Third baby and thinking about home birth (help please)

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Permalink Reply by jade kikyo on July 31, 2010 at 6:21am

Wow thank you. It sounds like you had the same night and day differences I had between my two hospital births. Thank you so much for telling me your story. I honestly think my first time around would have been way better had we just stayed home but we never even considered it at the time.

Do you mind me asking where you had your first? Our first was in Florida which I have since sworn never to deliver another baby at a hospital in Florida. Our second was in Ohio. Oh also did you have a midwife or a doula with your second? Or did you do everything as just family?

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Permalink Reply by Nicole A. Tucker, Lic. LCC on July 31, 2010 at 8:52am

Hi Jade:

You can work powerfully towards your desired birth. Research what options are out there to assist you to safely and consciously prepare throughout your pregnancy to have a natural childbirth. There are many resources that can guide you in improving your physical, emotional and mental health to achieve your goal.

To Your Best Birth,
Nicole
Holistic Maternity Practitioner
www.WholeCreations.com

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Permalink Reply by Sara on July 31, 2010 at 9:31am

Congrats on your pregnancy!

I had a horrible first birth in the hospital. I was almost at 10 cm when I got to the hospital. They discovered she was footling breech so they decided on a c/sec. While they were prepping me for surgery I finished dilating and as they were wheeling me into the OR they had their hand inside me holding her in instructing me not to push. And she was born during a terrible thunderstorm. The electricity in the hosp went out. We had lights from the generator and the machines worked but it did not power the AC. So, in Texas in the middle of August I was laboring in a hosp w/no AC. Very HOT. They did have a huge fan blowing on me which did nothing but make me feel like I was in a windstorm. They strapped my hands down. My epi also didn't work. As the DR began cutting into me I could feel EVERYTHING!!! I really thought I was dying. Really. The anesth. noticed and asked me if I was OK, all I could manage was whimpering. He asked if I was in pain and I just started screaming. He gave me a shot of something that pretty much knocked me out. I barely remember seeing my daughter's face, almost like it happened in a dream. i remember nothing else for several hours. When I finally came to I was groggy and drugged up and this is how I have the first memories of bonding w/my daughter. Things don't clear up for me until the end of the second day of her life. I also got a terrible headache from the epi. I was very traumatized and was and am still sad to not have clear first memories of her first day of life. We spent 5 days in the hosp.

My second was much better. I had a Midwife. i gave birth in a hospital. I was told that since the epi didn't work the first time I was prolly in that very small group of women that get "spotty" or incomplete coverage. I decided to go for a drug free childbirth. I accepted continuous EFM but declined all other interventions. I can remember my son's birth vividly. I can close my eyes and relive it, and remember it as a thrilling touching empowering experience. Much different from my daughter's birth.

However, my MW did an episiotomy b/c she said I was going to have a "blow out" and tear in several places. I had originally told her that I would prefer to tear. However, in the moment she said if she cut me he would pop right out or I could keep pushing. I would have allowed her to saw off my arm at that point if it meant he would pop out ;) Later, i regretted it, but in the moment I allowed her to do it. She also gave me a shot of pitocin after delivery as a part of active mgmt of 3rd stage of labor. I didn't tell her she could and she did not ask. Just did it. it made me shake so hard I could not hold the baby. That bothered me. She should have asked. She should have let my body handle it and intervened w/Pitocin only if my bleeding became dangerous. Still this experience was world's above my first delivery. We went home the next morning.

With my 3rd child I decided to have a Home Birth. I found a Midwife that would do it (no small feat since I am a VBAC patient). I labored at home, walking around chatting w/my family. Very relaxed. I got in the tub at about 9 cm. The bathroom had been carefully prepared. i had a string of flower lights hanging over the tub, candles were lit. It was so peaceful and serene. No beeping. No bright lights. No nurses trying to check me. No stupid elastic bands digging into my belly. No catheter. No worries that anyone was going to do anything that I did not specifically consent to. Knowledge that my MW wouldn't advise or do something that wasn't absolutely necessary. I was encouraged to eat and drink if that's what I felt like. I pushed when i felt like it and relaxed when i didn't.

