Micah's Birth Story

Preface: I posted this on another blog and I am consolidating them, so I moved it here.  Micah is 3-months-old now.  Here's what he looks like now:

 

I made him those leg-warmers out of a pair of gym socks that Erik didn't want anymore because they were too tight.  Awesome!  Anyways... without further ado, Micah's birth story...

 

The Birth Story of Micah Lucero Rakestraw

May 30th, 2008

Where does a birth begin? This birth was a teaching birth about letting go and opening and relaxing. This birth began with Noah's birth, to be honest.

Noah was born in a hospital with a doula on January 5, 2005. Of course, we didn't know very much about birth and babies. We did what we thought best. But the story became less of ours and more of theirs. I went into the hospital thinking that I could labor alone and peacefully until the time of birth. The thing that didn't allow me to really open up was all the strangers parading in and out asking me questions and telling me what I should do and what I needed and what I could not do. Then there was a misunderstanding about my hemoglobin level and an IV was forced upon my by a very irate doctor who told me that I would be endangering my baby if I continued with my attitude. From then on, labor was extremely painful and scary as I felt a complete loss of control over the situation. My cervical lip stayed at 9.5 cm for 4 hours. I could not relax if I wanted to. They told me to push, but I was so scared and exhausted that pushing efforts were futile. Then they told me if I couldn't get the baby out in the next 2 hours, "we would have to look at other options." That's when I said I would do anything to avoid a cesarean. They suggested giving me an epidural. I consented. When I got the epidural I fell asleep for an hour. Then they woke me to tell me to push the baby out. I was on my back with the IV and the monitor strapped on. Nurses pushed my feet up by my belly and watched the monitor for contractions. Whenever I had a contraction they would tell me to push, and I can still hear the one nurse, sweet middle-aged Filipino woman, saying, "Harder, harder, harder, harder..." Since I couldn't feel the baby coming out and I couldn't feel the contractions, it was difficult to know how hard to push, so I just pushed til my face turned blue. When he came out I wanted to hold him so badly, but they said he had a little meconium in the fluid, so they had to take him away and suction him. At that time they also wiped him down and wrapped him tightly in a receiving blanket and put a hat on him. I was overjoyed to have my baby when they gave him to me. I never felt the placenta come out. At this point, everyone was happy and parents were brought in and there was much joy. He was born at 6:18 pm. I had arrived at the hospital at 7am and already dilated 7 cm.

After about an hour they wheeled me to my room. Two beds divided by a curtain. A wooden chair was next to the bed. There was a woman next to me. We never saw each other. Within one hour, a huge man, maybe 350 lbs or more, came in and said he had to bathe Noah. I said, he didn't need a bath. The man stared at me a second and then said that if he didn't get a bath that no one could touch him ungloved except for me and Erik. Erik looked at me with a look, that said, "Just let him." How many times had that thought run through my head while in the hospital, "Just let them. Just let them." As the man bathed Noah, sweat was dripping off his head onto my baby, who was screaming. I could not stop the tears from flowing down my own face. After the bath, he put Noah under the warmer. As soon as he left, I took Noah out from the warmer and held him on my chest under my clothes. When a nurse came in about 20 minutes later to turn off the warmer, she gasped audibly and looked at me with panicked eyes, as she asked, "Where's the baby?!" I gently opened my nightgown to show her. She did laugh and said, "Oh." I guess she wasn't used to seeing that.

Finally, Erik was exhausted and went home to sleep. I tried to settle in and sleep, but mostly I just held Noah all night. The next day, we convinced them to let us go home in the afternoon, which would have been prior to the 24-hr standard wait time. They okayed us to go home around 11 am, but then we kept having to wait for one more person to come in and have us sign some form, or one more person to check some vital sign. We left at around 5 pm and got home in a dizzying stupor of our experience. We still had to adjust to life at home, and that was difficult as well. I vowed I would never birth in a hospital again.

