Birthy Believer: Seven Years Ago Today

Seven years ago today my life changed completely. The change happened slowly and all at once. It was expected and it was a complete surprise.

John and I started our family early. I was only 22 and he was 28 when our first son was born. We enjoyed every part of the pregnancy. We went to childbirth classes. In the 41st week the doctor told us that our baby was ready and she was going to be on call at the hospital on Sunday anyway and that would be a convenient time to induce, we packed our bags and set them by the door.

I arrived at the hospital on Sunday morning, was hooked up to the external monitor, and discovered I was having regular "strong" contractions that I was not feeling at all. The doctor was pleased, but wanted to "help things along" so she broke my water. That was the end of blissfully laboring with no pain. My baby boy was born just 5 hours later, but not before I was scared into some pain medication I didn't need, yelled at for pushing "wrong," and cut after only 45 minutes of pushing (on my back, of course) without permission. And I went home and told everyone how wonderful my "natural birth" was.

That was so much fun, and my baby was getting "so grown up" (at age 10 months) that we were ready to do the whole thing again. I had some wonderful women in my life who were studying midwifery. I thought that sounded intriguing but knew I didn't feel ready for a home birth (what if something happened?!?!) so that time I chose to see a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) and to plan to have my baby at the hospital with the midwife. That was a truly beautiful labor and birth. It is completely possible, with the support of your care provider, to have a beautiful natural birth in a hospital, with privacy, low lights, and the loving care of a midwife. The birth was amazing. And then the midwife went home and we were left at the hospital and that's when things got crazy. I'll save all the gory details for another day but suffice it to say that we became acutely aware that it was irrelevant to the hospital staff that we were the baby's parents. They had policies and procedures and protocols to adhere to and it didn't really matter if we understood what was happening when they took him away to the NICU for 13 hours with no explanation.

We were honestly so traumatized not by what they thought was wrong with our child (partly because they didn't actually tell us for 13 hours) but by the lack of information and the guilt tactics they employed to get us to agree to do things they felt were important and we were questioning. I remember we called John's parents in Montana to come immediately and they did. They drove all day and night to come to our aid. And we were so thankful. Of course, he was fine, a totally healthy roly-poly bouncing baby boy.

So when we were expecting baby #3 we were convinced we weren't going to the hospital unless someone was in imminent danger of dying. We again chose to use the CNMs and we planned to birth our baby at the birth center. That really was a lovely plan......but that's now what happened. Apparently all the athletic ability the Good Lord gave me went directly to my uterus. We got in the car about 10 minutes after my first contraction and my sweet baby boy was born in the car, into my mother's hands, about 7 blocks from the birth center. That, also, is a story for another day. My total labor, first contraction to birth, was about 35 minutes.

Soooooo.......not wishing to repeat that experience, I finally bit the birthing bullet and decided that maybe home birth wasn't so bad after all! I mean by this time I was pretty confident in my body's ability to birth my baby (seriously, they should have an Olympic event for birthing!) and I sure didn't want to repeat the car birth experience. Despite the fact that I live in Home Birth Central and this town is swarming with lovely and capable midwives, there was really only one choice for me. This midwife had trained two of my friends, caught their babies, and every one raved about how great she was and how much they loved her. I knew she was my gal before I ever met her.

I remember she came to the house and were supposed to interview her. Only I didn't really need to interview her. She could have had two heads and I still would have hired her. She's that awesome. I remember at first for my appointments I wasn't sure about these prenatal checkups in my HOME. (?) I was really paranoid that they might think my house was too dirty so I deep cleaned before they came and made cookies. I envisioned us all sitting around drinking tea, eating cookies, and talking about .......I had no idea. What do you do for an hour? I was used to 10 minutes appointments.

You know what else I was used to? Putting my legs up in the stirrups, medical tests, and weight checks. So imagine my surprise when she never asked to "examine" me, didn't ask my weight, or push a bunch of tests at each visit. Now the CNMs did much less of this than the OB did, and there are times when each of these things are indicated, but I was healthy, with good weight, and a healthy diet and a normal pregnancy. Everything was offered and I was informed but I got to choose! But she did listen to my baby at each visit, feel the baby's position, and talk to me about what I might be experiencing and any concerns I might have had.

By this time you might be wondering about the title of this post (or maybe that was several paragraphs ago). Toward the end of this pregnancy, at about 32 weeks, we discovered my baby was breech. Uh oh. But don't worry, there's still plenty of time for the baby to turn, especially since this is baby number 4.

Week 36. Still breech. Huh. Well, maybe we should start thinking about helping this baby turn. So I got in a knees and chest position, where I was on my knees but my head was on a pillow on the floor, trying to tick the baby into thinking "uh oh, I'm upside down! I better turn around!"

