People think I’m nuts when I say I had a home birth on the homestead with a preemie, unassisted!
Let me clarify something. Never once did I intend to have an unassisted birth at 36 weeks. I planned and researched and became a doula to have the knowledge. We gathered supplies. Then I fully trusted my body. I had a midwife all set up to birth at the earliest at 38 weeks, maybe 37. My normal was in the 38th week (3 kids previous naturally). I have assisted births before so I was used to everything birth related. So let’s get into the nitty gritty of my home birth on the homestead.
It was my first home birth. I intended on a midwife but she was across the country as we were in reality expecting the baby to come at 38 weeks.
So at 12:04 am when my water broke I was like holy hell! I felt sick. I had printed out birth affirmations, and for the first 15 minutes they kept me calm as I was pacing the bedroom floor back and forth reading them until I became dizzy. What a whirlwind of emotions I was feeling. Happy, uneasy, excited, jittery. We got the pool blown up just in case. We knew that I had very fast labors and only got faster with each kid. I wanted to labor at home as long as possible because I didn’t want to deal with the hospital finding ways to get me to be on some sort of IV or medication.
Each contraction was so barely there but strong enough to make me pee so I mostly labored on the toilet. These contractions were nothing compared to all of my other births. It was so odd cause it just didn’t feel real.
So a little over 4 hours into it, I finally start a scant bloody show and I get into the birth pool cause I’m just not feeling like birth is going to be present any time soon. We had told no one. My kids were sleep and my 3 year old decides to wake up after about 30 minutes of me in the pool. I honestly felt like my labor had stalled. It went like 20 minutes and no contractions. Then bam a huge contraction hit. I felt him come down.
Oh my goodness it was happening!! Never once was I scared. I was just in the moment. With my knowledge I was doing all I could to not clench my jaw and with another huge contraction out came his head. I laid back in the water and asked my husband to help grab the baby and he reaches down and out he came.
What a beautiful moment! He came out quiet but alert. Eyes open and breathing just fine. Just calm and collected like my entire home birth. It was fantastic.
A few hours later we finally cut the cord because I hadn’t birthed the placenta yet and I spent a good 30 minutes contracting and peeing with the cord just kind of hanging and laying on my thigh. I finally squatted in the floor and slowly pulled on the cord just to feel if there was resistance. There was, so I waited. Another contraction hit and I was back on the toilet. Then I grabbed the bowl I had for the placenta and with another contraction hit and I’m squatting over it and put it comes. The pain came with birthing the placenta was worse than birthing my son. It was so thick. Nothing like most placentas I have seen. There was a decent amount of blood so I slowly got my husband to help me back up and walk me to the bed.
It was a full day before I was able to leave my bed because I was faint. I knew the signs of how much blood I am capable of losing before there is an issue. So again, we were safe. This is the biggest thing I can possibly mention. Do lot’s and lot’s of research! Listen to your body and your gut. I will be the first to say that if I had felt inclined to go to the hospital I would have.
I felt safe. It was peaceful. He was born perfect.
I now am 5 months postpartum and we are doing amazing. He fattened up so much and now we are back to working on the homestead. We are a family of 7 and try to live a self sustaining lifestyle. Check out my post about that here.
Do you have a homebirth story you’d like to share? Are you a blogger? I’d love to feature you and your birth story on my site with photos if you’d like to include them. Email me at Jonesfamilypuzzle@gmail.com