Only thing we needed to settle us, and before we got serious
about baby preparation, was beds, cause the rest had been catered for. So one day we get beds, the next day we drive
to get our big girl from the airport, and the next day a friend turned up with
her two young girls. That same night a
fellow community member dropped in too, and it was all of a sudden too many
other people in our sanctum. We slipped
into our bedroom that night and felt overwhelmed and like we’d made a big
mistake. We’d finally got to a good and
private place and then invited the world into it, and gave it away, what the
hell was with that? When were we gonna be free to be ourselves in our own home
again? Went to sleep feeling slightly
silly, distraught and ominous, after lots of activity and socialising….
And then woke up at 3am that morning, went for a wee, and had
amniotic fluids running down my legs.
Shock, denial, fear, disbelief, horror, and panic played poker for
centre stage, and I woke Currawong up to tell him, so they could tap dance in
his head as well. We decided to hope for
the best, believe that my bladder had finally and all of a sudden sprung a leak
after all these birthing years, and go back to sleep. I woke up at 7 in the morning, had another
wee, and this time the plug came away, with a whole heap of fluid, and I knew
that I had to face up to it. I was 35
weeks pregnant, which many people would agree is far too early to be
considering birthing at home, and going into premature labour which is
associated with lungs not yet ready, and a hospital birth with lots of backup,
care, and postnatal attention. After
talking to my birth support person, Annetta, we decided that it was safest to
just ring the local hospital and go in for their help, so sadly and miserably I
packed my bags and asked my big daughter and our friend who’d just turned up
the night before, to look after all our babies, while we went to the hospital
for who knows how long.
We got there, and I mistakenly expected all the flurries and
attention of the hospital folk that you’d see in a tele drama, and instead we
got mostly left in a room for hours on our own. One of my first thoughts was
about a midwife friend…….who had greeted this pregnancy with a seeming prophecy
(that really messed with my head throughout the whole pregnancy), about how if
this baby was to be stillborn, or with special needs, or needing intensive
medical assistance, then that would be fine……and I told Currawong that she’d been
right. Here we were in hospital. Feeling really depressed. A hardened midwife of many many years was our
tour guide into the system, and at first she was horrified that I was so far
into a pregnancy at my age and with my history, without having had any tests,
or ultrasounds, or doctors appointments…..
She wanted to kick us out and stop us wasting her time, so we could go
and do paperwork and blood tests with a doctor instead of her. It’s a tricky thing to try and explain to a
hospital based midwife that I trusted my body and the process of birth, and
hadn’t seen the need for medicalising my experience or getting information that
might haunt me, especially considering that we wouldn’t have aborted this child
in any case. She put one of those machines on me that
needed strapping in two places to my belly, and that recorded my blood
pressure, baby’s heart beat, and contractions.
Currawong and I chatted and told stories, and asked her questions about
herself, till she started to thaw, and realised that we weren’t homebirth
extremists, and started making comments about ‘some alternative people who
aren’t as open minded as you two….’ and the like. A sad chapter in the war
between homebirths and hospital births is, this woman was bitter from the
attacks she’d felt from ‘alternative’ types while she was doing her job to the
best of her ability over the years……and if we had reacted to her reacting to
us, we could have had a very different experience.
A young doctor came in and asked a whole heap of random
questions in the hope we wouldn’t notice he was checking us out, and that was
the last we saw of him. Then there was
just hours of us sitting in an unused and sterile birthing suite, chatting,
making phone calls to the kids and friends, Currawong popping out for fruit
cake and bottled water whilst pouring money into parking meters, looking around
at the standard fare in surroundings for women and families who birth in hospitals,
and having moments of tears and disappointment, as we thought we were watching
our homebirth sail off into the distance.
