We made it back home after out trip and tried to settle into a new routine with all the kids now in school. It was strange and lonely being home alone. For the first few days I spent a lot of time in town. I couldn't handle the quietness of house with all the kids gone all day. I was feeling good though. I spent time in the garden harvesting and canning. I kept myself busy waiting until I could take the next pregnancy test. Two weeks after we got home the test was positive. We were ecstatic but at the same time I was afraid. I was afraid I would lose it again. I was afraid I would end up back were I started.
I felt better this time. I didn't have that nagging feeling like something was wrong like last time. Nate was in Calgary for 2 weeks doing training for work. I woke up one morning before the alarm went off when I was 6 weeks along, to insane pain in my lower left abdomen. I laid in bed for a while trying not to move, waiting for the alarm before I had to get up and get the kids ready for school. When it was time I was able to slowly but painfully get out of bed and walk slowly hunched over to get the kids all up. I went to the kitchen to make breakfast and lunches, still unable to really stand, when pain that felt like I was being stabbed, ripped through my side. I hit the floor unable to stand. I pretty sure I freaked the kids out pretty good. I crawled to the couch and laid their giving orders while the kids got themselves ready for school and Claire made lunches. I managed to hold myself together fairly well until they were out the door and onto the bus. Once they were gone I was able to call Nate bawling, thinking I had a Ectopic pregnancy and was losing this baby too. After talking to him for a few minutes I was able to calm down a bit, get dressed and drove myself to the hospital.
Once at the hospital I was checked out by a student nurse, he would then go out to the desk tell the nurse on duty what I had said, she would give him a list of questions to come back and ask me, he'd then go back to the nurse on duty and tell her the answers, It went on like this for some time. Since we live in a fairly rural community the Doctor on call wasn't at the hospital, he was at home eating breakfast with his family and getting his kids ready for school. I laid in that hospital bed for over and hour and a half, with a possible ruptured Fallopian tube, in excruciating pain, I wasn't offered any kind of pain medication, before he finally made it in to check me out and send me to the Lethbridge hospital an hour away to get an ultrasound done. Me? Bitter? No not me. ;) I drove myself to my moms house and caught her as she was on her way out the door to an appointment. She was able to change it and drive me to Lethbridge to get the ultrasound done.
By the time I finally got an ultrasound it was nearly 5 hours after I woke up in pain. I had not only been physically in pain but I was an emotional wreck. When the tech was done the ultrasound she said she was going to go talk things over with radiologist and then come talk to me in the waiting room. After waiting what felt like forever she finally came out to tell me that they sent all the info back to my doctor and to go back ( an hour away) to see him and get the results. At first she wouldn't tell me anything but when I started crying it made her nervous. She finally told me that the baby was fine and was where it was supposed to be. She also said that I had an ovarian cyst burst (which was what the stabbing pain was) and my doctor could tell me more about that. WTF. I've never had ovarian cysts in my life. Thank you universe, you picked this exact moment to burst my ovary while my husband was out of town, just had a miscarriage, and I am 6 weeks pregnant. Like come on! The ride back to town all I could feel was overwhelming relief.
From here on out it was pretty smooth sailing. Waiting to hear that first heart beat, or to feel the first movement seemed to take ages to make it to those milestone. Every time she moved it was a huge sigh of relief. I don't get sick with pregnancies, I don't get swollen, huge, or uncomfortable. I have fast labors. I'm one of those strange people that actually enjoy being pregnant. Expect when it comes to trying to get of the couch and feeling like a beach whale, I don't really like that part.
We waited until Christmas to tell the kids and our families. I wanted to be further along before we told the kids in case something were to happen. I was still a little gun shy. I was around 16 weeks at Christmas. We wrapped a package of diapers and let the kids all open it at the same time. They were beyond excited! They had been begging for years to get a baby... Like it was a puppy.
With this pregnancy we decided to have a home birth with the Midwives. Yup. A home birth. My journey with Midwifery started before I was pregnant, before I even had Nate on board with having a baby. With my other 4 labors being fast, and by fast I mean, living a few blocks away from the hospital and barely making it to the hospital in time before the baby came with only Nate and a nurse delivering the baby without the Dr., kind of fast. So I knew making it to the nearest capable hospital over an hour away would be out of the question. Unless Nate was up for delivering by himself on the side of the highway, which I'm pretty sure he wasn't, but it would have made for a great story!