I found out I was pregnant again on September 27, 2007. It was a little scary because I had just started a new job and we now owned a house which required both our incomes for the mortgage. That's when the miracles started happening. My parents had moved to Tucson in Spring of that year. When I called my mom and told her about the pregnancy I was crying because I couldn't figure out how to stay home again. She said that their lease was up in May of 2008 and they could move in with us and help out with the mortgage. She was adament that it would work out. Baby was due May 29th (according to my calculations, but May 30th according to the midwife... more on the midwife later.)

I was scared to tell my boss about the pregnancy, but knew I had to. I had only worked there about a month when I found out. He was okay with it. I told him I'd be gone for longer than 12 weeks and so he'd probably want to hire another person. He said, "We'll see." Fortunately, the week I stopped working was the week my part-time college student co-worker's finals ended and he could start working full time. Second miracle.

I started to research unassisted childbirth. The more I read about it, the more convinced I was that I had to do it. Alone, with my animal instincts, birthing my baby. If all these other women could do it, so could I! I ordered books online all about unassisted childbirth. I felt it in my soul that it was the thing to do. If women had been delivering babies since the beginning of time, why couldn't I?

I had tried to bring it up with Erik, but he never took me seriously. I would leave articles and YouTube videos on the computer for him to see, but he never looked at them. I went on bulletin boards and talked with other women who had had a UC or were planning them. One night I went to him solemnly and told him that I WOULD have an unassisted childbirth, because "I" was birthing the child, not him, and that was that. He looked at me with an "I give up" expression and said, "Alright, I'll just see you like a horse giving birth. If that's what you want to do!" I was ecstatic! I went to the boards and proudly announced my husband's agreement. A tiny part of me did keep asking, "What if?" But I knew that was just fear that needed to be overcome.

I told Erik not to tell anyone, but one day he told my parents, just that we were to have it at home. She called me up to talk about it. I assumed he had told her we wanted it unassisted. So I said, "Yeah, did you hear we want to have it unassisted?" She was not happy and told me that was irresponsible and that she would not support me in that. She said she would not want to be in a house with a baby being born unassisted, because she would feel responsible for something going wrong. This bolstered Erik's misgivings about the situation. I talked to my dad, who was delighted about the prospect of a homebirth, but strongly recommended at least a midwife. He said, "We can help you cover some of the cost of a midwife, if that's the problem." I was crushed, but agreed, since they would be living in the house when the baby would be born. I remember after hanging up, I took a shower and actually felt a little relieved. If I were lucky, I could still have an unassisted and just call the midwife too late. That way, I'd have back-up.

This was before Christmas and at Christmas my company gave out very generous bonuses. I got $1500, which would cover more than half of the cost of a midwife. Plus, I knew we would get the stimulus package the following year. Miracle number three.

Around this time Ricky Lake's movie "The Business of Being Born", about the hospital birth industry, came out. I put it on my Netflix queu and anxiously awaited its arrival. When it arrived I made Erik watch it. He didn't say much about it at the time, but I heard him telling his mom on the phone about it and he seemed quite impressed. Also my mom watched it of her own accord and told me that it changed her mind regarding thr safety of hospital births. Another miracle?

I started searching for a midwife in January. How would I find one? First I talked to a couple of people whose wife or daughter had had homebirth. I waited for them to call me, but I got nothing. I started to hunt around on the Mothering dot commune boards. I asked for people's opinions of local midwives and I searched old posts. I found a hodge podge of recommendations, wrote them all down and started calling. There was one midwife that someone had used and said that the midwife didn't come in time so she ended up having a UC. That intrigued me. The first midwife I called worked with a partner, which I didn't like. Bette Kibble, the one where someone had ended up having the baby before she got there, was second on my list. Her phone number was 822-8228, which was a beautiful number to me, because I love the number 8. I called and left a message and she called back around an hour later, 8 in the evening. We talked for about an hour, and she never seemed in a hurry to go or anything. I told her how I needed a midwife who could let a mother labor alone if needed, and she was okay with that. She told me about a beautiful birth she attended in New Mexico of a Native American couple, where as the baby was being born, the husband perfomed a ritual annointing and Bette just sat back and watched. I really liked her calm demeanor and set up an appointment right away.

