Author: kadiekbarber

Our baby girl Lyra actually came 3 weeks early on her 37th week birthday. Born in June on Soltice! 

My water broke at 6 PM on June 19th, I was in disbelief that it was happening so early. The saddest part of my labor was saying goodnight to my sweet 2 year old boy, knowing that our lives would all be changed when I got back.

We put our son to bed and called in the grandparent backup to watch him. We packed our remaining things and headed to the hospital. I wasn’t feeling any painful contractions at this point, which made the hour long drive to the hospital much more relaxing than I had preparing it would be.

We arrived at the hospital and they confirmed the water broke. They said we could labor more at home but the distance and potential for a fast labor made us want to spend the night and labor there. They offered augmentation to kickstart my labor but I asked to try and sleep and wait til morning.

We got a birthing room with a nice large tub for laboring in. My husband and I slept as best we could, I was nervous and excited. Starting at 4:45 AM I started feeling consistent surges. They were uncomfortable but extremely manageable. I used the music recordings and focused on being as relaxed as possible during and between them. 

The nurses offered augmentation again the morning of the 20th, but I refused saying that my surges had started and my labor was well on its way. My birth plan made it clear I wanted no pain medication and no coaching for pushing. I managed the surges with breathing techniques and some walking around the room until 8:50 AM when the surges were very painful. At this point I called in my birth doula to join us and got in the large tub to labor in the warm water. 

The bath helped make the surges easier to manage, though they were still very powerful. I was starting to be tempted by the idea of an epidural. Then around 10 AM, I suddenly felt intense pressure and said “baby!” Then the room got very busy. The nurses helped me out of the tub. I stood next to the bed, which they raised so I could lean my forearms on. I felt the natural urge to push. 4 or so contractions later, I pushed out baby Lyra. She looked purple and covered in vernix. She cried and I was so pleased! Also very proud for pushing her out standing up!

We then got on the bed and they wanted to give me pitocin to push out the placenta. I asked if that was necessary. They allowed me to wait and then the placenta came out soon after. They say I lost very little blood.

I was also pleased that I did not suffer any tearing. I think having this be a second birth and an early/small baby (5lb 6oz) helped with that.

We are all doing well and I have had a very good recovery. Lyra had a bit of jaundice (which runs in the family) but we have managed it without need for bili lights. She is a sleepy feeder, so we have had to bottle feed to make sure she gets enough to eat. Luckily I have good milk supply. Still working on getting her to latch so we can be nursing instead.

If you have read this far, thanks for reading my birth story! It is so nice to share!

I am very happy with my birthing and thank HypnoBirthing for their teachings. While the birth was in no way painless, the meditation techniques helped me change my relation to the pain, allowing me to birth unmedicated. 

Fiona was born on June 23! The last few weeks were a wild ride followed by a smooth and surprisingly quick labor.

As my June 10 due date came and went, I started stressing because I didn’t want to be induced. I did EVERYTHING to try to bring on spontaneous labor. Curb walking, eating dates, raspberry leaf tea, sex, pumping, massage, acupuncture, hypnosis tracks, pelvic steaming – at one point I was even hoping the full moon might do it! 

We finally decided to schedule an induction at 41 weeks +4, on Friday, June 21. We packed up the car and were about to head to our main hospital, when we got a call saying they were too full and wouldn’t be able to admit us. They rescheduled our induction for Saturday at a different hospital. I was really resistant to giving birth in a hospital I’d never been to, with midwives I’d never met, but my concerns melted away as soon as we got there. It was such a quiet hospital and as we walked up we were greeted by a group of nurses on break out front, “Good morning! We know who you are!” 

They showed us to our room and hooked me up to belly monitors and gave me my first dose of misoprostol. We spent the day getting a dose every four hours, watching Parks & Recreation, knitting, and listening to a Hypnobabies track I’d found called “Come Out Baby.” Around 10 p.m. the midwife offered to start Pitocin or do another dose of miso, I chose the latter and decided to try to get some rest.

Around 1:30 a.m. I woke up with surges coming every 2-3 minutes. The miso had left my system by 2 a.m., and we waited to see if my surges would continue. Then around 5:30 the midwife came and took me off the monitors. I was so excited to get off the monitors and hopeful that my body had taken over and my birth plan was back on track.

Chris and I went for a walk and my water broke in the parking lot. When we got back to our room, I got in the tub and things seemed to go from zero to 60. My surges were suddenly a lot stronger and Chris called our doula, Heidi. It was time for a shift change and I met my new midwife and nurses while I was in the tub. I focused on my surge breathing and we put on my Iron & Wine playlist. When Heidi arrived around 8 a.m., I was already feeling the urge to push with each surge. I got out of the tub and she guided me and Chris through different positions. My surges were still a few minutes apart and Heidi told me to be prepared because they would get closer together as the day went on and I’d no longer have a break in between. But a few minutes later I started feeling the “ring of fire.” Everyone thought it was too soon, but Heidi looked down to see my daughter’s head. The nurse called the midwife and the rest of the nursing team rushed in as Fiona was born at 11:15 a.m. 

After being so resistant to induction, we ended up having an amazing experience, and we wouldn’t change a thing. We are so grateful for how everything turned out, and so in love with our little girl! 