A couple years ago a Midwife clinic opened in our little rural town, with a two midwife team. I was intrigued. I'd "heard stories" about midwives and home births and wanted to find out more. I began doing research. I watched every documentary I could get my hands on. I read articles published in medical journals from Canada, USA, Europe, and the UK. I read articles published by our own Canadian and Provincial government/health officials. And every piece of data/info I found all concluded that for low-risk pregnancies home births with a midwife are not only as safe as hospital births but can actually be safer than a hospital birth. They carry all sorts of equipment with them, and are well trained in emergency situations. I would LOVE to go into more detail with this but I think that is a whole other post for a whole other day. I encourage you to do your own research on this even if your not expecting. More awareness needs to be brought to Midwifery to be able to increase funding from the government which in turn will save the gov money. Its a win win situation.
My best friend was expecting, she decided to use the midwives, maybe with just a little encouragement from me. She was my guinea pig in a sense. I could see first hand the kind of special care that a person gets from a midwife vs obgyn. And with that first hand knowledge I could make a more informed decision if the time ever came for me. And a year later it did.
Again, convincing Nate was another story. I presented him with all the info and data I had gathered over the previous two years. We discussed at length possible outcomes including emergencies. Although he agrees with me on living a more holistic lifestyle and that hospitals, a lot of the time, are too quick to intervene and often cause more problem with their interventions. He was still just worried about the worst case scenario. Being an hour away from the hospital in a worst case scenario is an even bigger worst case scenario, but it is one of the risk of living rural. Not just with births but with everyday life accidents. Sometimes its hard to step out of your comfort zone and out of the "norm". I had already started seeing the midwives at his point. I knew my body, I know my intuition. I knew it was the best case scenario for us. Once he got used to the idea, learned more about it, and met the Midwifes, he was for sure on board. We were both looking forward to the experience of a home birth.
Our family on the other hand... My mom was great when I told her we were using the Midwives. I think she kind of expected it. She knows me well enough that I don't do anything with out doing tons of research and making an informed decision. She trusted me and supported me. Maybe partly because I inherited her amazingly fast labor and delivery skills, she understood I wouldn't make it to the hospital. I'm sure she had her moments where she had doubts, but she never showed me those. I never had anything but complete support from her.Which I appreciate immensely. My family as a whole (to my face anyways) were fairly supportive. Again I don't think they were surprised. In my family I'm kinda the hippy, tree hugger, crazy chicken lady, holistic weirdo.
Nate's family on the other hand..I think I can honestly say that I never felt like I fully had their support. I love them so much, and couldn't ask for better in-laws, but In this case I felt really let down. They made me feel like I was being selfish and intentionally putting my baby in harms way. We had a few discussion with them, and tried to explain the reasoning behind our decision. I don't know if they listened or not, or if it helped them feel more comfortable with it. It wasn't easy, there was hurt and tears probably on both sides. But at the end of the day it wasn't their decision to make and it was up to them if they were going to support us or not.
Finally the day came! Well not really. The day that we had planned on her coming came, she, on the other hand, did not. Three of my kids were all exactly 2 week early, the other was 10 days early. So we marked the calendar for June 6th as the day we had expected her to make her debut. Nothing. June 7..nothing. Over the next couple day I had pangs and twinges there was a couple times where I thought maybe this was it and then they would stop. It felt like this baby was never going to come. Every morning I would wake up and Nate would reach over and feel my belly hoping I would have had her in the night while he was sleeping. Nope.. sorry buddy, your not getting off that easy. Over a week of twinges on and off. I started to get frustrated, most of them happened in the night so I wasn't sleeping well. June 17th, three days before my due date, I had an appointment with my Midwife, she decided it would be ok to do a "stretch and sweep" I think she called it. And sent me home with instructions to have everything ready and on hand. I spent the rest of my day like any other day. I went grocery shopping, took the kids to the library, took the kids to baseball, did a bunch of driving around doing other errands. We finally made it home around 6 to start making supper. I continued to have pangs and twinges all day like I'd been having for a couple weeks. While making supper I started to get a lot of lower back pain. I handed the rest of supper making duties over to Nate and decided to go have a bath to relax and try to decide if it was for real this time or not. At this point any twinges were still over 10 minutes apart. So I still wasn't sure. I wasn't really having contraction's just mostly back pain. My other babies were all born in the middle of the night so I basically just woke up in labor. I didn't know what earlier labor felt like so I didn't know what was really going on.
