Birth Story Of mayim meadow

One Monday morning I heard my daughter shout, “The sky is beautiful, Mommy!” Upon looking out my front door I said to myself “It would be a beautiful day to have a baby.” I snapped a picture and went on with my morning as usual. My three children and I headed to our homeschool room in hopes to get another school day completed. I wasn’t having any contractions, however the previous day I had had rolling Braxton Hicks contractions that would stop when resting. I knew the day would be soon.

While my daughter was in the middle of reading her language arts lesson, I had my first contraction. I pulled up a contraction counter on my phone and documented it at 11:06am. I had several more contractions, all about 2 minutes apart. After having about 4, I decided to lay down to see if my contractions would stop. My husband had taken the day off “just in case”, but ran to the store while I was homeschooling. He called to check in to see how I was doing. I let him know my contractions were steady and he said “I’ll be home in 7 minutes.”

My first three births were all born in under 4 hours. When I told him I was contracting he knew he had to hurry!

At around 11:40am I called Emily to let her know it was GO time. She jumped right into action ending the appointment she was in, canceling appointments for the rest of the day and getting to my home as fast as possible. Thankfully, with all of our conversations about my previous births, she allowed us to have the birthing tub early - so it was already blown up and ready to go.

When my husband arrived home he saw I was filling the tub with water. That’s when he knew we would be meeting our daughter very soon. Emily arrived at 12:30pm, unpacked her things, and checked in on me. At about 1:00pm, she checked to see how dilation was progressing. To all of our surprise, I was only 2cm dilated with a high posterior baby. Emily told me she didn’t want the information to discourage me. However, my response was simply, “I’M JUST GLAD YOU’RE HERE!”

With the information about only being 2cm we decided it would be best to wait to get into the tub. After telling me she’d check vitals again in 30 minutes, Emily asked if I wanted some space to labor on my own. Contractions became more intense, and at 1:12pm I had my first sign of blood, just two single drops. Those single drops were important to me because I knew I was continuing to progress. When Emily came to check vitals again she heard me tell my husband I had the urge to push. I climbed into the tub at 1:29pm and at 1:31pm my water broke. I heard Emily report that there was meconium in my water. I didn’t have time to worry because as I had my next contraction I could feel my baby’s head. Within seconds my daughter was born at 1:34pm. From first contraction to baby in arms was 2hours 28min.

From 2cm to baby in arms was only 34 minutes!

Emily immediately grabbed the bulb syringe and towel the moment she noticed the meconium. She worked quickly to clear out her mouth which was full of meconium. We are fortunate that there were zero problems caused by the meconium. All of my children were in the room meeting their baby sister the same minute she was born. I stayed in the water in hopes to deliver the placenta, but in the end needed to move around which helped the position of my placenta. I climbed out and delivered it in the comfort of my own bed.

From there we had the most beautiful family bonding time and worked on our first breastfeeding session. Emily took her time, included my three extremely excited children and let them help in any way they could. She took placenta pictures, which turned out incredible and even charted sweet comments like the one from my daughter, “Thank you, Mommy. Good job!”

Postpartum care has been incredible too. She came to my house a couple times and was always checking in during those first several weeks. Honestly, I feel like I’ve gained a friend and will be sad when I don’t get to see her every couple weeks. I’m so glad I went with my gut and decided to have this sweet baby at home. Giving birth at home was incredibly peaceful and empowering.