About 5 hours later and after not seeing a doctor or having an
ultrasound or having anything really checked out, our new friend the midwife
came in with a pill to stop labour, tags with my name on it for my wrist, and a
shot of steroids in my bum for developing the baby’s lungs, as it was
premature. 6 hours later another midwife
came on duty who we connected with straight away, as we all told each other how
judgement was futile, and it was far easier to make peace with your own
decisions, and accept other people and the choices they made, rather than fight
about it. I had another 2 pills over the
next hour, and time for a huge hug and cry with Currawong, as we realised that
this was really it, and I’d be staying overnight in the hospital on my own, and
he would go off to spend the night with the kids. We really don’t dig spending time apart……
7 hours after getting to the hospital, a wild eyed doctor
came in, asked about the dates, and within minutes had ascertained that I’d got
my dates wrong, because I’d counted from
conception, rather than the two weeks before it, when the egg had
descended and become ‘alive’. Or in
plainer language, I’d counted from conception, instead of from the first day of
my last period, which is when the rest of the world considers the beginning of
pregnancy to be. I wasn’t 35 weeks
pregnant, I was 37!! We looked at each
other horrified, and thoughts jockeyed in my head about how I’d robbed us of a
homebirth, how stupid I felt, how I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life,
and all sorts of other barbs. But in my
defence, we’d counted it from conception because we both remembered so clearly
how this baby was made! And the date of
it. It was a memorable event. Other people remember holidays or outings,
but my love and I remember conceptionsJ
So as we sat there looking shocked, the doctor tried to joke us out of
it, asked us about our birthing history, and got very serious when I told him
that our last birth was twins born at home in water and two days apart, and
told us a few times in a tut tut kind of voice that we were very very lucky
that it had worked out well for us. He
also told me that I was high risk anyway because of my age, and how many babies
I’d had, and because I’d had a caesarean and twins most recent. And then finished up by saying that I may as
well stay in if I was already there, and spend the night even though there was
no risk and we weren’t premature after all, and have an ultrasound in the
morning so they could see what was going on.
Of course they wouldn’t be giving me any more pills to slow it down, or
the other shot of steroids that was coming.
He left the room and I wailed to Currawong about what an
idiot I felt. And then I rang Annetta. “Get out of there! And I’ll come visit you tonight, and we’ll
see what we do from there” was her advice.
And big old strapping hippy me, the alternative lifestyler, the anarchist,
the system questioning one……really needed somebody else to give me permission
to go. Afterall, once I was booked in and had the tags on my
wrists, wasn’t it a given? And a really
sad consideration that was probably one of the main reasons I was in hospital
in the first place, and yet another casualty of the war between homebirth and
hospital birth, was the knowledge that if something ‘bad’ happened in hospital,
it would be considered par for the course, but if that same ‘bad’ thing
happened at home, as the writer of a blog that was rather public about my
impending birth, I’d most likely be hauled before the coroners court and
demonised by the mainstream media and a horde of anti-homebirthing internet
activists who’d doctor my photographs so I looked like Charles Manson…… What a shame politics has entered the arena
of a woman’s personal choice for a place to birth. So I needed permission. All of a sudden this was a totally normal
birth, and it was safe to do at home, and I could exercise my rights and
just…..walk…..out…..of…….there…….
The nice midwife came back in with a very unappetising
hospital version of spaghetti bolognaise, and with tears in my eyes I told her
that I wanted to be back with my family, to which I was overwhelmingly happy
when she totally agreed, thought it would be best, and I’m sure she gave me a
veiled message to stay the hell at home, when she told me about how I could
come back in the morning, and sit around on my bum for another 8 hours till
they could get around to giving me an ultrasound….or stay with my family and
see how labour progressed at home. She
went and worked it out with the doctor, and before you could say ‘Homebirths-R-Us’
we were getting shooed out of the room, and I took those tags off my wrists,
and we scampered out of the building to the big sky, and the fresh air, and our
wonderful magic bus that was going to spirit us back home. The feeling of reprieve from impending doom
was immense. The reminder of how
unspecial a hospital environment can be, even when they’re doing you the
tremendous favour of helping you or saving a life, was timely. And maybe that doomsaying midwife friend
hadn’t been right after all!! Maybe we
really could pull off another beautiful homebirth.
