Birth stories are always a pretty wild ride. Even when they're more of the standard "I had contractions, so we went to the hospital, and 13 hours later I had a baby" variety, there's something really fun and visceral about hearing how a baby came into the world … even if it's by accidental home birth.
One mom recently shared her extra-dramatic story. Like many births, it started with a plan: a low-intervention hospital birth. Sounds good, right? Except that this was the mom's first time going into labor naturally, and the experience ended up totally different for her this time around.
“I’d been having timeable Braxton-Hicks for over a week – strong, about a minute long, anywhere from 5-15 mins apart. Some of them felt ‘productive,’ though I also didn’t know what I was doing, having never gone into labor naturally before. They were intense, but rarely painful beyond some mild cramping. At my 38-week midwife visit, I was told these were normal (especially for a 2nd pregnancy) and that they likely weren’t doing anything to progress labor, which was really frustrating.”
She said things progressed in more or less the same way the following day, a Saturday, but Sunday started off with a bang:
“I woke from a painful contraction and went back to sleep for an hour (this wasn’t unheard of over the previous few weeks, but I was hopeful). At 5am I woke again, and this time began to feel more over the next hour and couldn’t sleep due to excitement. They were roughly 10 mins apart. At 6 am I got out of bed and began timing. I watched tv and bounced on the ball while my husband and 2-year old daughter slept. For that first timed hour contractions were 1 mins each and average 7-8 mins apart. They were getting more painful, but I could mostly breathe through them. I was really excited and felt progress was good and we’d head to the hospital in a few hours. I went to wake my family to do breakfast and start the day. This is where things kind of went off script…”
She added that while the contractions came less frequently, they were more powerful. However, she had another kid to take care of, and she didn't realize how different they were:
“Admittedly I was trying to cook breakfast, entertain a toddler, and be in active labor, but the pattern was noticeably different. I had to start moaning a bit during the contractions and stop what I was doing. My daughter would come up and pet me and ask ‘mama okay?’ (so sweet).”
This was also her first time experiencing labor that started on its own. That didn't happen with her first baby:
“With my first, my water broke at 37+1, and after trying to start labor at home for over 24 hours, I was induced with pitocin. I had been going for an unmedicated hospital birth, so that was disappointing. In the end I labored for 9 hours, needing a constant high dose of pitocin. I did not get an epidural, but had a few doses of fentanyl. I pushed for 3 hours. Other than that, it was a positive (albeit intense) delivery. So, in short, I did not know how my body labored under normal conditions, and so the 5-1-1 rule given by my midwife was all I knew and what I was shooting for. That, and ‘when you can’t talk through contractions, you should go in’ were my guideposts.”
The contractions continued, and she and her husband decided they should head to the hospital in case it was really time:
“I was getting discouraged that the counts weren’t closing in on 5-1-1, but my husband and I agreed to call in my parents, who were on point to watch our daughter during the birth. They took their sweet time getting there! At about 10:40 they arrived; I tried to help pack but was very distracted and had to keep stepping away to lean on something and work through it. We told them our plan to keep going at home for a while, then head to the hospital. We waved goodbye to my daughter at the front door at about 10:55.”
Her husband took a second to go to the restroom, and she followed him back toward it. At that point, everything changed:
“At this point I felt a big one come on and sort of braced myself at the end of the bed. Except this one was different. It was HUGE, and came with that massive dropping pressure in your bottom (the ‘urge to push’.) I recognized it from the first time, which terrified me, because I knew if I felt that, I should be in the hospital. I started moaning really loud, that deep cow moan that most women start making at this point, and I heard my husband from the bathroom moaning with me and encouraging me (bless him, I had prepped him well on my coping tactics). But I started yelling back to him ‘nonononono! Get in here! Help me!’ It felt like forever until he got there, and the contraction ended, and I told him something was wrong.”
The journey only intensified from there:
“I went into the bathroom, on autopilot. Another wave starts coming and I drop to all fours because I feel that pushing sensation again. I’m screaming and between screams saying ‘help me, call 911!’ My husband gets out his phone, the contraction ends, and he asks if we need to call because I’ve stopped yelling. I say no, wait, because that time between contractions can really trick you into remembering when things were all okay! But the next one comes and I plead for it again, and he calls. Time is 11:06 (we know from the phone log). I move to the toilet, I’m moaning and screaming, and I can hear him telling them we need medical, that I’m having a baby, etc.”
At this point, the mom says that she doesn't fully remember the details of the rest of the experience, but her husband was able to fill her in on what she didn't notice while she was, you know, in active labor. Her husband was on the phone with the paramedics when:
“They ask him what he can see, he looks between my legs and sees ‘dark wet hair’ which he told them was ‘maybe the mucus plug’ only because he couldn’t wrap his head around the truth, which was that the baby was crowning. She told him to get me off the toilet and on the floor. He told me to lay down, and all I could think was ‘[expletive] no, I am not lying down!’ (if you’ve done this before you know how much your body does NOT want to lie on its back when you’ve got a baby head in your pelvis).”
And then … it happened! The baby decided it was time to be born, whether there were medics present or not:
“I got on all fours as another wave started coming. He ran to the hallway to get a towel, per her instructions. As he came back she asked if my water was broken, if he could see anything, and he says he looked behind me and saw the baby’s head completely outside of me, facing him. Obviously shocked. (I definitely felt it come out in that single contraction. It was so intense but also a huge relief.) The next contraction, the baby’s torso came out, then her hips and legs and the bag of waters broke. He caught her, and a few seconds later she cried. There was a lot of back and forth with 911 about clearing her airway, don’t hold her up above me, wrap her in a clean towel, etc. My husband said he thought the worst when the baby came out lifeless… because I couldn’t really see anything (I was fully clothed and my pants were tethering my knees together!), all I heard was the crying and instinctively knew she was ok. I was having such a physical, out-of-body experience, I hadn’t had the time to rationally panic like he did. We got her situated on the towel… she seemed so tiny and purple to me! The dispatcher told us the medics were there so my husband ran to the door to let them in.”
Once the paramedics arrived, they assessed both patients and took everyone to the hospital. The mom she said she started nursing the baby in the back of the ambulance! Once they arrived to the hospital, mom and baby cuddled skin-to-skin for an hour before the team measured her: 7 lbs., 7 oz. and 20 inches long.
Everyone was totally healthy, and the family became micro-celebrities in the maternity ward. However, the mom says she doesn't recommend a surprise home birth for everyone:
“I don’t recommend this is something you go for, but I’m glad it all worked out for us (and I have to admit, it was a pleasant surprise to skip the whole drawn out labor thing). But it was SCARY, and I think my husband legitimately might have some work to do to deal with this trauma. It felt so acutely primal to me, as labor often is, that I don’t have any clear traumatic thoughts about it yet. We’ll see what happens when I get home, have to use my bathroom again, and when hormones settle (or not). We have talked a bit about what we could have done differently, and I’m not sure we could have done much, given the information we had. Obviously hindsight is 20/20 and we should have headed into the hospital by 9am or so. They are telling me if I have another baby, it will go this fast too, so I need to be prepared.”
