Emelia Fern’s Birth Story - Unmedicated Hospital Birth

 

Emelia Fern Clines

March 17th, 2023 at 5:19 am

7 lbs 12.8 oz

20”

Here she is, my darling girl.

After my first was born, my heart was complete. After battling severe postpartum depression for the first 3 months of his life, I began to settle into a rhythm of motherhood that fit me & my beautiful little blue-eyed guy perfectly.

We did everything together, as a new mother & her little one does. & at 19, my world did not seem like it could expand any bigger than it already was.

I thought he would be my only one, truly. But then I remembered the friendships I had had with my siblings, the later years in which Daniel and I would grow old-& who would my darling blue-eyed boy have then? So we decided to start trying once more for another precious addition. It’s not the right choice for everyone, but it was for us.

Well we tried alright, but nothing happened. It took me over a year to get that positive test for our second, Kane. You can read his birth story here.

But things had changed since we had welcomed our 2nd edition to the family. A full blown pandemic had rocked the world for 2 years, my husband’s budding 

business had taken off into something much more(making it to where he was essentially working two full time jobs plus whatever he could squeeze in on the weekends), both of our families lived hours away or even in different states, & I was once again questioning if I could do this whole mom thing on my own or if our family was complete once again. 

On July 4th, 2022 I took a pregnancy test on a whim, after feeling particularly winded & queasy that morning after my annual 4th of July 10k race. I was shocked to see those 2 pink lines on the test.

Holy crap.

Could we actually do this again?

Fast forward from months of morning sickness I hadn’t experienced with my other two, extreme exhaustion, caring for my precious boys & we make it to our birth story.

Finally.

If you follow my YouTube channel or know me in real life, you know I’m crunchy-ish. I say crunchy-ish because home girl can slam an entire Wendy’s frosty but also go home & turn on my ten diffusers with 18 different essential oil blends in each one for specific medical & emotional purposes.

I’m kidding of course.

Mostly.

Anyway, if you know this about me, you know that I went into this birth with naturally bent mindset.

I had a birth flow, complete with hopes of no IV, minimal pelvic exams, limited nursing staff in room, dim lighting, the whole kit & caboodle as they say. 

So when I went past my due date & my doctors office started offering up whispers inducing me if I went too far past my “due date”, I started panicking.

I mean, I had worked so hard this entire pregnancy to work toward an unmedicated, limited intervention birth. & NOW they wanted to induce me?

I dug my heels in. I said I would try the recommended tricks to get labor going(castor oil, lunges, miles circuit, breast pump…you name it, I did it that last week of pregnancy.)

I knew babies came precisely when they meant to, & if her & I were both safe & healthy & there were no complications, why force her to come out just because of an arbitrary “due date”? 

Well, medical professionals have their reasons. 

 I had a strong mother’s intuition that this was going to happen on its own, so I decided to trust my gut & wait it out. 

I chose to try some of the things my midwife suggested to safely get labor going. That still didn’t suppress my mounting anxiety that I was going to have to be induced after my due date after all.

I called backup on Thursday night, the 16th, 8 days after my due date.

In tears I lamented to my cousin how they wanted me to have this baby in the next couple days & how I needed to drink  2 ounces of castor oil & hurl my guts up for three hours to get labor going & there was NO WAY I could take care of my other two boys whilst this was transpiring of course. It wasn’t an hour later blessed cousin arrived with another one of my sweet cousins to watch the boys & allow me to do my thing. 

I went upstairs around 8 pm after a short walk & tried the breast pump again. Earlier that day I had been on the monitor & they had picked up slight contractions about 15 minutes apart. I could feel them but it was nothing serious. I was also 6 centimeters dilated already, SIX!! 

So I thought if I did my midwife’s recommended regime of walking, breast pump, walking, castor oil, breast pump, & a few of the Miles circuit moves in between, I could get the contractions to stick around & get stronger.

& it WORKED. 

Around 10 pm I started timing contractions. They were still manageable, I could talk through them & they only last about 30-45 seconds, every 7-10 minutes.

I was still wondering if this was real labor, but as it was getting late I decided to try the breast pump one last time & then try to lie down & get some rest despite my anxiety. 

The contractions kept coming, praise the Lord! I was so thankful. I kept doing my Bradley method, deep breaths in, deep breaths out, trying to relax my entire body.  I realized as the night went on these contractions were getting extremely hard to relax through, I felt like they came on a lot faster & with extra intensity than with my 2nd child, whom I’d had a natural birth with. 