And as a little aside and to skip to the present, it’s only a
few weeks after our birth, and already the story has spread round the area like
wildfire, and friends have already heard a few times how “That woman who has SO
many children, didn’t even get her dates right!” Reminds me of when I had an emergency
caesarean with Balthazar, and “that woman who’d had all those natural births
had to have a caesarean, so you never can tell!!”, and there were also some
nastier comments about how the ‘mighty homebirther had fallen’. And it sits in a funny place within me. Like a slightly uncomfortable itch that
intermittently annoys. A bit of a
wrinkle in my birthing fabric. I also
got my dates wrong with Spiral-Moon, because the first day of my last period
wasn’t actually the first day of my last period…..it was a miscarriage of her
twin. And I only found out that I’d got
my dates wrong because I was going to freebirth her in a town 250kms away from
Adelaide, and thought I should at least make sure that the placenta was in a
good place and everything was going well before we did. And you know what? Sometimes the medical system and ultrasounds get
it wrong too. I’ve got just about every
detail possible ‘wrong’ throughout all my births, and hardly ever predicted
correctly which gender they were going to be.
But what I’ve learnt from my
‘mistakes’ could fill a book, and has taught me far more than being ‘right’
all the time could have. And in getting
so caught up in getting it ‘right’, we can get so swept up in using other
peoples terms and talismans that we can miss the subtle little nuances that
were meant just for us. Like how in
getting my birth dates ‘wrong’, we ended up in hospital for a day, and got to
really live out some of my most dastardly fears about the birth I was about to
engage in the Tango with, and to really sit with them, in the hospital, with
all the staff around us, and then get the incredible opportunity to break free,
fly the gilded cage, and empower ourselves towards the birth that we really
wanted. What an amazingly emphatic way
of working through some last minute fears and creating some clearing around
them so that the forthcoming journey was made all the sweeter and stronger!!
And (to get back to the story), the first thing we did was go
shopping. I was so unprepared for this
birth, that I didn’t even have a pair of knickers! Let alone something to bleed into, or soak up
my excess breast milk, or baby clothing, or wrapping cloths, or a birthing
pool….. I was especially worried about
the lack of birthing pool. Annetta
couldn’t get her hands on one at this short notice, and how could I birth out
of water! Surely there was a kids pool
to be bought in the megaplex that would do? But they were all too shallow or
too big, and I calmed myself with the knowledge that we had a bath at home that
would probably do. Getting back home
again was like a homecoming scene from the Waltons……hugs and tears and many
children draped all round me asking for the story, and telling us how glad they
all were that we were both back. We
settled them all down, and got them into bed, our visitor and her girls went to
bed also, and Currawong went to bed early too, after our exhausting and
emotionally roller coasted day, while I sat up to wait for Annetta.
She drove up in her awesome 4WD home, and parked outside,
walked into the front door, gave me a huge hug and kiss, and then scooped up a
baby bat that was sitting in a corner between the bathroom and hallway
doors. “You’ve got a baby bat” she said
as she held the little one up, and we looked for something to hold it in. I brought out a basket that I’d made as a
meeting between crochet and basket weaving, nice and wooly like a mamma bat,
and we popped it in there, till I could pass it on to my big daughter and the
other kids to look after later. We both
decided it was a good omen, bats being considered good luck by many peoples,
and a baby bat to boot….. And I told Annetta
about how we were all sure that this baby coming was a girl, and how Currawong
had liked the name Batsheva for years, with it’s meaning being ‘daughter of
seven’ which we all thought was apt. We
chatted, I told her the story of the day, we had cuppa’s, and then she checked
me over, felt the head that was down in my pelvis nicely, heard the baby’s
heartbeat, and checked me on the inside to see how I was going. The only danger now was one of infection, as
the plug was gone, but if I kept clean, drank lots of water, and showered
regularly, all that risk should be avoided.