When my son came out (I did tear but just a little on my old scar) I delivered him into my hands and brought him up to my chest. i unwrapped the umbilical cord from around his shoulders and neck. The first thing he felt as he entered this world was my hands. the first thing he saw was my face. The first thing that went into his precious little mouth was my nipple (no suctioning with that hard plastic bulb) within minutes of his birth. We left his cord attached until it stopped pulsing and I delivered the placenta (about 10 minutes after he was born). No shot of pitocin cuz my body did what it was supposed to. After I delivered the placenta, I carried him to the bed and snuggled him and nursed him. It was only after he had nursed that the MW checked him out. At the foot of my bed. He never left my side (no trips to the nursery)

My husband brought me homemade biscuits and sausage gravy (thanks MOM!), scrambled eggs, fruit and OJ and I ate in my bed while I watched the MW check out my son. After, I took the baby downstairs and snuggled with him on the sofa surrounded by my family. That night when we went to bed it was in our own bed. With the baby safely nestled between us.

It was the greatest birth yet. Everything I ever wanted and then some. Words cannot describe the powerful and peaceful feeling that came with the birth of my "water baby." The only downside is that I have no "going home from the hospital" outfit to save like I did w/the first two. ;) And that's OK by me. I just saved the little t-shirt he wore.

I am so glad to have been able to have a HB. I wouldn't change or trade the experience for anything. There were no trade offs. It was blissful, peaceful, and beautiful. just like birth should be. Perfect.

Good Luck to you.

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Permalink Reply by Rachel on July 31, 2010 at 6:51pm

I had 2 hospital births, and I had a home birth with my third baby 3 1/2 months ago. My first son''s birth was pretty fast. I was very young and uneducated. They gave me Demerol when I got there I was 6cm. The pain was overwhelming and scary and they gave me an epidural. I only pushed for 45 minutes and he was out. It wasn't a horrible experience, and I liked the midwife, but hated that I felt like I had no control. My second sons birth I decided I would go natural. I refused the IV and labored in the hospital bed, from 11am to 1pm. The pain was awful and scary and I couldn't relax. I was gripping the bed rails. I was fully dilated by 1pm. Then I pushed for 2 1/2 hours. The OB said they should try a vacuum. I agreed I was in so much pain and was completely exhausted. When they pulled him out my tail bone fractured. I was in so much pain I didn't even want to hold him. It wasn't until about 30 min until I spent time with him. He was whisked away to get washed.
After his birth I felt sad. He was a very fussy baby and still a very emotional. When I found out I was having a third I started to think about what I wanted from this next birth. At first I didn't consider home birth, but I knew I wanted a different experience. I stared looking for a birth center, or a place that did water birth. There were none close enough to our home. Then I watched The Business of Being Born. It changed me. I heard about a group of women that met every month to talk about birth , it was led by a midwife. I decided to go. At the gathering I was able to hear these wonderful and emotional stories of women giving birth at home. That night I knew I had to give birth to this baby at home, not just for me but for my baby.
I had to convince of husband, but he knew it was what I needed so he supported me. My third birth of my daughter was at home, in water and it was amazing. It was my longest labor, but I was so relaxed. I went into labor 6pm on Saturday night and had mild contractions till 8am then got in the tub at 10 am, pushed for 30min and I had her at 1:00. My recovery was so quick. I lay in my bed for day bonded with my daughter. I wasn't in much pain and was very well taken care of by my family and midwives. She was never taken away from me at all which I loved. She nursed immediately after birth, he cord cutting was delayed. She didn't get all the routine stuff they do at the hospital. She was born into a calm setting with her family and two wonderful midwives. I actually didn't know about everything they did at the hospital. They have a list of things, like the vitamin K shot, hearing test, heel prick, eye ointment. I had no idea my boys got all that.
I do wish I had done it every time at home, but I don't think I was ready. My daughters birth was extremely healing and empowering.
I wish you the best of luck for your birth. If I can be pf any support or you have questions, please let me know! Congratulations!

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Permalink Reply by jade kikyo on August 13, 2010 at 9:38am

Thank you all so much. I'm sorry it took me so long to get back on here. We were in the middle of moving when I discovered this site and things have been a little crazy. All of your stories sound so wonderful and you are all so friendly and sweet for sharing with me. I really appreciate the support. I am still undure of what I want which is crazy since I am now almost 28 weeks along, lol.

On a different note have any of you ever done the rrl tea or the primrose oil? I did both with my second and plan to do both with this one aswell. They worked really really well for me.

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Permalink Reply by S. Schulz on August 13, 2010 at 1:15pm

Hello Jade,

After reading your post and the other comments I started to cry....really cry deeply..... I hurt for so many women out there that have had traumatic births. I too had an extremely traumatic first birth. It hurts to even write about it and yet I know that the Lord has purposed this encounter today to bring about an even deeper healing within. So I thank you for writing your post.
I have 4 children and the first three were born in hospitals and my fourth was born at home.

