STEPH’S STORY @casa_colibri

Taos arrived last night at 12:42am MT on Aug 22nd, just hitting 39w0d! She’s 7lbs, and yikes that was a fast and intense home birth!

It’s funny because despite 0 changes to my physical body over the last few weeks, we all (myself/husband/doula/midwives) had a feeling that she might be born the 22nd (1 week ahead of schedule). For me…it felt more like a hope as I have to travel/teach with her in late Oct and 1 week early means a week extra to recover. Still, we didn’t do anything to bring her about a bit early, outside of ask nicely. ?

Felt normal all day yesterday. No weird nesting aspects. No broken water/bloody show, etc. I worked most of the day, fed the furry children, and then had dinner with @drbenhouse and watched Netflix.

From 6:30-9:30pm, I started to have a few mild cramping waves. I didn’t really think they were much outside of annoying and my midwives agreed when I texted them the random intervals. Still…I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that my birth would be fast so when I laid down in bed to rest, I decided to time them just to see what would change.

Contractions quickly sped up to every 5 min in the next hour to every 2 minutes by 11pm. At that point, we had called the midwives and my fabulous doula @maite_yoga and they were on their way, rolling in around 12pm despite a broken car and lots of jungle lightening.

I was doing most of my labor on hands and knees in the shower while Ben frantically tried to get the birth tub ready. But then my water broke around 12:20, and I started to feel the need to push. There wasn’t room in the shower, and the rest of my birth stations sounded uninviting, so I ended up pushing for about 20 min on my side on the bed.

Pushing was ouch! Still massive cramps + major burn. I don’t exactly know my dilation/effacement schedule because we honestly never even checked, but it must have been pretty fast since active labor only lasted a few hours. Four big pushes later and she was out with just a small first degree tear (no sutures). Phew. 

Taos has a short cord, so we couldn’t get her on the boob until we cut and clamped it, but once she was up there, she got her latch pretty fast.  She took to breastfeeding fairly easily, but the surprising part for me was the length and difficulty passing the placenta.  That took 3 x as long as pushing her out, and I never got the urge to push it so it was extra unpleasant to force myself to do so. 

All in all, I’m grateful we had a quick home birth without complications.  I was dizzy for a few hours after (oh hey anaemia) and my poor pubic symphysis is even more pissed than during pregnancy, but i am Very grateful that Taos and I whipped through birth.

@drbenhouse was awesome, the whole team was awesome, and now it’s time to chill with the fam for a few days.