Try as I might, I just couldn’t get my body to stop tensing up during the contractions, despite all the practicing & prep I had done in weeks prior. I chalked it up to me going on very little sleep & also all the natural labor “inducing” tricks I had been doing the past couple days. Maybe I had made my body go TOO fast, who knows.

Either way, I started getting rather discouraged & exhausted. I decided to scrap the Bradley method & just breathe through the waves as best I could & not tense up my face or *most* of my body. This turned out to serve me a lot better! Looking back, I’m so glad I let go of this mentally & just went with the flow instead of holding onto the feelings of failure that I couldn’t follow the method to a T. This is just proof of how much simpler a natural birth can be if you let go of preconceived notions & plans. 

I was still upstairs in the bedroom, changing positions every so often, mostly laying on the floor on my side & trying to ride the waves of each contraction. My husband came up to bed around midnight(he’s a night owl in his woodshop every night) & I told him to get some sleep because I could tell by now this was real labor & I wanted him to have at least a couple hours of rest before things really started going. He rubbed clary Sage & lavender EO along my spine & then he tried to get some sleep.

Well, things started going a lot faster than I had anticipated. 

At 1 AM my contractions were lasting one minute, about every 4-6 minutes. 

My midwife had told me not to come in until contractions were every 4 minutes, lasting 1 minute, for 1 hour.

I hated all this guesswork, because for a half hour my contractions would be 4 minutes apart lasting 1 minute, & then all the sudden I’d go 7 or 8 minutes & only have 1 that lasted 30 seconds or so. It was excruciating & made me second guess when I should wake Daniel. Such is the mystery of birth. 

I had tried listening to some music to distract me as I had with my last natural birth, but nothing seemed to soothe me at all-except John Denver. But as the night wore on even ol’ John began to grate against my ears. That’s how I knew things were getting serious, it took all my concentration to get through each contraction.

 By this time I had already woke Daniel up & told him he might want to start loading the car & getting ready to leave. Even though my contractions were still sporadic, I had a gut feeling I was a lot closer than I thought & wouldn’t completely relax & progress anymore until we got to the hospital.

Around 4ish AM we got in the car(in the pouring rain!) & made the short drive to the hospital. Luckily this time around we chose the hospital right in our town, so the drive was only 7ish minutes or so. 

I noticed the contractions came on a lot stronger & faster when I was standing, & I tried to convey this to the ER staff that were taking their sweet precious to get us back to labor & delivery. You know, the 80,000 questions they ask even though you filled out their pre-registry 3 weeks before where they swore “if you fill out this paperwork we won’t ask you the 80,000 questions when you come in to deliver”? Oh yes, those questions.

Finally they wheeled me back to labor & delivery & got me into a room. Two nurses(we’ll call them nurse one & nurse two, for convenience) asked me even MORE questions as nurse one strapped me down to a monitor & told me I had to lie still for 30 minutes so she could get the babies heart rate. I looked at her like she was ludicrous. Nurse two kindly looked through my birth plan & relayed it quickly back to me, & then stepped back. 

Nurse one decided I had to have a cervical check & I swear, I’ve had many cervical checks in my 5 years of having babies….& this nurse HAD NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS DOING. It felt like she was trying to ram her hand up to my stomach! She felt around for way longer than any other nurse or midwife I had had before, & she looked confused the entire time. Not only that, but she determined I was 6 centimeters dilated, & I knew in my gut after laboring hard for three hours & having already been dilated a 6 at my appointment the previous day,  there was no way this was the case. 

Nonetheless, I didn’t punch the woman, even though she remained in my face the entire time & kept becoming agitated when I’d accidentally wriggle out of their stupid monitor during contractions & she’d have to readjust it.

Honestly though, praise the Lord I had scrapped my original plan of doing the Bradley method early on in labor, because there is no way I could’ve done the recommended moves with nurse one in my face constantly & the monitor strapped mercilessly to me. 

The worst part? My midwife told us the would call her once we were checked into a room & they had checked my dilation & contractions. Since nurse one & nurse two were more concerned with the mountain of paperwork & hyper focused on me wriggling out of the monitor(even though we had heard baby’s heart beat me multiple times throughout & she was perfectly fine) & since nurse one had told her I was *only* 6 centimeters-my midwife wasn’t even on her way yet! 