My first birth happened in what I like to call a vetinarian clinic (and I apologize to really good vet clinics out there ,.....and yet that is what it felt like.....treated more like an animal than a human being).
I am and have been a very healthy woman and I was determined to have a birth that I would be able to bond with my child immediately. My mother was of the generation where she was 'put under' and has no recollection of giving birth. I have always felt that the reason why so many parents of that generation are/were so disconnected to my generation has alot to due with the mother being completely 'asleep' during birth....rather prophetic of how many have remained 'asleep' with attitudes of indifference to their grown children today.

So with that shared.....I will detail how my first birth unfolded with so many 'unnecessary interventions' and in so doing brought about much pain physically and emotionally.
I was overdue 2 weeks and so my doctor decided to give me what he called a 'roto-rooter' (stripping the membranes)....I was completely clueless as to what all that meant and talked with a couple of girlfriends and they too said that it had been done to them and so I felt like that it must be o.k. then....and this hurt.
This really didn't work though so I was scheduled to check into the hospital to induce and because all of my friends had been induced I didn't think anything was wrong.

Once I arrived at 6:00am at the hospital I was struck at how there was no warm greeting (this is my first child and I just thought that everyone would be so tender and excited for me) nope...just very cold and sterile....I then was administered a enima and this made me crampy and it also contributed to me getting very dehydrated. I was not allowed to eat or drink....I was given only ice chips....and then I was hooked up to all the monitors and was only dialated a little.....and that is when they administered the pitocin.....this made me very sick and so I started vomiting.....and this went on for several hours.....I then was given an epidural and this made me even more sick and dizzy.

The doctor I had also had 4 other patients that were all delivering at the same time....so he had five patients in all that he kept going back and forth to check on. The nurse told my husband and I that the girl next door is "neck and neck with you, when you are at a five she is at a six so you might have to 'hold on' until he gets through with delivering her". I pushed for 3-4 hours and was vomiting between every push and the nurse would hold that little 'kidney bean vomit tray' under my chin (I will talk later about how the nurse used that 'kidney bean' after I gave birth....you will NOT BELIEVE what she did to me). I kept asking for my mom and mother in law to be let in to see the birth but the nurses didn't want them in until the very last minute. The baby was crowning but his head was turned side-ways and so he was stuck....and at that point I just wanted to have a c-section b/c I was so tired from pushing, vomiting, and dizziness. The doctor finally came in and said that he was going to 'try one more thing' and if it didn't work then he would do a c-section. This 'one more thing' was complete and utter brutality to the very core of my being.....he slid a pair of forceps under me so that I would not see how large these metal tongs that were about to rip me from end to end.....(my husband told me later that when he saw them his eyes got so huge, he started to well up with tears and wishes to this day that he would have said "NOOOO!!!!! ....but he too thought that this was normal and the doctor 'knew better').

As soon as the forceps entered my body I let out a scream because I felt like a wishbone that had just been snapped. The person that adminstered the epidural was standing there and was doubting me that I could feel anything and I screamed again and said "I am being torn in two".....and my doctor yelled 'give her some more' ( drug to deaden pain)......finally after the forceps my son was born and immediately was taken away ....there was no cry......and the doctor and everyone seemed nervous that there was no cry.....and finally after a few minutes came a tired little cry from my precious son. He had a huge indentation across his face from where the forceps had grabbed him and twisted his little head to come out of me. It is a literal miracle that he was not blinded in one eye b/c the forceps missed his eye by a couple of centimeters.

The nurses did not get my mother or mother in law in time so they both missed the birth.....and sad to say I was more concerned about their feelings of missing the birth than I was of enjoying my newborn son. I had no strength left at all in me.....I now had a fever of 104 degrees because of being completely dehydrated and vomiting. As I was being sown up I later found out that I had not only an episotomoy that was off the charts (completly through my rectum) but due to the forceps I was torn all the way up my cervix.....I asked the doctor how many stitches and he said "I stopped counting at 40".....I just cried.

