Radiating joy!
by Carolyn DeFreitas
JEMILLA’S BIRTH: A VISION COME TRUE
Your Dad and I are sitting at the kitchen table, lingering after a late evening meal. I feel a swoosh of wetness like I’ve peed my pants and the conversation stops mid-sentence. It’s 10:40 p.m., and my waters have broken.
But the story of your birth actually begins many weeks before this evening. In our home community of Masset on the remote islands of Haida Gwaii, it was not recommended for us to stay on-island for your birth. Our hospital staff was not equipped to handle birth emergencies should they occur. The medical evacuation trip across the Hecate Strait via helicopter to Prince Rupert Hospital, without room for your Dad, was not a risk we were willing to take. In addition to this potential scenario, there were also no registered midwives on Haida Gwaii, which made the decision to have you born elsewhere even easier.
I spent the last five months of my pregnancy going to prenatal checkups at the local clinic and seeing whichever (non-resident) doctor was available that day, then following up with a phone appointment with our midwife in Victoria. Two very different streams of simultaneous health care.
In my eighth month, your dad and I traveled to the city to await your arrival. This is the recommended time frame in which to depart the Islands in preparation for delivery. Victoria awaited us with weekly midwife appointments, childbirth education classes, labor breathing workshops, and prenatal yoga classes. Wow, the resources!
Our vision went like this: homebirth in a furnished, pet-friendly sublet home. Yes, we intended to bring Sophie, the family dog. The home would be walking distance from your grandparents, (who would have been happier to drive to a hospital than to a homebirth). The birth team would be comprised of two midwives, your dad, and a doula (who was also an acupuncturist). With trust in the universe . . . we were able to manifest this vision precisely.
Back to the kitchen table . . . labor began at 10:40 p.m. We recalled from childbirth education classes that it is best to try and sleep/rest through the night—as it was sure to be a long day tomorrow. Your dad promptly moved into relaxation measures, running me a candlelit bath and offering a glass of wine. The bath was lovely, and I felt myself retreat into a fog, getting further away from this earthly plane. Up from the tub, I moved quickly into contractions. I did not experience an “early stage” of labor as the books say. I could not eat, go out for a walk, do a photo project, or even think about sleep. From the onset, my contractions were strong. Your dad rubbed my body and followed me around the apartment while keeping excellent notes of the time, duration, and frequency of my contractions, even with a column for comments. A behavioral biologist indeed! I leaned on the back of the couch mostly, sat on the birthing ball, did hands and knees on the bed, had a heat pad on my lower back, and intermittently sat on the toilet, until we thought we really needed help and called the rest of the team at 3 a.m.
They arrived in time to watch me throw up. Believing I might be at the transition phase (almost fully dilated and ready to push), my midwife Corinne quickly set up her equipment. We were all very surprised when she checked and found me to be only three centimeters dilated. The next fifteen hours are a bit of a blur. I know I had to have someone hold my hand at all times—the physical contact was grounding. I made sounds and sang mantras I had no idea could come out of me, and I moved my arm in a peculiar “cranking” motion. This was labor-land. Contractions were a truly phenomenal body experience: an energy deep within your core begins to build, and peaks to a flat-line crescendo, then slowly dissipates. I knew I had to stay one step ahead of these waves, not let myself be taken by them, and try to lead them with my breath. I remember the dark through the apartment windows turning to light, and then being peripherally aware of the gradual darkness again. I was progressing each time I was checked (continued cervical dilation)—it was just happening slowly.
There was some concern that my cervix wasn’t dilating at the same rate all the way around and a small lip was beginning to swell on one side. A head-down, bottom-up position was recommended by the midwife, while my acupuncturist-doula needled me on the outside of my knee and heated up the point with mugwort smoke. The combination was successful and at next check, the swelling was down.
Then Corinne put the pressure on. She was concerned about my energy level—I had been at it for eighteen hours. I needed to dilate faster and reserve energy for pushing—or we’d have to move this delivery to the hospital. This was a crucial moment. Moving to the hospital meant getting into a car at rush hour and enduring an estimated fifteen contractions in the back seat. This sounded like dreadful punishment to me. I knew in my heart I had the energy and was strong enough to have you delivered at home. Your dad and I had made a commitment that we would go to the hospital if your health was in jeopardy, but so far all checks on your heart rate were fine.
I kept my fluids up by drinking water and sustained my energy through maple syrup by the teaspoon. I focused and visualized my cervix opening. I sat on the toilet a lot. Finally, we were ready to push!