At the appointment to meet Bette, Erik and I sat and talked with her about all our concerns and fears. Erik wanted to know what she would do if the baby weren't breathing, and other questions like that. At one point I had to go to the bathroom and when I came back Erik was telling her that I had wanted to do unassisted. I had told him beforehand not to tell her that because I was afraid she wouldn't want to take me if she knew that. My jaw practically dropped, but amazingly, I picked up the pieces and smoothly told her that my ideas for unassisted sprung out of a reaction to my desire to avoid another birth like the last one. She said she completely understood and at that moment I realized that truth had sprung from my lips like a butterfly. That was EXACTLY why I was seeking an unassisted birth. She then told me that she knew of a woman, another midwife, who had had many people at her first birth and it had gotten too hectic, but since she was in labor, she couldn't tell them to leave. So for her next one, when labor started, she quietly went down and lit a fire in the fireplace and labored there alone until it was time to birth. Bette understood.

Of course, we hired her and found out she would do home visits for an extra $250. Miracle number four. Apparently, very few midwives do homevisits. Also Bette worked alone. Miracle number five. Most work with assistants.

The homevisits were so joyful. She only had to do a few things each time, but we would end up talking about all sorts of things, like spirtuality, health foods, her family, my family, Tucson, etc. It brings tears to my eyes when I think about how lucky I was to find her. When I was pregnant with Noah, I never saw the same person twice for each of my prenatal visits. With Bette, it was in my own home.

As the due date got closer and closer, I had some emotional baggage to work through. Erik and I had gone through some rough times in 2007 prior to getting pregnant, and I had a lot of guilt. On Tuesday and Wednesday before the birth I was feeling very lonely and unattractive. Erik was always so tired when he got home. My pregnancy hormones were high and I would be horny. His non-desire for sex was churning inside me. On Thursday I cried a lot during the day. Erik could tell there was something wrong and kept asking me, but I wouldn't tell him. When he got home I told him that I felt so unattractive and unloved. He told me to go swimming with him, which really energized me. He reassured me that his love would always be there. It makes me cry now. That was what I needed to hear. After we swam we made love. Then we ate dinner and went for a hike. Since my parents were there, they watched Noah for us. Such a blessing. The hike reconnected us in so many ways. To be together in nature and reassured of his love; I felt new. We saw a nest in a saguaro and watched the parent feeding the babies. That evening I started to lose my mucus plug. I also had some contractions as I went to bed, but they subsided through the night.

Friday I woke up at around 5:30 and had a feeling. I said to Erik, "Make love to me now. We need to do this." He tried to refuse because he was sleepy. I wouldn't back down, and because I didn't feel self-concious or unloved, I asserted that we must. I crawled over to him and we made love again. I wanted those prostaglandins to do their job! He asked me if I thought it might be that day. I said maybe, so he canceled work. I told him I wanted to hike again to get things moving. He said in a little while, but only if he could get Starbucks. So I got up and started some laundry. I made myself some steel-cut oats with raisins and prunes. I knew I needed a breakfast that would stay with me throughout the day. We went for our hike, which was magical again. On the way to the hike Erik suggested the name Micah Lucero. I said it sounded nice. I had heard hundreds of names over the last nine months, but that one had a nice ring to it. During the hike I found a beautiful big rock with a ribbon of pink quartz on top. Erik said that is indicative of gold. Then I noticed the shiny soft papery material on top. Mica! I showed Erik and we touched it. So pretty. I had contractions on the walk about every 10 minutes. We saw another bird nest in a saguaro-- gila woodpecker. We watched them feeding the babies. One would feed, fly away, then the other would feed. Within minutes the first one would be back with another morsel. I told Erik that mammals have it easy with nursing. When we got back I lost my bloody show.

