Pressure-Free Home Birth After 2 Weeks of Braxton Hicks Contractions

My first birth was fast. After three hours of non-timable contractions my water broke. An hour later I arrived at the hospital at 5cm, and an hour after that I was holding my son. He had to be delivered by a wandering pediatrician because no one thought a first time mom could push out her baby in under 15 minutes after less than five hours of labour.

I read a lot of Ina May books after that birth and decided my next birth would be at home. There was no way I was dealing with getting to the hospital when my labour time might be cut in half. I found fantastic midwives that attend a lot of home births in my area.

My pregnancy was fairly uneventful, but full of contractions. I had been put on pelvic rest with my first son to keep from going into labour and needed it again this time. At 23 weeks I was on “as needed” bed rest and full pelvic rest. At 34 weeks we were given the green light but DH (Jonathan) and I waited another three as I wanted to make sure I got my home birth and 37 weeks is required for that.

After two weeks of Braxton Hicks and prodromal labor and being dilated to 3cm my midwife finally swept my membranes at 38w 6d. I had contractions until that afternoon but they stopped. I had a few sporadic ones throughout the day but nothing stuck.

That night (June 22) I woke up at 2:49am with a very painful contraction. I started timing and had a few more. After about 5 that were pretty regular I called the midwife (3:30am). She called the student midwife and they quickly headed ontheir way.

I spent contractions on my birthing ball and in between making the bed and giving Jonathan orders. They got to our place around 4:00 and madly set up. They checked me and I was at 6cm and very thin. They called the other midwife and told her to hurry and continued to set up while I labored on the bed, clutching whatever I could through contractions. Shortly after I started having small urges to push and knew my water was about to break. They got an extra pad under me and two contractions later my water exploded across the room (4:35am). The student managed to dodge it but boy was she surprised!

I enjoyed the feeling of not having the pressure for a little while as the contractions slowed for the pushing stage. The midwife was called again and told to run the red lights. A few contractions later and I was starting to push again(4:40am). The main midwife made it by then and was ready to help instruct Jonathan on how to push on my opening as Levi’s head quickly crowned. I started panting to slow down the process as I knew I would tear if I didn’t.

The worst pain was in my urethra. It felt like someone was shoving their finger up it and I was yelling at them to stop. As soon as the head was free though that pain was gone. Levi got his arm free and tried to swim and claw the rest of the way out. It was 4:46am. It only took 1 contraction to get him out. Levi had a good cry for about 10 minutes and then we got him to nurse. He was a pro!

He weighed 7.13lbs, 21.5″ long!

Brothers meeting for the first just an hour after birth.

Submitted by Barbie R.