Our 11th Child is born!

I want to preface this post for people who do not know my family, may be new to my blog, or unfamiliar with natural childbirth in general. I’ve been birthing babies for 17 years. 11 births — one hospital birth, 3 midwife attended homebirths, and 7 unattended homebirths. I am not an expert by any means, but I am well informed. I am not opposed to medical assistance, I just reserve it for when things are beyond our capabilities. We trust in our instincts. If at any point we are concerned, we would transport. We don’t do what we do out of fear, we do it because that’s how we feel things should be. You don’t have to agree, but you do have to understand, you cant bully, shame or antagonize us to do things differently. If that is not something you are mature enough to deal with, this blog post, in fact, this website, it not for you.

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Me at 40 weeks EDD. Baby was born at 41 weeks EDD

On Thursday October 15th, I woke up at 5am with contractions.. They were pretty strong, but I wasn’t sure it was the real deal.. I had some pretty painful stretching and random warm ups for the past week. I went to the bathroom and laid back down and told Joe.  Two more over the next hour, strong enough for me to decide to stay home.

The contractions over the next few hours were pretty intense, and getting closer. I had been hoping for another short labor, intense contractions are usually a sign of that. About 9:15 they got even stronger. My water broke with one big strong contraction along with my mucous plug. I did notice a bit of what I suspected as meconium staining. It was very faint and I was not concerned.( my birthing position is ideal for expelling the lungs, and clearing the airways)  It was at that point things then moved really fast. It wasn’t much longer before the urge to push took over. As the head was born, Joe told me the cord was wrapped. Twice. I had actually been thinking about this, intuition maybe.  But he is our 3rd birth with the cord wrapped.. So we knew how to proceed. Joe put his finger between the cord and the neck to ensure both came out simultaneously as it was too tight to unwrap. We waited for him to turn his shoulders, two more pushes and he was born at 9:40am.

As soon as he was out Joe unwrapped his cord and handed him to me. I held him inverted and rubbed his back, checked his airways, he loudly protested, and I held him skin to skin on my chest. He wasn’t interested in nursing but was quite alert, immediately looking around. We waited 30 minutes or more to cut the cord. This was longer than we usually wait, but this is also beneficial to babies who may have been exposed to meconium in their lungs. He showed no visible signs of distress and he looked and sounded good. There were no signs of meconium aspiration. Mosiah was completely fascinated with all of this. We let Zachary cut the cord.

I know there was a lot of concern of his condition, his color is great. He has bruising on his face, due to the birth process. This is normal, and not a concern to me, nor to most birth professionals. I can assure you I have looked my son over numerous times, he is well.. He was not in any danger, and he is healthy. I am not a doctor, but it doesn’t take one to determine if a baby is in distress. I encourage every parent and parent to be, to know basic first aid, resuscitation etc. You may not be planning an unattended homebirth, but you may end up having one.

We didn’t get many birth photos. The lighting wasn’t great and things moved very fast. Everyone was present for the birth,

this was Mosiah’s face as I was holding the baby moments after.

We didn’t weigh or measure, we usually don’t, but I would guess he was about 9-9 1/2lbs

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We have had a few issues latching but he is getting better, but I will admit, it’s making me sore. He’s quite the little snuggle bug.

Here are a few snapshots of his first two days.