My mom said Bette had called 3 times! "What!" I thought, "Does she know?" I called her back, but she didn't answer. She had left a long message about how another client had taken castor oil to induce so she might not be able to make our 3pm appt that day. I smiled and thought, "So I might be having an unassisted birth afterall!" Erik said, "Tell Bette that you are going into labor so that she doesn't go to that other woman! Or else we are going to the hospital!" I said, "Don't worry, everything will be fine. Some people lose their mucus plug and don't have the baby for another 48 hrs!" Bette finally got a hold of me and I told her about the bloody show and the contractions. She said she would let me know in acouple hours if the castor oil worked on the other lady. She didn't think it would because the woman was so tense.

Erik and Noah and I went to the pool store to get a new pool vacuum. While we were there the sales man told us his wife just had a baby three weeks ago. Erik told him that I was in labor right now. The man was impressed and bid us good luck.

At home Erik and I started assembling the pool vacuum. It felt good to be doing something while in labor and not just focusing on the contractions. Every now and then I would have a contraction, and Erik would say, "What's wrong?" And I would be breathing and say, "Contraction, what do you think?"

At one point I went inside to find something for Erik and a contraction started while I was walking. I started to breathe, but my dad asked me something. I still hadn't told them about the labor because I wanted to keep everything calm. I tried to answer him which made the contraction really strong and as I walked away my water broke. It felt like a warm little water baloon popping. That was a new sensation because I was unaware of that happening with Noah's labor.

I grabbed a towel to wipe up the liquid on the floor. I went back outside and told Erik and showed him my wet Tevas with a smile. He looked at me with his nose kind of screwed up and said, "Well, wash your feet off so we can finish this." I folded two pool towels onto my patio chair and sat down. As soon as I sat down another contraction squeezed the warm liquid onto the chair. I was only wearing a sarong skirt, so I didn't care. I didn't tell Erik that the contractions were getting stronger and that liquid was oozing out with each one.

We finished assembling the vacuum. I told Erik to bring me the bills and my checkbook and stamps. I couldn't get up, but those had to get done! It took me three times as long as it normally does to write out the bills as every 4-5 mnutes I had to stop and breathe. My breaths were still slow and easy through these ones, not even audible, but definitely visible. At one point I felt the warm liquid coming out but realized I was peeing! I just let it flood the towels and chair. I felt like an animal.

When I finished the bills Bette called, again, right on time! She was to tell me that the other woman hadn't progressed. I told her that my water broke and she said, "Oh! I would have thought you'd have called!" I told her the contractions were really coming and she said she'd be there in about an hour, around one. I hung up and just sat out in the sun and stared at the sapphire glittering on the pool surface. I watched wrens flying through our yard, gathering dead bugs from the skimmer basket that Erik had taken out to put the vacuum in. Their nest was in our neighbor's palm tree.

Soon Erik came out to take a swim before Bette came and Noah and my mom came out to watch. It was too much commotion for me so I went into the bedroom. I took off my sopping sarong and t-shirt and tied a fresh sarong in dress fashion. My mom brought a patio chair into my shower as per my request and I went out to the living room to get my iPod, which I had filled with labor songs. I closed myself in the room and fumbled with the iPod. As a contraction came on I realized how much I DIDN'T want the silly thing. The only music I wanted was my own breathing and pacing. I also realized I did NOT want to get wet, and that the chair would be good for Bette instead. I didn't want her standing over me without a place to sit, if need be. So between contractions I took the chair out of the bathroom and tried a couple of places around the room til I found the right spot. Then I started pacing and breathing with horse lips. At one point Erik came in and worried about me dripping fluid on the carpet. I surprised myself with my calm, yet commando, response of, "Then lay towels down on the floor where I walk!" From that point until the birth, the only words that came out of my mouth were direct commands.

The contractions were really picking up; I had to breathe faster and more forcefully. Around this time Bette showed up. I walked out to greet her, between contractions, and said, "Now's a good time, I'm between contractions." As I walked back into the bedroom a good one swept me up and I "swooshed" through it. At this point my breaths were like quick "swooshes".

