A Home Birth Story

My beautiful daughter was born on December 27th, 2023 at 3:07am in the comfort of our home. Her birth was the most sacred, healing, intimate and primal experience of my life. Our story is one worth remembering, so here it is.

Disclaimer

Before diving into my experience, I think it’s really important to make clear that there is no one right way to birth your baby. There is a lot of talk about what our bodies should or shouldn’t be able to do and shame around interventions in birth. I’m here to say that only YOU know the right way to birth your baby in a way that feels safe and empowering. Only YOU can decide if interventions are in your best interest or not. My hope for every birthing person is to have full autonomy in their birth. And that comes with proper birth education, informed consent and a birth team that trusts you. There are many beautiful ways to birth your baby. And if your birth did not go the way you were expecting or left you feeling a certain way, i’m so sorry. Birth can be unpredictable and there are so many factors at play. This story is simply me sharing my personal experience. I believe birth stories, in all their forms, deserve to be told. Just as the mothers deserve to be held. I hope this story inspires you and gives you confidence in your choices surrounding birth.

Birth Planning

I was nearly 20 weeks pregnant with my second child when I made the decision to have a home birth. It’s expected these days to give birth in a hospital, it’s the default that I assumed with my first because I didn’t see any other choice as options for me. I saw people who had home births as the outliers, and reserved for only the most hippy dippy crunchy of moms and for reasons I just didn’t fully understand at the time.

But after I had my first child, I was starting to understand why people chose to birth at home. For many reasons, being in the hospital held me back from an empowered and intervention-free birth with my first born (which is something I knew I wanted). You can read that birth story here. I really started to ask myself, is being in the hospital truly the safest place for me to birth?

Now understanding why people birth at home, and actually doing it, are two separate things. When the time came to actually jump ship from my hospital-based providers and commit to a home birth, I had a lot of conditioned fear I needed to work through. I had to do a lot of inner work to really connect to my intuition and find trust in myself, my body and the birthing process. I sought out support from other home birth moms which was extremely helpful. It was also very important for me to protect my space in who I discussed my birth plans with and limit the content I consumed around birth. In time, the choice for a home birth became so utterly clear to me, and there was no looking back.

Prenatal Care

I have to say, the shift from a hospital based provider to a home birth provider was a breath of fresh air. I’ll never forget my first visit with my midwife Brigitte. She spent an entire hour with me. She listened to my whole story and validated my entire experience with my first born. She answered all my questions and was so detailed with her own questioning. She was so mindful about the importance of informed consent- from each physical exam to any “routine” testing. She let me be in charge of my care and made sure that I was fully understanding and on board with every step of the process. It was such a refreshing experience with a medical provider and made me realize how much is overlooked in our traditional system.

Early Labor

I woke up on Christmas day (2 weeks before my expected due date) to some bloody show. Based off my experience with my first birth, I knew that it was very likely that my labor was going to be starting soon. I focused on staying calm and centered that day. I updated my birth team and continued on as normal.

On Dec 26, I started getting some cramping in the morning and throughout the day. The sensations were mild and not super close together. Again, this felt very similar to early labor with my first. Even so, I tried to tell myself that this birth could be completely different than my first and I could be days off still from having a baby. Even still, I was feeling a little anxious/nervous about it all, so I did some guided birth meditations to ground myself and took a long afternoon nap, otherwise I mostly tried to carry on my day as normal as possible. As the day went on the cramping sensations slightly picked up in frequency, but still weren’t too intense. I was convinced I still had lots of time so by 7pm I decided to take a long bath to relax and then go to bed to get a good nights sleep. I told myself i’d have a baby tomorrow.

Well this baby had other plans for me…

As soon as I laid down to go to bed, the contractions ramped up significantly. I was having a really hard time getting comfortable in bed and eventually needed to get up to move around my room. I consider this point as my shift into active labor. I called my midwife and doula and we all agreed it was time for them to make their way over. They both arrived around 10pm.

