I got my VBAC at HOME!
I am still in awe of how our baby boy Navah came to be Earthside on the 2nd of October a little after midnight.
I had been planning and hoping to have a home birth in the water since my first pregnancy. That birth ended up as a C section where i was induced and had way more intervention than wanted. I learned so much from that experience. The biggest and best lesson was to let go. Let go, surrender and have no expectation only intentions.
This time around I prepared myself and planned for the birthing experience that I wanted and then I let it go. It felt like I was planning a dinner party only I wasn’t sure if I was going to cook or order pizzas, if I was going to let the guests in when they arrived or if we would even eat. I know now that birth is a mystery and something that all birthing women need to educate and inform themselves for. Knowledge truly is power and anything can happen.
My labour pains started 5 days before I went into labour. Pre labour, oh my god my body was doing it’s thing! I was so excited that everything the body does before a baby comes, was happening. In my first pregnancy after being 10 days ‘over’ (although I don’t believe in babies being late, they come on their own divine time) my cervix didn’t appear to have any plans of shortening or thinning.
Wednesday afternoon my husband, our 2 year old and I (40 weeks pregnant) went to the hills of Olinda and did a massive hike. It was beautiful (and very hard on my pelvis) but I felt the need to get out into nature and help bring this baby down with the beautiful Dandenong ranges breeze.
From that day on I kept feeling these little burst of discomfort (I won’t call it pain because they were nothing compared to when I actually went into labour lol). On Sunday morning about 8am we went to our local cafe and had a coffee, and there I got some really strong surges and thought “this may happen soon!!!”
I was so excited to feel my body contracting, since the first time around I never went into labour, I didn’t get to feel my body contract. I was so excited to feel that.
There were a few more things we needed to buy so we headed to the shops. On the way there I said to my husband that I didn’t think I could go, the pain was getting stronger and I felt I needed to be at home.
At about 2pm I had to lay in our bed on my side. I knew things were getting stronger but I kept thinking “am I really going into labour or am I just thinking I am” I remember feeling like I shouldn’t call the midwives until I really knew it was on. it was like I was trying to be polite and think of them when really there was no “right” thing to do. You call when you feel to call.
So I waited, my mother in law came over to help with our 2 year old and by 4 pm we decided to call our team. I had some amazing women to hold that birthing space.
I was meant to have Jan and Kelly the beautiful dynamic duo from Mamas but one was sick and the other unavailable. So in walked Marita whom I knew from last pregnancy and her back up Margret (who turned out to be so amazing), my gorgeous Doula Lisa and shortly after came my bestie and photographer Kristy.
My husband was running around getting the pool sorted and filled and I was letting the waves of contractions that kept getting stronger by the hour.
I had dreamed of having my baby in the water for as long as I could remember yet as soon as I got in I knew It wasn’t for me. Maybe I got in too early maybe I wasn’t ever going to enjoy the water like I thought, the important thing was I had prepared myself to let go and surrender and just go with it, so onto the couch I moved.
I went from the toilet to the floor, to the couch and then came a point where I said to my team “I don’t know where to be comfortable!” and that was ok. I had a rush of, “ can I actually do this” come in and then as soon as it came I would say out loud, YES I CAN!”
Before I knew it was on the couch and they were telling me I was 10 centimetres. I couldn’t believe it!!! OMG I did it thats like it! Its coming to end soon and baby is on the way. My husband got emotional (he later told me) “you’re going to meet your baby soon” the midwives said to him.
In my birth plans I had told everyone not to tell me anything durning the labour. Especially not how far dilated I was. I knew that birth was a big mindset game and if I knew anything like that it would really mess with me and I would make it mean stuff.
I didn’t even open my eyes in the labour only twice. I stayed inward, breathed and moaned, had a few freak outs but was guided by the team and brought myself back into my body and there on the living floor I pushed my baby boy out.
I loved the pushing part, it was my favourite thing about the birth (besides feeling my baby’s head after crowning). I was so ready to push and when the body finally flopped out I went down to grab my baby and realised then it was a boy! We had kept it a secret and to feel a pair of balls was crazy (we thought for sure it was a girl).
What an amazing feeling, this feeling was like no other. I was so high on oxytocin, on love hormones. I didn’t even care that I had a 3rd degree tear (I have Linchen sclerosis) a skin disorder which thins your genital area’s skin).
I had my VBAC and at home and everything went perfectly. My baby boy worked with me and did an amazing job bringing himself through my body with each contraction. I was drug free this time and with the high of the hormones I didn’t sleep for 40 hours after the birth of Navah.
We ended up at the hospital to get the stitches sorted and then began the post part healing. That was tough as all the emotions that come with, the bleeding, leaking milk, engorged breasts, crying toddler, crying baby, sore vagina and then not being able to poo (never mind the thrush and mastitis I got later) BUT IT WAS ALL worth it. I did it! Naturally. I proved to myself I could do it and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
All the lessons and tears and laughs it brought it was all perfect. WE are designed to birth and no matter how we birth as long as we are educated and informed, we can exercise our choice.
Thank you to the amazing team at Mamas we couldn’t have done this without you. You are ALL wonderful and you are all angels.