Week 38. Still breech. Yikes! Time to employ the chiropractic Webster Technique, moxibustion, manual version (also called External Cephalic Version)..... And when all of this failed to coax my baby to turn, I began reading everything I could find on breech birth. I was NOT excited about having a c-section. I have a tendency to have difficulty clotting, and I was worried about bleeding and recovery. And, I just didn't want to get cut.

It took longer to find materials to read than it took to actually read them, there were so few books. There were exactly TWO. One was written by a midwife in the UK and the other by a midwife in New Zealand. Both of them imported, and both of them exceedingly difficult to acquire, especially in a short matter of time.

And here is where the faith factor enters into this story. Backtracking just a bit.....you remember I have three sons. We loved having three sons....but we also really wanted to have a daughter. And we really thought we were done having babies. Still, I wanted a daughter to share in the line of amazing women in my family, since we are all very close. I wanted a daughter for John, because he is such a loving daddy, and I knew he would be such a wonderful daddy to a little girl. And maybe because I always wanted a sister, I sort of wanted some other feminine energy in the house. But after wishing for so long, and after the boys were diagnosed, and after all the researching and therapies and doctors visits, we just thought we *should* be done. Other people told us we should be done. And it did seem logical. So we tucked that little dream away and moved on.

And then one day...I was sitting in church one day and all of a sudden, I happened to meet eyes with a sweet little girl (whom I have never seen before or since) as she looked over her daddy's shoulder and right into my eyes. And at that very moment I felt very strongly these words, "I will give you the desire of your heart." And I just knew down deep in my soul that God wanted to give us a daughter.

We read books on how to increase our chances, we waited and contemplated what it would mean to have a 4th child for about 18 months, we prayed and thought through all the ethics of desiring and seeking to attempt to choose the sex of a child. We searched our hearts for our motives. And what I was told over and over again was that He wanted to give us the desire of our hearts and that He would give us a healthy baby.

This is hard to talk about because there are no guarantees in this life. My two oldest boys were both diagnosed with some difficult neurological conditions and we truly would have accepted and loved a child with any exceptionality. I didn't not ask for a perfect child, but I did pray for a healthy child.

So when my daughter was persistently breech, and after all attempts to turn her had failed, and after trusting for a whole pregnancy that this baby would be healthy, we were faced with a faith crisis of sorts. Not the kind where you question God, but the kind where you know you have faith and yet you question what you thought you knew in the face of some high stakes. You wonder if you are being told to stay the course or divert to a different course. So we talked and we read and we talked some more. And in my particular case, John, the midwife, and I all agreed that continuing with the planned home birth was the most logical choice for various reasons. I do not believe all women who find themselves with a breech presenting baby late in pregnancy should have their baby vaginally at home, but I do believe that this is an option that needs to be kept available to the women who would choose this option with their skilled care provider.

Of course, for some people, homebirth is scary enough (I used to be one of those people). So when people found out I was planning the birth my breech baby at home (!) I heard about it. I heard about everyone's fears. I heard about horror stories that happened to friends-of-friends-of-friends. And being an empathetic person, I began absorbing those fears.

Fear is a nasty thing. It seeps in quietly and slowly and taints all your thought processes. And it's exhausting. When I realized that I was internalizing the fears of others but that what I felt I had been told by God had not changed (in fact He was continuing to breathe that promise to me over and over again), and that not only was the decision to go ahead with the home birth an honoring of what I faithfully believed about my God and my body, but was also quite a logical decision based on my particular situation, I decided to stop letting others feed me fear. I had to put up some protective walls and hunker down. And that's what I did.

Until early in the morning of April 13th, 2004. At 1:30 a.m. I was awakened by the spontaneous rupturing of my membranes (and I was glad I'd been sleeping with a towel between my legs for a week!). I woke John up and we made some last minute preparations, then I called my midwife. She came right away and the contractions started at about 1:45 a.m. By 2:00 a.m. the contractions were very strong. And my darling baby was born at 2:46 a.m. I believe I pushed twice and out came a very healthy and gorgeous little girl!

God is SO GOOD! And He's not good because we have a daughter, and He's not good because we were able to have a homebirth, and he's not good because there were no complications or because she's healthy. He's good because He's faithful. He's Good because when he says he will do something, He does it! We aren't all told the same things. There is suffering in this world, for sure. And if things had ended differently, God would be no less Good. But I will praise Him for the journey which he brought us through. I will praise Him for his Good gifts. I will praise him for his gift to his servant when I had come to peace about not realizing a dream. When I was done dreaming my dream, He dreamed it into reality for me.

He is Good because he is generous. When I had become content with what I'd been given, that is when he gave me more. When I faced trials that called my choices into question and caused me to make new, difficult choices, He never left me. When fear was all around me, He gave me His Peace. And at the hour of my delivery, He was there.

So happy Birthday little Quinn. You are seven years old. And today I celebrate the dual gifts of your birth from my womb and the strengthening of my faith. May we both continue to grow in our faith under His Good care.