Everything was tickety boo, I was so relieved and greatful to be home
and out of the hospital, and we smilingly went off to bed, hoping that the next
time we saw each other would be early in the morning while I was in labour, and
could ring the hospital and cancel that ultrasound, as my baby had come and was
safe at home.
3am in the morning I woke up and started having tightenings,
sat up for a while on my own, and then Jess, my big daughter, woke up and
joined me. We had a lovely time out of
time together, in the endless seeming hours of the early morning, as I told her
stories about how horrendous I felt when I realised that I was 37 weeks
pregnant in the hospital and thought I’d ripped us all off a homebirth, and how
glad I was that we were home, and how strange it was to be birthing without my
mother around for the first time, and how freaked out I was about birthing out
of water…… A really bonding and
connecting time. She started timing the
contractions, and they were very nicely and evenly heading down a narrowing
tunnel of focus towards contractions close together and getting more
intense. In between them I kept
chatting, and was getting more and more excited and empowered as I realised
that I could manage my tightenings out of the water! I was finding a position that tucked my bum
in, while hanging my pelvis in as relaxed a manner as I could, rubbing the top
of my bum, breathing out through a wide open mouth, and rubbing just under my
belly all at the same time. Currawong
woke up feeling well rested, and joined in the dance I was creating through the
house and the verandah, and we were both feeling happy and like we were going
to meet our baby soon. The contractions
were getting closer and closer, and Jess went out to wake Annetta. She came in too, and the dance kept winding
round the house, and in between contractions I was brilliantly alive, and
intense, and telling them the magic of this baby. This new baby was all about letting go of the
old and my attachments I decided. I’d
lost my birthing necklace with the Kali cow bone bead that I’d had since
Griffyn’s birth, to Balthazar bashing it to smithereens early on in the
pregnancy. I’d left my breastfeeding
dressing gown at my mum’s house. I was
birthing for the first time without my mother around, and interestingly, was
out of the water and out of my traditional birthing position on my back, that
was the same position that my mother had birthed me. I’d been into the lion’s den of the hospital,
thinking that my anxieties and that dire prediction had won, but had been
released to birth at home, and was finally able to shrug off all those negative
omens!! I was standing on two feet
strongly grounded, and looking birth in the eye! I was wearing a lanolin soaked, handspun,
bird cape with a raw fleece bustle that I’d made for Tribal Fibres, as a wrap
to lend me power and magic. I was meeting birth in a different way than
I’d ever met it before, dressed in power clothes, standing tall and strong,
perching my pelvis in a way that relieved the pain, and with my Currawong
firmly at my side, instead of running around boiling water and making sure that
the bath was the right temperature. He
was just as delighted with the new fangled way that this birth was
happening. I was grinning and smiling
and laughing with delight at the fears I was facing, and the new birthing paths
I was treading. It looked like we were
heading nicely towards birthing in time to ring the hospital with our awesome
result, and then get on with the rest of the day…..
And then our guest woke up.
She had breakfast, and was telling stories of herself and her
relationship and her births, and chatting to all my people who’d been dancing
with me, and the contractions started to slow. I tried to entice her into the birthing cocoon
we’d been weaving, and she joined in the dance for a moment. But then we were hearing about her plans for
the day, and her daughters woke up, and my expansions virtually came to a stop. I was bereft.
We were heading so cleanly and strongly towards birth weren’t we? What had happened? How could it have gone away so completely? I came to the conclusion that I needed to ask
our guest to leave. I needed to reclaim
my birth space, and keep it sacred and for the people who were in on the dance
with me, and immediate family and my birth support person only. Our guest didn’t take it too well, and felt
like she was being kicked out, and was very pouty about it, but I stayed
strong. Which was actually a really big
thing for me. Underneath the strong alternative
exterior, I’m actually quite a wus, and have often given what I want over in
the face of opposition. I’ll compromise
what I want to make others happy before just sticking to what I want and
exactly how I want it. But I was
clear. “This isn’t about you, it’s about
me, and what I need for this birth, and who I want around me, and it has to be
family only. Bummer about the timing,
and thank you for your help yesterday, but that’s just how it is.” I
organised with a dear friend closer to Nimbin for our guest and her girls to
stay in their community house for a few nights, and after packing up she was
gone. And so was my birthing process
that had felt like it was coming to a conclusion.
