Frugal Babe

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The Birth Of Our Son

May 7, 2008 By Frugal Babe

Thank you all so much for all the comments and congratulations on new baby – your kind words mean a lot to us.  A couple people requested the birth story, so here it is… (obviously I’m strongly in favor of home births and intervention-free births.  If that’s not your cup of tea, please don’t be offended – this is just our story, and we’re so glad that it turned out the way it did)

The whole time I was pregnant, we’ve been seeing a wonderful midwife every few weeks for prenatal checkups.  The visits were always fun – she would give me a foot massage for about 40 minutes while she talked to us about all the ins and outs of pregnancy and whatever stage we happened to be at.  She would take my blood pressure, check my pee, listen to the baby’s heart, tell us that we were doing great, and send us on our way.  She charges $3000 to deliver a baby, including all the prenatals and postnatals and the birth.  (The backup midwife’s fee is included in that amount, so we didn’t have to pay anything extra to have the second midwife at our birth).  Our health insurance doesn’t cover home birth midwives, so we paid the $3000 ourselves.  Our midwife was always commenting on how easy we were as clients, and I remember thinking that we were spending a lot of money to have someone just be able to tell us that we were doing everything right and didn’t need to change a thing.

Well, our midwives sure did earn every penny of their fee during our birth.  All of my close girlfriends have had babies in the last few years, and all but one ended up with c-sections.  Based on their stories, and how closely my labor matched some of their experiences, there is no doubt in my mind that we would very likely have been headed for some serious medical intervention if we had been having our baby in a hospital.  But because we had two highly skilled midwives here with us, our experience turned out just the way we hoped it would.  With minimal intervention, a healthy mama, and an absolutely perfect baby.  I was in labor for 45 hours, and the longest break I ever had between contractions was 18 minutes.  That doesn’t leave much room for sleeping…  We weren’t sure at first if it was real labor or false labor, because the contractions weren’t very regular.   But they did get more and more intense and lasted longer and longer as the hours went by.  We cleaned the garage to give me something else to focus on, but that only lasted a while on Sunday, because the pain was getting to be too intense to do much of anything else.  I talked to our midwife several times, and told her I’d call her in the morning and let her know how we were doing.  Neither of us slept on Sunday, because I had to get out of bed with every contraction – they were way too painful to handle if I was lying down – and they were pretty close together by then.  We called our midwife in the morning, and she got here about 10 am.  She checked me and I was at 7 cm and she could feel the baby’s head.  We were all ecstatic – especially me, as I was so glad to know that all the pain of the previous 30 some hours had been getting us somewhere.

The backup midwife arrived a couple hours later, and we all thought that we’d have a baby by the afternoon.  Then I got stuck at 9 cm, and stayed there for seven hours.  Who knows why.  I had fierce contractions every few minutes the whole time, but they weren’t doing anything.  A friend who was in the exact same situation a couple years ago ended up with a c-section, and although I tried to push her birth story out of my mind, I couldn’t help but think how closely my labor was mirroring hers.  Luckily we had midwives with us, instead of doctors.  They hooked me to a breast pump to strengthen the contractions, and used an amniohook to break my waters.  They helped me walk around, and put me in the bathtub.  They told me how confident they were in my ability to birth my baby, and never wavered in their calm support.  They checked the baby’s heart rate numerous times during the whole thing, and it was always so reassuring to us to hear it thumping loud and strong, never wavering.  If he could do it, so could I.  And of course my husband was with me every minute – I don’t know how I would have done it without him.

And so it was that our little boy was born in our bedroom, with just his parents and the midwives to welcome him into a wonderfully calm little world that we had made for him.  I needed a few stitches afterwards, which the midwives did with the greatest of skill.  The midwives were a perfect combination of birth knowledge and medical knowledge and knew when each was required.  I know that sometimes, on rare occasions, medical intervention is required during a birth.  But here in the US, it’s done at an alarming rate, far more often than in most of the rest of the world.  I’m grateful that hospitals and doctors are there in the event of a serious medical emergency, but I’m ever so grateful that our midwives were there for us during the birth of our baby.  Our midwife was here today to check on us, and she’ll be back five more times in the next eight weeks (it sure is nice to have your postpartum checkups without having to leave your bedroom!)  I have to say – that was the best $3000 we’ve ever spent.

Filed Under: Debt 8 Comments

Comments

  1. April D says

    May 8, 2008 at 7:44 am

    Congratulations on the baby!

    I’m clueless on this, but why are c-sections so bad? It seems like I hear about more and more women actually requesting them. I guess I need to read up on the subject a lot more.

    Reply
  2. Mrs. Accountability says

    May 8, 2008 at 8:23 am

    FB, thank you for honoring us with your birth story. It sounds like you had a wonderful experience. I am our family’s doula and have been at seven births in the last decade and I love, love, love home births. Midwives are the most awesome people in the world!! Thanks again! Mrs. A

    Reply
  3. Helena says

    May 8, 2008 at 10:56 am

    I’ve been reading a while, but have never commented before. Just wanted to say congratulations on the baby, and how wonderful your birth sounds! I’m due in October with our first, and we’re going to a midwife-run birth center. The midwives there are wonderful–sounds like you had some good ones too!

    Reply
  4. FrugalBabe says

    May 8, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    April, thanks for stopping by. A c-section is major surgery, with several weeks of recovery required afterwards. Even after 45 hours of labor and several stitches needed after the birth, I’m feeling nearly 100% on day three. Our bodies recover a lot faster from non-surgical birth. Also, there’s varying research about the benefits to the baby of passing through the birth canal rather than being lifted out of the abdomen. Some researchers have found that a vaginal birth results in better and stronger bonding between the mother and baby, although a big part of that may just be the more difficult recovery time that the mother has after a c-section.

    Reply
  5. Claire in CA, USA says

    May 8, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    Congratulations! I truly envy your birth experience. I had two c-sections; the first because I was uneducated, and the second because the doctor (who was NOT the same doctor as the first time) wasn’t willing to risk a uterine hemorrhage (because of the first c-section), though he was very willing to let me labor for almost 24 hours to try a vbac.

    April might also like to know that the scars from a c-section never go away; I feel like I was mutilated. That’s just no fun at all.

    Reply
  6. Kelly from My Small Cents says

    May 9, 2008 at 12:12 am

    That’s a beautiful birth story! I think the best part about home births (my first two were born at home) is being able to get into your own bed afterwards.

    Just don’t forget to rest- even though you may feel great it’s still important!

    Reply
  7. FrugalBabe says

    May 9, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    Thanks everyone! And don’t worry Kelly – my body isn’t letting me forget to rest! Spending half an hour at my computer makes me feel like I’ve run a 10K, and all I’m really motivated to do right now is snuggle with my baby and take a nap :)

    Reply
  8. Jessica says

    May 10, 2008 at 1:14 am

    I was really glad to read this post. I was actually born at home with a midwife 22 years ago, and my 17 year old cousin was born with the same midwife. I have not thought too much about it but I think I could really enjoy a home delivery too. I feel like modern medicine takes to many unnecessary steps.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

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