Last Tuesday, February 24th, I had an appointment with my midwife (still at the hospital in Skebootyville, but I did manage to find it without any bother this time – fourth time’s a charm!) at 1 PM. She asked if anything was happening, and I told her not really. A contraction here and there, nothing to write home about. I made my appointment for this coming Friday, but told the receptionist I hoped not to be able to keep it (as it happens, we are keeping it, but as a follow-up visit for mother *and* baby – yay!)
In the course of the half hour drive home from the hospital, I had three decently strong contractions that I thought might be the very early beginnings of labor, but I wasn’t counting my chickens. The contractions continued noticeably but not too painfully about every 7-10 minutes as I got the little ones to their naps and Pippa to her quiet playtime. By the time I sat down at my computer to play with this little gadget, they were about every 6 minutes. Now I was starting to count chickens, but I was still thinking I might have a day or so of this ahead, like I had with Beatrix.
The Supplies
The contractions stayed at about that spacing for most of the evening. We had decided not to go to small group (it would have been awkward to give birth at somebody *else’s* house), and asked my mom to pick up dinner for us on her way home from work. She stayed and had cheesesteaks with us, looking utterly panicked every time I had a contraction. After dinner, my dear friend and neighbor Laura came over (she was supplying the stainless steel bowl for the placenta) and lightened the mood. We sat on the sofa after dinner swapping labor stories and passing the time until Laura’s husband Todd showed up with groceries for us – what wonderful friends! The girls got to play with their little friend Katie for a little while and stay up way past their bedtime. Considering I was in fairly active labor, it was actually a lovely time of fellowship sprinkled with lots of laughter. I think it went a long way toward convincing my mom of the merits of homebirth. Or made her think we were a bunch of crazy hippies. One or the other.
After everyone left at about 9 o’clock we put the girls to bed, knowing it was quite possibly our last bedtime routine as a family of five. We made some last minute preparations for the birth: put the sheets on the bed, gathered up all the supplies, cleaned like the queen was coming to stay with us did some light tidying up. Then we watched an episode of Lost on Hulu before *trying* to get some sleep.
From 11 to 12 I lay in bed not sleeping even a little bit through pretty strong 5-minute-apart contractions. I didn’t think it was time to call the midwife yet, since I was still sometimes having longer gaps than 5 minutes, and I could tell they weren’t lasting the full 1-minute that is the prerequisite for waking up the midwife in the dead of night and dragging her to your house. Instead, I went downstairs to sit in the bath.
Junie and I, moments after her birth
The bathtub is my best friend when I’m in labor, and I stayed there off and on for the better part of the next two hours, with a change of water somewhere in the middle. Although it offered great relief, it didn’t scare off the contractions – they continued to come every five minutes and got stronger and stronger. At about 1 AM I started to feel a little nervous about not having the midwife on her way yet, and went to get Trevor to help me assess the situation.
Poor Trevor doesn’t do well in the middle of the night. I’d like to tell you that when I explained my situation to him, he leapt out of bed and asked what he could do for me… not so much. He did reluctantly come downstairs with me to keep me company and time contractions with me, but he also temporarily scared them off. After my telling him that they were faithfully arriving every five minutes for the last hour, you can imagine how unimpressed he was that they were coming every 6-7 minutes, sometimes 10, once I woke him up.
They soon got regular again, and when I was happily (?) relaxing (?!) in the bath again they were coming every 4 minutes, but still not lasting the required minute, more like 40 seconds or so. Nevertheless, we thought we’d better call the midwife (at 3 AM, exactly what I had hoped to avoid) and get her take on the situation. She said it “sounded promising” and that she would start heading over.
By the time Barbara the midwife arrived at about 3:45 AM, I was sitting in the “flower chair” in our living room, and holding on for dear life through each contraction. She decided to check me first before doing any monitoring or setting up equipment (smart girl), so we headed upstairs to the ‘birthing suite’ AKA our bedroom. She found me a “stretchy 6″ cm dilated with a “bulging bag of waters” (lovely, huh?) and called her nurse and told her to head over. I told her excitedly that I’d never been a “six” before, having only been measured with the other girls at 2-4 cm and then ready to push. Trevor and I were patting ourselves on the backs for timing it so well this time, thinking we probably still had a couple of hours to go at least.