This final phase of delivery took a short forty minutes. We went to the birthing bed and calm washed over me. The energy was smoother and softer. Contractions were different too. We had a mirror in which I could see your head coming down farther with every push. I found this visual incredibly motivating. I reached down to feel the top of your head and could hardly believe I was finally touching you! Your head was out at last and Corinne made certain there was no cord around your neck. Your dad and she birthed your shoulders, and when your arms were out, I hooked my hands under your armpits, and with your dad holding your chest and hips, we pulled you out into the world. “La Niña,” he said, “a girl!” You were lifted straight to my chest, cloaked in warm flannel blankets, eyes wide open and crying and crying and crying. You made your way quickly to my nipple, mouthing for comfort. I was overwhelmed with joy, in awe of my body’s performance and the miracle we had produced! Welcome to the world Jemilla Elecia, you will carry this beautiful and peaceful entrance on your life’s journey.
Radiating joy!
The happy family: Carolyn, Bart, and Jemilla!
FARAH'S BIRTH STORY
A newborn nook!
We are house sitting for the second time in a very special cabin on Teanook Lake, just twenty minutes outside of Victoria. You would never imagine this private forest setting is down the road from a big-box shopping center in Millstream. I was to become familiar with this coastal forest, a gorgeous place of moss and rocks, walking and laboring long hours with Arbutus and Douglas Fir trees.
This was our second baby, and we couldn’t have planned for a better home away from home. We had acquired the same midwifery services from the birth of our daughter, two years earlier. Again, our northern remote archipelago could not provide a homebirth experience for us, nor did it offer the astute care of a midwife. And so again, we traveled from our Haida Gwaii home to our preferred “calving grounds” on Vancouver Island.
I was feeling confident about the birth. I knew about breath control, working through contractions, asking for help when I needed it. Given that my first baby had taken over twenty hours to emerge, I took solace in the fact that this labor was bound to be shorter. It was nearly improbable that the second delivery would take that long. When labor began the morning of January 25, I did not know that it would take until almost nightfall January 26 before my second child was born.
My contractions were irregular, from mild to moderate intensity, for the entire first day. I ate, I kept hydrated, I went for walks, and I had acupuncture treatments. My spirits were surprisingly OK—I just wanted this baby to arrive. That evening, after a relaxing bath, I watched with my husband, Bart, and our doula, Nina, the glowing orange embers in the fireplace. We talked until very late about the imminent death of Nina’s close friend, whom she had been called away to visit in the hospital during my labor that day. Contrasting with the imminent birth at hand, it made for rich conversation. I slept little bits and pieces that night, the baby constantly reminding me of the work ahead.
A morning exam told me that the fruits of twenty-four hours of labor had yielded four to five centimeters dilation. Upon seeing my feigned smile, Corinne gave me permission to get angry. This was exactly what I needed. My even keel began to tip. The easygoing “it’s OK, I can handle this” needed to make room for the “let’s get this baby out before I’m too tired and the baby is stressed, and we have to leave this cabin bubble.”
I spent the day walking up and down driveways, bushwhacking through the forest, and marching with my legs lifted high—trying to bring the baby down. Just when contractions would get more intense, they would subside, becoming mild again. Another exam at 4:30 p.m. revealed dilation at five to six centimeters. This meant that eight hours of hard work only brought us one to two centimeters closer to delivery. Not the news any of us wanted to hear.
As a team, we decide to artificially rupture my membranes. Turns out, this was just what I needed to kick my labor into high gear. In the absence of this liquid cushion, baby’s head aligned to put direct and intense pressure to dilate me to nine centimeters by 5:15 p.m. I had made more progress in forty-five minutes than I had in the first thirty-two hours!
The support of my husband and doula during this extremely powerful time will never be forgotten: a true rollercoaster ride in birth land. Having contractions in a side-lying and hand-and-knees positions moved baby along quickly, and I felt ready to push. At 5:30, the second midwife Julie was called, but unless she teleported, there was no chance of her making the delivery. A mere fifteen minutes of pushing, and our daughter Farah was born. Out the window overlooking the lake, the colors of sunset still vivid in the sky, my newborn on my chest—it had all been worth it.
Hours later, grandparents arrived with big sister Jemilla to see our new baby girl. We had worked long and hard—and looking into the face of our healthy and thriving baby, we knew we had been rewarded and blessed.
Glowing family of four!
Carolyn and her husband Bart, a community planner and biologist, respectively, live in the Haida Gwaii.