After he stitched me up everyone left me alone and the nurse brought in my food tray but put it at a distance to where I could not reach it and because of my epidural, fever, and completely empty of all strength I could not even reach the intercom to call for the nurse to come in and help me. I tried to scream but there was no voice left....I just cried with tears rolling slowly down my cheeks.....feeling so alone, so battered, so completely wounded and tired. After an hour she came back in and so did my husband....they wanted to let me rest and my husband was horrified to see that my tray of food had not been touched and no one had heard my cries for help. The nurse then told me that it was time to go to the post delivery room and asked me if I had enough strength to get up off the bed into a wheelchair? (I have now learned that most good hospitals would never put a woman in my condition into a wheel chair but would have left her in bed and rolled the bed into the new room). With my husband lifting me up under one shoulder and the nurse on the other side of me I started to feel like I was going to vomit. The nurse then walked me to the bathroom that was in the delivery room.....and as I got to the toilet we all noticed that someone had peed in it and had not flushed .....and in the toilet with the PEE someone had thrown the 'kidney bean tray'.....it was floating in the toilet with the pee......and I KID YOU NOT>>>>> the nurse picked the tray out of the toilet and shook off the pee and said 'here you can throw up in this'.....!!!.....I just looked at here as if I was now in the twilight zone and told her to GET THAT THING OUT OF MY FACE.
Once I got to my new room I was informed that because of my fever it was hospital policy that newborns are not allowed to be around anyone including the mother with a fever. Everyone had told my husband that he needed to rest and to go on home and that we could see each other fresh in the morning....so I now was alone in the hospital without my newborn and to make it worse there was a huge thunderstorm that knocked out the power of the hospital....but thankfully the generators came on. It was 24 hours before I got to finally hold my son. By that time he had already had formula and was having a hard time latching on. When we got home I hired a lactation consultant and RN and after hearing all that happened to me she said 'In all my 20 years of nursing I have never seen someone that has as many stitches as you and and can not comprehend why the doctor did what he did to you'.....it was at that moment that I realized that this was not a "normal" birth.....and that there was something seriously wrong with the way women are treated during birth at some hospitals.

Well.....I now have to go and pick my children up from school.....sorry that this was so long but I have never written it all down before.....my other 2 hospital births (both at a different hospital went really well for the most part and I did receive good nursing care.....but I still was induced and had epidurals and completely felt druggy afterwards).....I still had not become educated about birthing options....up until that time I was sadly one of the 'herd' just following everyone else along not even realizing that there were other options out there.... and learning about how hospital interventions are usually what causes many of the complications during birth.....I will come back and share my homebirth story......

Love to you.....and may your birth be BLESSED with joy and peace......

S.Schulz

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Permalink Reply by jade kikyo on August 14, 2010 at 7:39pm

You poor thing I feel so sorry for you with what you endured. My first was really bad and complete torture but you had it worse then I did. You are so right about just being treated like an animal though. I can't believe the way I was treated with my first. The level of care I was shown was pretty comparable to that which was shown you only once I got past the 30+ hours of labor I some how managed to push her out with only about 10-15min of pushing. I got lucky there but was begging for a c-section like you so I can only imagine what you must have gone through. I am so sorry for that. I was induced from nothing. Nothing had been stripped, softened, or dialated. I went in with my body no where near labor and was hooked up to pitocin. I later learned in that situation they are supposed to use something to soften things up before they start that stuff. I think they wanted more time in the hospital for a bigger bill though and that is why I was forced to endure 30+ hrs of labor with contractions that flatlined at the top of the chart and never broke. Finally a nurse took mercy on me and lowered the pitocin so the contraction would fall. The nurses yelled at me and told me I was scaring the other patients because I was makeing to much noise being in pain. I didn't want to scare anyone but seriously!?!? When it came time to push the doctor said "well you have a few hours of this" and walked right back out of the room. The nurse had to run to go get him after the first push. Then he came back with a full medical class of about 20 students to stand and watch me deliver. I was told I only had a second degree tear but the doctor refused to tell me how many stitches. No one believed me that the epidural didn't work so the doctor sewed me up with no anestesia.

Do you mind me asking what hospital you delivered at? I'm wondering if maybe we gave birth at the same place. My first was Florida Hospital which is obviously in Florida.

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Permalink Reply by Shari W on October 31, 2010 at 11:03pm

I gave birth to my third at home, and it was the best. I don't call my first birth traumatic, but it was disappointing and turned me into an activist. First birth was induced at 41 1/2 weeks, long long labor, long pushing, and then cesarean for "failure to progress". My take is that I should never have been induced and just waited. Second birth was a hospital VBAC of a big baby. At 41 weeks I was induced because I knew she was kind of big (9lb 3oz) and I didn't want to chance waiting longer. I had to battle for the VBAC every step of the way, but managed to do it with just pitocin and not one molecule of any other drug. Third time the deck was really stacked against me for avoiding cesarean. I was 41 and had gestational diabetes. I was in trouble because my 2nd kid had been big. And of course I wanted a VBAC. The pushing and discouraging and testing got to me so much I finally switched to home birth at 36 weeks. Again I did not go into labor until I tried acupuncture at 41w5d. My baby was born that night at home in complete health and peace. Good luck to you!

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