Active Labor

My bedroom and bathroom were set up as a calm oasis for me, I had christmas lights up, candles burning, peaceful music in the background. It was truly a sanctuary for me compared to being in the hospital. I felt calm, safe and held by my environment and my birth team. As contractions ramped up, I quickly decided to get into my bath where I labored for a couple hours. The warm water was glorious and allowed me to stay relaxed. But after a few hours I was starting to experience a fair amount of back pain, so decided to get out and change positions.

From that point I probably changed positions every 30 minutes or so, letting my intuition and body guide me. I went from hands and knees, to the birth ball, to leaning on my husband, to the toilet, to sidelying, to bent over on the bathroom counter. Every time I changed positions my contractions got more intense, which I kept telling myself was a good sign of progress even though it was so challenging to work through in the moment. My birth team was a gentle re-assuring presence. They were helpful when I needed and encouraging, but mostly hands-off. My husband held me every step of the way, he gave me massages, kept me hydrated and reminded me of how strong I am, the best daddy doula I could have ever asked for.

Fairly early on in the process I noticed my body involuntarily bearing down with my contractions. I was pushing without even trying. My midwife encouraged me to follow my bodies lead, whatever it felt it needed to do I had full permission to surrender to it. The trust my birth team had in me and the birthing process was so re-assuring. I checked myself periodically to see if I could feel my babys head with my fingers. She still felt fairly high in the birth canal, despite my pushy contractions. I kept talking to my baby, telling her that she was safe, that I was ready for her, that I trusted her. But after almost 4 hours of this, I just wasn’t feeling her head moving further down. I was getting so so tired at this point, and starting to mentally question my ability to do it. I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be strong enough. Birth has a way of bringing you to your breaking point and forcing you to truly surrender.

Transition

My midwife picked up on this mental shift of mine and asked if I would be open to trying a cervical exam so she could see what was going on (thinking that the exam might give us more information so she could offer suggestions on how to help things progress). I was originally not planning on having any checks during this birth, I verbalized to my team that I was scared a check would just result in her telling me something discouraging. But after some time to think and a bit of desperation, I consented.

She didn’t get through the full exam without me telling her to stop, it was extremely painful. I immediately regretted consenting. My gracious midwife was so respectful of my ask to stop. Still feeling exhausted and defeated, it was suggested that I get in my shower with my foot up on a stool in a lunge position. She thought that a change of positions might help things progress and free up space.

I immediately felt better once in the shower, the warm water helped re-center me and gave me a boost of energy. I leaned on my husband in a lunge position and waited for the next contraction. Amazingly, after just 2 or 3 contractions in the shower, I felt my baby drop and start crowning. It was amazing how fast it all happened from there. The intensity of that sensation…. I can’t even begin to describe. I let out the most guttural, primal scream you could ever imagine. It took about 3 contractions in total and I caught my beautiful baby girl and brought her to my chest. Wide eyed, crying and covered in vernix, Ava Rae Aronson was brought earth-side at 3:07am. I was in complete awe of what my body just did.

Afterbirth

We transitioned back to my bed where I effortlessly birthed my placenta. I was able to rest and breastfeed while my team cleaned up and took care of us. My body felt so weak - I couldn’t move my legs for awhile and kept shaking from all the hormones. But after a couple hours of monitoring and making sure we were all well, fed, hydrated and able to transfer to my bathroom safely, my team departed and we got to enjoy the rest of the day at home getting to know our new little love.

Final thoughts

Being home was the best decision I could have made for myself. My home birth was the most healing experience. It was unbelievably challenging, but also strangely the simplest thing in the whole world, like exactly what we are meant to do. It pushed me to my edge, but it also restored my trust in my intuition and in my body. I never once felt afraid to be at home, it truly felt like the safest place in the world for me to birth. My birth team held the space for me to be my rawest most vulnerable self. It was the most empowering experience and everything I could have hoped for and felt like the closing of a cycle. We are truly built to birth, and no one knows how to birth our babies better than we do.

xoxo

Amy