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I wanted to share Aspen's birth story, as it is a fairly unique one. She was diagnosed as breech when I was 33 weeks pregnant. She is my third baby, third planned natural birth and second planned home birth. If we had lived in Florida for her birth, I would have had to fight very hard to have her vaginally and even I some how got that opportunity, it would have been in a hospital, for sure. When we first found out that she was breech I tried everything to turn her, short of a moxibustion. I hung out upside down, I put frozen peas on my belly, I walked, I meditated, I talked to her, I went to the chiropractor weekly and nothing was working. I read many many anecdotes where the babies turned after 37 weeks of pregnancy, sometimes even during labor, so I kept my hopes high.
37 weeks came and went, then 38 weeks creeped up fast behind it. This baby was still breech and her turning was highly unlikely at this point. All this time, my midwives were so supportive and helpful and ready to attend my birth no matter what direction baby's bum was facing. Around 38 weeks I got an ultrasound to confirm her position, she was complete breech, what a relief. One of my midwives were not exactly comfortable with the idea of delivering a footling breech baby at home, so to find out that she was not in that position was great.
At 39 weeks and 6 days I had a midwife appointment. It was three days after Christmas, my family had left my house that morning and we were still in the thick of holiday madness with a refrigerator that needed cleaning and wrapping paper and boxes that needed to be sorted and taken out. But I went to my appointment, which I always enjoyed doing (baby was still breech, of course) and when I got home I decided to rearrange furniture and clean everything (I'm sure we are all seeing where this is going). After dinner as we were cleaning up and I felt my first rush that seemed much different than the others and several more followed behind it every 5 minutes for 20 minutes so I called my midwife to let her know what was going on.
Byron and I continued cleaning up around the house and getting the kids to bed and during that time I figured labor was not going to let up so I asked my midwives to come. While laying down with the girls my contractions spaced out but intensified. That night putting the kids to bed was much harder than usual, I still think Avery knew what was going on because she was so chatty as we were trying to get them to bed. By the time we got up my doula and the student midwives had already arrived.
The mood was light for a while but labor picked up pretty fast. The details of what was happening around me went unnoticed. I remember drinking a lot of water, smelling a lot of lavender, being comforted by a hot water bottle against my back, peeing a lot and swaying through the contractions. Everything was moving right along, a perfectly boring by the book labor, my midwives could not have been more pleased.
When I was ready to push, we discussed the appropriate position for delivery that accommodated the fact that she was breech. I pushed with all of my might for about 25 minutes before she finally started to descend, which happened rather all at once. Every further inch of her that was exposed brought relief to the room and when she slid out into my midwives hands we knew that we had done it and it went perfectly. I reached back for my baby and was overwhelmed with gratitude for my support team, my husband who was nothing but supportive during this journey, my body for birthing yet another beautiful little girl and my little girl because she knew how she needed to be born. I was also grateful for my intuition, because with all of the fear based information there is for breech births, I managed to listen to myself and know that I had no reason to worry.
Aspen Magnolia was born on December 29, 2016 at 12:35 am and has been lighting up our lives every since. We love her, so.
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