She entered the bedroom and started setting up her stuff. I was pacing and chuffing away. I heard her say, "Oh, those sound good!" That was encouraging to hear. She tried to get my blood pressure, but I had to get up and walk through a contraction. Then she got it. 110/72. Not bad! Then she listened to the baby's heartbeat, and it was good, 132. Normally it was 140, but I guess the contractions slowed it a little. I remember she was worried about getting a tissue to wipe the jelly off my stomach from the heartbeat thingy, and I said (in my one moment of humor), "I've got lots of jelly coming out of me; it's not a problem!" She was never able to get a pee sample because I started going into transition at that point.

Up to then I only wanted to walk and not touch anything. Now as the contractions were coming on top of each other and I was chuffing like a racing steam engine, I went into the bathroom and leaned on the counter with straight arms. I stayed like that, bent over the counter 'til my arms started shaking. It felt good to distribute some of the weight. This was the beginning of my morph into my birth position, animal mother. I also started to vocalize with low groans in between contractions.

I felt like I needed to poop, just a little. So I sat on the toilet, but I still needed to distribute the weight. Plus my mouth was very dry from the breathing. So I said, "Ice chips!" "And get Erik!" Erik rushed in with the ice chips in what seemed like seconds. I said, "Get in front of me. Down. No, face me." He was squatting and he has a bad back, so I knew that would never support me. I said, "Get something to sit on." I could feel a contraction coming. He started to sit on the upright trash can! I said, "Go outside and get one of those patio footstools! Hurry!" He ran out and back in as the contraction came on. I leaned on his shoulders and he braced on me as I chuffed through the rush. I tried to push the "poop" out and it felt really good. On the next one I pushed again. This time Bette heard me and said, "Don't push on the toilet!" Erik looked at me with an alarmed expression and said, "Get up honey!" This was the only time I got really mad at them and hollered, "NO!" Then I had a couple more contractions with pushing and one time I bit Erik on his shoulder, but he didn't say anything. Then Bette checked me as I was on the toilet and said real gently, "Come on, let's get into a nice birthing position. Erik and I will help you. In this position, there's a lot of pressure on your cervix, and it could get swollen." I thought the bed would be nicer. So, Erik and Bette kind of walked me to the bed.

At that point I took off my sarong and since I was between contractions I gathered all the pillows into a mountain and leaned over them on all fours. (Thanks, Mom, for the extra pillows, several days beforehand!) That felt good and I stayed in that position for the birth. I would grip the pillows as the contraction came on and would push through it. The nice thing about the pushing contractions is that they give you a break between them, unlike the transition contractions.

As I felt his head descending, I was really surprised at how big it felt. I remember thinking, "How in the world is that going to come out of me without tearing?" It really did feel like a bowling ball was going to come out of me. When I pushed now I usually grunted, but not every time. Bette just waited for the pushes and then she would wipe me and tell me good job. Sometimes I would feel his head go back in a little. Then she said, "Okay, you can push all the way." So on the next contraction I pushed and it was really stinging. I thought he was crowning, but she said, "On the next one, as he is crowning I want you to breathe, breathe, breathe, don't push." In my mind, I thought, "WHAT?" But she was helping to prevent tearing by going slow. So I pushed a little and really felt the crowning. I wanted to just push all the way but she said, "Breathe. Breathe. Breathe." She was having me wait for the next contraction. So I did and pushed the head out. I thought his body would slip out, but, no, you have to push the shoulders out. I heard her suctioning the mouth and Erik said, "Oh my God!" I waited for a bit and she said, "Push. Push him out." And Erik said, "Push, honey, come on." And I really wanted to get him out. So without waiting for a contraction--or maybe there was one, I'm not sure-- I heave-ho'd it and just pushed til I thought my butt was going to explode (his hand was up by his shoulder, which made it a little harder). I did my deepest vocalization I've ever done in my life as I felt his body slither out. I was even groaning a little on the breaths right after he came out, on the come down. But almost immediately I turned over with true joy and elation to see the fruit of my labor, the biggest miracle of all.