We sat around for a bit, I had a few spasmodic contractions,
and tried hard to not feel like I’d failed in some way. Annetta decided to head off for the day,
advised me to rest, and said she’d be back later that night after the babies
were asleep, and we’d see what happened then.
We all agreed that we’d give it till the next morning, and if nothing
was happening then, we’d have to consider hospital again. That day was a bit despondent. I tried all the things that I knew could
bring on labour….walking around, squatting, and other positions to give my body
every chance to kick back into the birthing process. The hospital rang to see how we were going, and
Currawong told them that birth had been happening and then stalled, and we were
waiting to see what the rest of the day brought, and if nothing had happened by
the next morning we’d be considering coming back in. But the highlight of the day was Currawong’s
favourite birth starting procedure…..making love. And this was the first time in our birthing
career that it actually worked. All the
other times we’ve tried it have been with lots of people around, and as a
purely mechanical antidote. Currawong’s
enjoyed it, but I’ve been unimpressed, unfocused, and interested in what it
might do for my body only. But there was
no-one around, the kids were all off on a walk, there was nothing else
happening, and our lovemaking session did kick off a few contractions, but that
was not the main aim of the exercise anymore.
We actually had the time and space to melt into each other, and visited
the special place we create together, with the added spice of immanent
birth. I climaxed quite a few times, and
Currawong was crying as our bubble of us drew to a close, telling me that
watching me love him was what he was born for.
That moment he was watching me, was the moment he was born to
witness. Gotta love a romantic bird man.
Birth meanwhile, had gone on a very extended coffee break,
and wasn’t coming back into the space anytime soon. The day dwindled into the night, and well fed
kids went off to bed, and Currawong again went to bed early with them. I sat alone and waited for Annetta again,
sad, and depressed, and tired after two days now of little sleep and big
stress. She came in again like a breeze
of hope, and just hugged me and let me hold onto her. And then she checked me over again, checked
the baby’s heartbeat and position, and we sat as she explained what she was
piecing together. After having so many
baby’s, my uterus was looser than normal, and hadn’t quite contracted tight
enough to start pushing out a baby. My body had been taken by surprise by the
plugs defection, and a bit like my birth preparations, just wasn’t quite
ready. There was nothing wrong with the
baby either, and it seemed like the little person inside had been caught on the
hop as well, not quite ready to shimmy down my birth canal. The culprit it seemed was the fact that my
cervix which, again after having had so many baby’s, had been dilated and open
for quite a while beforehand, and had left the plug vulnerable and exposed to
the hungry bacteria that live in every healthy vagina, which had snacked on the
sweetness of my mucus plug. And then
stresses, and moving, and cleaning and the like had helped weaken it, till it
came away earlier than my body and baby were ready for. So there was nothing wrong with us, except a
mechanical fault that had thrown a spanner in the works…..so to speak. And we seriously spoke about how getting this
far from the plug having come away, there was still an increased risk of
infection to me and the babe inside, and I had to finally and completely let go
of the idea of a water birth, as water increased the risk of infection
too. I went to bed despondent and tired,
but I felt like I at least had a clearer picture about why this was happening,
and that there was nothing wrong with my body or baby.
And guess what……..I’ve reached my self imposed limit for a
blog post, so I’m going to finish the story in another post. We have another situation of a ‘to be
continued’. It may not be twins, but it
goes over days again, and a lot can happen in three and a bit days!! And sorry, but this birth was far too
engaging and intimate for any of us to have bothered with taking many photo’s,
so you’ll have to imagine how it looked in your minds eye………….