Junie gets checked over by Barbara
A little while after she checked me (maybe twenty minutes or so), I tried lying on my side to see if the contractions were more comfortable that way (they weren’t!) and the change in position made my water break. After that the contractions were different, not worse, but actually more bearable, and there were only about five of them before things changed again. I could tell Barbara was getting ready for the main event. I said “You look like you think this is going to happen soon,” and she said, “I do.”
It was at this point that it occurred to me to explore my birth position options. Not at any of the ten or so hour-long appointments I had had at the birth center with the midwives asking me “Any questions at all?”, but now, with the baby knocking at the door of the world *very* loudly. She told me I could get into any position that felt comfortable, but given the urgency of the situation, I pushed her for a quick recommendation, and she told me to lie on my side.
I was no sooner there than baby Junie was coming, and it all came flooding back to my mind. It is true what they say: you do forget the pain, but you remember it just at the wrong moment, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. I grumbled something about “remembering this part” and “really not wanting to do it again” and then I was just screaming. Sometime in the middle of the screaming, nurse Jeannie appeared on the scene (she had heard me from outside, so didn’t bother knocking). I felt like I was screaming forever, and that the girls would be awake and maybe the whole neighborhood, but I think it was just a minute or so and her head was out.
But I was still screaming. In hindsight, I realize that the other three girls slid out on their own after their heads came out, but Juniper, stocky little thing that she is, made me work for it a little more. Amid my screaming frenzy, someone got my attention, and Barbara explained to me that I had to push. You would think by my fourth delivery that I would be familiar with this concept, but it really was kind of a first. Trevor told me later that “her head was out forever before her body came out!” But I did manage to get her body out (and finally stop screaming) at 4:42 AM, and Barbara told me later when I was complaining about how long it took, that I pushed for about five minutes in total. Oh.
Nurse Jeannie
Ro with Melicia
There was an instant chorus of “It’s a girl!” though Trevor claims he was the first to announce the good news. I could hear the relief in his voice, not just because he still insists he wouldn’t know what to do with a boy, but because he knew he was off the hook for the grueling name discussions that would have taken place if we had had a boy.
Juniper Lucy had come to me back in July, just a few days after finding out I was pregnant, and managed not only to pass Daddy muster, but to stick for a whole pregnancy – unprecedented! Juniper (and especially the nickname Junie) is in honor of my dear Great Aunt June, whom I have called “Junie” since I was old enough to talk. Her middle name, Lucy, is for Lucy Pevensie of the Narnia series.
I got to hold her immediately and for as long as I wanted – such a nice change from Bea’s birth. Barbara and Jeannie quietly scurried around tidying up and doing what they needed to do, and we had a lovely peaceful time of enjoying our sweet new girl in our very own bedroom. I didn’t set out to do this whole homebirth thing, but I enjoyed the whole experience more than I thought I would, and I would do it this way again if I had it to do over.
Meeting Baby Junie
We started hearing stirrings from the girls’ room just down the hall at a little after five. Mostly just Beatrix at first, so we left her in hopes that she’d go back to sleep. By about 6:30 it was clear that everyone was awake and staying awake, so three sleepy girls wandered into our room to meet their new sister. After a half an hour or so of trying to contain them upstairs, Trevor took them down and got them breakfast.
Jeannie stayed with us until the other midwife Melicia arrived at the change of on-call shifts at 7 AM. I think her main job was to go over paperwork with me and babysit me until a certain number of hours had passed since the birth. In practice she sat on the floor for quite a while playing “guys” with Romilly, who kept reappearing back upstairs to see “Baby Junie”.
There is so much more I could share about “the homebirth experience”, and maybe it will get its own post at some point, but really, as always, it was all about the end result. There we were, holding a perfectly formed little person whom we had just met, yet who was instantly a part of our family, more precious to us than any material thing on this earth. We rejoiced in her safe arrival, and we marvelled at her beauty and the grace of the God who gave her to us.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139: 13-16
While our little Junebug is named after my great aunt June, whom I have called “Junie” since I was old enough to talk, we chose to give her the full name Juniper for a few reasons. 1. We have a short and boring last name, and June just wasn’t doing anything with it. 2. How would you like to be called June when your sisters names are Philippa, Romilly and Beatrix? Wait, don’t answer that. 3. An evergreen shrub makes a better name for a February baby than a month of the summer. I think.
ttakes: 
Would you believe Juniper is almost three weeks old already? I know!
I got tagged in a note on Facebook by 
