herself, and reassured me that this was still 99% my doing but that she would just be using her tools to help guide the baby’s head around the pelvic bone. Our OB happened to be a medical resident, who assisted in the delivery with the guidance of another OB, and several medical students were in the room observing. Forceps deliveries definitely have their own set of risk factors and challenges with recovery, which I’m happy to tell you about in person if any of my readers would like to reach out personally. It definitely wasn’t the private, quiet birth I had hoped for, but I was also beyond grateful for these people who helped bring my son into the world.
… AND HE’S HERE!
With the OB’s assistance, it only took two quick pushes and he was out – our baby boy, 7 lbs 9 oz, 20 in, at 5:48pm on November 8th, 2018, head full of wispy brown hair and healthy as can be. Our squirming, screaming red tomato of a newborn was placed on my chest, and he cried for a good couple of minutes before falling asleep. The birth team quickly left the room after checking him to leave Ed and I with our new baby, and we had maybe 30 minutes of bonding time before Ed went out of the room to welcome my mom, stepdad and sister into our room, who had been there waiting almost the whole time we were at the hospital.
We spent two nights in the hospital because of the nature of my delivery, and I remember thinking for the first day that other than the pain with healing, having a newborn wasn’t so hard. He slept all the time between feeds every 2-3 hours peacefully in his bassinet. I definitely had my emotional moments, sitting there in the middle of the night with him worrying that my milk wasn’t coming in and crying for no apparent reason, from the wacky hormones and flood of emotions at the time. But overall, it was “easy” compared to what was to come at home. I think we were also on an adrenaline high, and when you have visitors coming to wish you congratulations, it feels kind of like the honeymoon phase of having a baby. I’ll have to write a separate blog post on the first few weeks with a newborn, because that was an entirely different story to tell.
It took us over a week to name our child. Since we didn’t know the gender before we had him, we had options for both boys and girls, and just felt like we needed to get to know him before naming him. After a LOT of thought, we named him Benjamin, and his middle names are Robert Gordon after two of his great-grandfathers and paternal grandfather.
So there you have it, the story of how our baby made his way into the world. I hope it was interesting to some of you reading and not too long to read. Please feel free to comment below with any questions, fears or thoughts on your upcoming birth, or your own birth story!
