Holden's Birth Told By His Mom Dhari
Dhari and Ben took the Birthing In Awareness Childbirth Classes taught by Teresa. They came to the tea and decided to hire Guina Bixler to be their labor doula. They had their baby without any induction or pain management medication. Dhari is a petite mom, only 5'1" tall and wears a 5 1/2 shoe. So much for petite women having harder births!. She remained strong and allowed her instinctive voice to guide her as they drew on the preparation that they had done in hopes of having a gentle birth experience in bringing their son into the world!
Holden finally decided it was time to come meet his family. He was born on September 7th at 7:20pm. He weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz, 21 inches long. You will all be happy to hear that the birth went wonderfully, it was exactly as I had hoped it would be. No small part I'm sure to the vision that Ben and I were able to develop over the weeks in class with you all.
Our doula, Guina, had mentioned to me when Hurricane Charley was coming up from Florida that the weather can sometimes make your water break....so being 5 days past my due date I was hoping that Hurricane Frances would do the trick. Of course this was the slowest moving Hurricane in history, so I was trying everything else in the meantime. Although my midwives were being pretty good about it, they were starting to talk to me about induction. Funny that tonight would have been my "scheduled induction date" if I hadn't had him sooner. We even hit Scalinin's for the Eggplant Parmesean - it didn't work but it was a nice dinner for us. So Frances arrived at about 4:00am on Tuesday morning and my water broke at 6:00 am.
We called our midwife and she said to head in to the hospital. I wondered if I would like to wait it out at home for a while, but we were thinking about the impending rush hour and how it would be even worse with the pouring rain and the trees down on Georgia 400, so we decided we better go ahead in. Plus I was having contractions every 3-4 minutes (although I know now that they were mini contractions, so mild compared to the real thing!). It took us a while to get everything together so we ended up on the road at 7:45 am on the way to Northside. I have to admit there were a few moments that I wondered if we'd be using the black garbage bag with the newspaper and towel contents as we crawled our way there. (something Teresa tells us to do to prepare for a automobile birth) But we made it at 8:30 am and got checked in.
I was already proud to be the only person who appeared to be in actual labor. At that time, on the day after a holiday, it looked like a lot of inductions were checking in. Getting checked in was hectic, the paperwork to read and sign, and the dreaded EFM laying on my back....with that and the trip into the hospital in rush hour my contractions had slowed way down. When they checked me I was still around 2 cm - maybe a 3 my midwife said. Ok, time to get out of the bed and walk. We made laps around the Labor and Delivery halls, we were practicing wide open mouth kissing(a technique we learned in class that Ina May Gaskin encourages), and lots of nipple stimulation while we were in the room, we felt like a couple of teenagers when the nurse would walk in.
Four or Five times we left the room after having to get the EFM readings (they were checking every 45 minutes) to walk the halls. My contractions has slowed down to every 20 to 30 mintues. Everything was good with the baby and my midwife was fine with me progressing naturally so we kept up our techiques to get things going again. It was about 2:00 before things really got rolling again, and my mom had just arrived from her 5 hour drive from Tallahassee.
I sat down on the birth ball and felt what I would later know was the beginning of my "real" labor. It was about 2:30 pm. I called our doula and so began the pain management...I COULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS WITHOUT A Doula! She and Ben were by my side the entire time through the contractions. Ben was just a champ, he was so wonderful. They helped me in the shower (the hydrotherapy was great), the time squatting on the bed, both of them reciting affirmations, telling me "You are doing this" when I started to say I'm not sure I can do this..at that point I was hitting transition and I know now why Teresa said this is the point most women decide they want to check out. At the time I didn't know it was transition, I had no idea I was that close, the last time the midwife had checked me I was only at 4 centimeters.
It was really interesting to see how my body was coping with the process, the entire labor I was having one really intense contraction followed by one more mild one...and the endorphins that would kick in in between the contractions, I can honestly say I felt so good at those intervals. I was able to really rest and get ready for the next contraction. I even said at one point that it was almost worth the pain of the contractions just to feel that good in between.
It seemed even more unbelieveable when I said I thought I might be feeling the urge to push. Even though I was saying all this when I got checked again and was at 8-9 cm I still didn't actually believe it. Everything was so surreal, my animal howls (a technique to help keep me open that we learned in class) were filling up the entire labor and delivery wing with each contraction and my midwife was starting to get ready for the birth. I remember looking at the clock thinking I am going to have this baby at 7:00 - it was 6:50 and the pushing had started.
It took until 7:20 but then I had my beautiful baby Holden in my arms! Even after all the preparation I could not believe I had done it - I had brought him into the world without intervention as I had hoped.
There are no words to describe how I felt those hours and these days since the birth, but I know for sure that staying in tune with my body during the birth made the first hours and those days in the hospital so natural and smooth. There is no substitue for instinct in this process, and having him naturally really keeps you close to the right insincts. Holden latched on immediately after birth and has been breastfeeding beautifully since then. I know that I owe so much of that to being able to give birth naturally, it is truly the best gift I could have given Holden and myself.
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