Around 4:30 AMish nurse one & nurse two left the room to get my paperwork in. Nurse one said she would be back to take my blood(I have no idea why, they had never done this with my previous births, but I was so fed up with her at this point I didn’t even say anything.

After the nurses left, I asked Daniel to turn of some of the 1 billion fluorescent lights they had shining on me, & once he did that I was able to relax a little bit. 

At this point contractions were coming extremely close together, & since I was unable to move freely because of the dumb monitor, they were almost unbearable. 

I had to decide in that moment that I was going to have to go into hyper focus mode if I was going to make it through this labor. 

I asked Daniel to calmly tell the nurses to stop trying to talk to me during contractions & for him not to talk either, please & thank you. 

I knew I had to let these contractions do their thing if I was going to progress. 

I thought at this point I was *only* 6 centimeters dilated & had many more hours of labor ahead. Boy, was I wrong! & thank the Lord I was, because with one HUGE contraction my water broke on it’s own! 

After this happened the contractions were actually a little more bearable, some of the pressure was gone & I felt like I could control my breath once again.

Nurse one came back in shortly, & Daniel told her my water had broken. She did another one of her horrible cervical checks & determined I was 10 centimeters. She then screamed as LOUD as she could for nurse two to get back in the room because I was “having the baby!” Honestly, was the screaming necessary? She had completely ignored my birth plan, had me strapped down, & already majorly on edge with all her “routine” checks.  In hindsight, I would’ve asked her politely to back off. But I had been awake for almost 24 hours at this point, & my contractions were coming so close together I was doing everything I could to focus on getting baby earthside with as little stress to her as possible.

It wasn’t any time at all after my water broke that I started feeling the strong urge to push. & I mean strong! 

Nurse one got all up in my business again & told me to pretend I was blowing out birthday candles. I looked at her once again like she was ludicrous. 

Birthday candles?! Really?! 

At this point, she looked like she might pass out(who put this woman in labor & delivery?). She was freaking out because my midwife was still a few minutes out from the hospital.  

I told her calmly in so many words that this was my 3rd baby & if I felt the urge to push I wasn’t going to hold back, & she was going to have to have to get over it.

She then perched on the edge of the bed like a bird to watch me intently for the next ten minutes. 

Honestly, it was like she thought the baby would just pop out instantly & she would have to pounce on her or something. 

I kept breathing through each pushing contraction until my midwife got there, it was difficult, but there was no way I was letting nurse one catch my baby. 

Since she had ignored every request I had made, I knew she wouldn’t honor my requests for the baby either.

 So I held on. 

It was just when I thought I’d have to catch the baby myself that lo & behold, my midwife walked through the door!

I thought I might sob, I actually smiled with relief!

Everyone instantly calmed as soon as the midwife walked in. She calmly asked nurse one & two to back off(thank the Lord) & asked me how I would like to push(finally! Someone taking into consideration what I wanted for this birth!).

I told her I was most comfortable on my hands & knees for my last birth, so I’d like to try that.

They helped me get positioned, & my midwife helped me by telling me everywhere I was tensed up. This was so extremely helpful because I was so focused at this point I needed some calm redirection. My body started to push for me, so I tried to work with it as best I could. Since I thought I was going to be there several more hours just 10 minutes or so before, I was so relieved to be pushing!

I was going on 0 hours of sleep, so I really had to give it all I had for pushing, which wasn’t much, but I really did give it my all.

I took deep breaths & breathed baby down & out. 

With three short pushes, I felt that last wonderful wriggle & she was out! 

I was so relieved I didn’t even hear the midwife asking me to turn over so she could lay Emelia on my chest. I was SO tired & shaking. I can’t remember who turned me over but I was so relieved to see Emelia, she was so beautiful! 

Her skin was so bright & pink & her cry was so loud & joyous! 

She was here. 

Despite poorly trained nurses & my midwife literally only being there for the last 5 minutes of labor, we had made it.

She was safe, & I had had another successful unmedicated birth!

We had arrived at the hospital at 4:20 AM & at 5:19 AM, just barely less than an hour after arriving, our beautiful girl made her appearance into this world.

Even though the last hour of my birth wasn’t what I had envisioned(I really hadn’t expected my midwife to barely make it to be honest) I’m thankful to God I was able to labor at home peacefully & at my own pace for as long as I could. The Lord was really on my side for that one! 

& the best part?

I got a beautiful baby girl out of it.

Whew.