A bit of a long story, but with no signs of labor yet, we went in at 40+6 for a stress check for baby and I got hooked up to the heart monitors for a couple of hours. Generally, things looked good, but he was showing some small heart rate decelerations here and there, and they said given my being past my due date, they would recommend an induction and we could do it that same day if we wanted. We decided to go forward with it since we wanted to make sure he was safest. We checked in at 4 PM and started Misoprostol but just did a couple of rounds of a half-dose, since he was still showing a bit of those decelerations. At 1 AM, they suggested inserting a Foley balloon so that my cervix would dilate more naturally rather than with the drug and might put less stress on him. I was barely 1 cm after 8 hours of Miso, but they got the balloon in. That night I had some painful cramping but not any real full-blown contractions yet. The following day, they started me on Pitocin around 3 PM and we waited for the balloon to come out, at which point I’d be 4-5 cm. It was very slow and I still wasn’t feeling much other than some cramping. Later that evening, we discussed the next step – breaking the waters, whether or not the balloon had come out at its 24-hr mark. At around midnight that second night, I decided to get an epidural just because I was pretty tired and was worried that breaking of the waters might add to the pain significantly. I expected it might speed things up a lot and baby would be here the following morning either way. After I got the epidural, they were able to pull out the balloon and confirm I was at 5 cm, and they broke my water at 1 AM. I went to bed (still on pitocin too) and we hoped I’d be much more dilated by morning. Unfortunately, at my next check at 6 AM, I was still 5 cm! The third day was a repeating pattern of checking every 4 hours and not seeing any further progress. We did an ultrasound and confirmed that baby was in a bit of a weird slightly transverse yet head-down position, and partially facing upward, so we tried some spinning babies techniques to see if we could get him to rotate and engage lower. That didn’t prove effective and by my 6 PM check, we knew we were running out of time/options since my water had been broken for 18 hours. At that point, we decided to do a C-section since we wanted to just get him out and didn’t have a lot of other options. He was born via a swift and straightforward C-section at 8:48 PM on Wednesday June 26. John is a great baby so far, feeding wonderfully (and often!) and sleeping pretty well too! And I am recovering well from the surgery. 

Imogene

At my 41 week appointment after a couple weeks of pre-labor warm ups I found out I was 5-6 cm dilated/opened and opted for a second membrane sweep as the 42 week mark felt like it was quickly approaching. I will say I was not very patient and trying everything I could Google to get the birthing process started.

We went to bed that night around 10 p.m. and I woke up with a surge a little after midnight. I had felt a couple stronger ones in the past week so I didn’t think much of it until I had a couple more. I started timing them around 12:30 a.m. and even though they were irregular and still kind of short I woke Matt up a little after 1 when they had been going on for about an hour. I got into the shower and he called the hospital. Because I was already so dilated and this was a second baby they told us to pack our bags and come in. I was nervous to do this because the surges were not super strong and I didn’t want to go too soon, but by the time we were in the car things started to ramp up. For the early surges I found surge breathing really helpful while I squeezed a plastic comb in my hand as a distraction. As the surges got stronger I started to shake and I noticed my breaths becoming panicky so I started “singing” with the ahh vowel sound, which really helped me take longer breaths and ease the intensity of the sensations. 

When we got to the hospital we were sent to triage. Matt asked them to turn the lights down, which made a huge difference. I found out I was 8 cm dilated/opened at that point and admitted. When we got to the labor room a midwife, resident, medical student and a couple nurses were already there. This made me nervous and excited because I knew this meant we would meet the baby soon. I really appreciated the lights were already lowered and I could see the midwife reading our birth preferences. At that point I felt pressure and the urge to push. The resident asked if I wanted to be checked again, which I consented to and she said I had a little lip of the cervix left, but I could push if I wanted to. The midwife suggested a couple positions to remove the lip and agreed I could push as I felt the urge. I found the second stage of labor to be the most challenging part. I wonder if I should have tried to rest at this point, breathed and let my body do more of the work, but the pressure was intense and I just wanted to actively push to get her out. It took an hour of hard/forced pushing and a few different positions. She was born at 4:15 am about 4 hours after I felt the first surge. Once she was out there was a lot of talk about how big she was and we found out she weighed 10 lbs 13 oz. Her older sister was only 8 lbs so I did not expect to join the 10 lb club! 

I am so grateful for Matt’s calm and steady presence and the midwife and other birth attendants that gave me the care and confidence I needed when I started to really doubt I could push this big baby out. The birth team even asked if I wanted to touch the head while I was crowning and a medical student gave me a tour of the placenta after, which were unexpected special moments for me. 

Imogene is so sweet – mostly sleeping and eating and Florence, her big sis, is obsessed. 

We had our baby 4/26 at 2:01am…she weighed 7lbs 6oz and was 19 inches long. I was able to have a natural childbirth in the hospital. Everything followed my birthing preferences besides the pushing. I did the J breathing/pushing for almost 3 hours and I couldn’t get her head to stay out so I asked for advice and the midwife said don’t breathe out when I pushed so I tried that for like 30 minutes and she was born! The midwife and doula said it was the quietest birth they have ever seen. The doula said she couldn’t tell when I transitioned and couldn’t believe it. And the nurse said it was the most peaceful, beautiful, natural birth she has seen! My partner said our birth should have been filmed for a HypnoBirthing video!