Around 6:40 pm I got out of the bath, dried off and laid on the bed for a minute to decide if I was going to go eat supper or have a baby. I decided on supper. As I was just about to get up my water broke. My water has only broke on its own with one other baby. It's such a strange feeling. I'm pretty sure I heard, as well as felt, a POP sound. I cleaned up a bit and called Nate in and told him it was time to call the Midwives. Luckily one Midwife Eve, lives just a couple minutes away from me. While she was on her way here Nate tried to get the room ready. She was here in a matter of minutes, talk about service! With every contraction I had, they got closer and closer together and stronger. I wasn't really having contractions like I had with the others, it was all in my lower back. Nate was in and out of the room trying to keep the kids calm, grabbing items, starting the dryer to have warm towel. Really, he was just trying to keep himself busy, he doesn't do well with this kind of thing, which is one reason why delivering a baby on the highway was not at the top of our list. When he was in the room he would rub my lower back during the contractions when he was gone Eve would. One of the best parts about having a home birth is being allowed to move freely without being yelled at by nurses. I was able to move and get in a position that felt the best and relieved the most pain. Which for me was squatting. To even think about having to lay on my back made me sick. In between contraction Eve would get her equipment all laid out and ready to go. I'm not positive at what point the other midwife Terry made it, I think just before Scout supermaned her way into this world at 7:50pm. Seriously she had her hand up by her head, the kids think its hilarious when we say this. It only took one or two pushes for her to make her way. I'm not positive on that because it was never "ok now it's time to push". We just let it happen naturally when my body was ready to push it did so and it didn't take much. I sat there holding my squishy little alien baby, in complete awe and shock that this day FINALLY came. So much heart ache and tears all lead up to this moment and my heart could not be fuller. We moved up onto the bed so we could get her cleaned up and get a good look at her.
Unlike a hospital setting where they cut the cord immediately, take the baby away, weigh, measure, poke and prod, wrap them up and after minutes finally bring them back to you. I laid on my bed holding my baby skin to skin with a warm towel covering her, with the cord still attached ( up to 1/3 of their blood volume is still in the cord/placenta, its important they get this blood back in their bodies for many reasons, it doesn't usually happen in hospitals) until it stopped pulsing. I held her, stared into her eyes completely in unbelief that she is mine. All mine. And just maybe just a little bit Nate's. I do try to share her sometimes. After maybe 20/30 minutes and a feeding I finally relinquished her in order to weigh and measure her. She weighed a whopping 8lbs 3oz. My biggest baby! My others ranging from 5lbs 15 oz to 7 lbs 9 oz.
We then had the kids come in and check her out and get to hold her. They were as in love as we were. I think by this time both grandparents were here as well. They got the kids tucked in bed as the Midwives finished cleaning up and got me some supper and all tucked in bed. Seriously the service is amazing! Then they came in and got to check out the newest member of both families.
I don't think I can ever put into words how much I appreciate my Midwives. They are the most amazing women I have ever met. They put their own lives and families on hold to help bring lives into this world. Terry was watching her kids soccer game when she got the call to come. I hope she made it back in time to see the end of the game. Eve, I'm sure was at home spending an evening with her family. And thank you their families who support their calling in life. Amazing women!!
Now, I don't consider myself a superwomen for having a home birth or not using any medication. All my labors have been fast and drug free. I do however have a deeper understand of the spiritual side of the birthing process, that I don't feel like I had with my others. I do feel like that was taken from me with my other 4 hospital births. I wasn't able to connect with myself in such away that I did this time. I'm not in anyway against those who choose a hospital, I think there is a time and a place for medical interventions. But for me, this is what I needed. I needed my baby to be born is a safe, caring environment. I needed this experience to heal my pain of loss. I needed this, to be stronger. Although I now feel my family is complete, I would have 10 more babies just to be able to have the home birth experience again. I can't put into words the emotions of this experience nor do I really want to try. Those I will keep to myself and keep private. I would continue to have babies just for this experience. Everyone I've talked to who have had home births say the same thing. I have yet to hear someone say, " I would have a baby again just so I can get that C-section or that epidural again"? A home birth for me was a spiritual experience.
And with that, We named her Scout Ireland Primrose. SCOUT for the spunky little cowgirl she is. IRELAND not only because that is "where she was made" but for the lessons I learned while there, the awakening, the letting go of loss and looking forward. I never want to forget what I went through while in Ireland and Scotland. She is my lucky charm, my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the rainbow after the storm, my four leaf clover and all the rest of that cheesy stuff. And finally PRIMROSE because I didn't want Nate to get suspicious and think her real dad is a leprechaun.
This little girl has flipped our world upside down, kept us on our toes. Stretched our hearts bigger than we ever could have imagined. She is adored not only by us but by her siblings. Even Shayde who desperately wanted a brother, now wouldn't trade her for any boy in the world. Every day I thank the Lord, the Angels, the Moon and the Stars that she is here and all mine... Ours.. I mean Ours...but mostly Mine.
