ROOM SERVICE

by Maureen Bradley

My partner Stacey wanted a homebirth more than anything. Everything about her pregnancy was carefully planned: the tur- key-baster home conception, the hypnobirthing classes, acupuncture, organic food, lots of time with the midwife, plenty of R & R, and a meticulous natural birth plan. It wasn’t easy for two women to make a baby and we were doing everything we could to safeguard the baby’s health. Stacey wanted no medical intervention whatsoever unless it was critical. She never even got an ultrasound.

We went on a hospital tour “just in case” when she was five months pregnant. Stacey looked nauseated for the duration. This sterile environment was not where she wanted to welcome our child into the world. We were so relieved that our baby would be born in a natural, non-institutional setting. Family and friends thought we were a bit nutty for planning a birth in our small apartment. They feared for the baby’s safety. But they’d long since given up trying to convince us to be conventional. Once we cleared the homebirth with the building manager, it was all systems go.

“The baby likes pink,” Stacey’s best friend Kim said, eyeing a fluffy pink cupcake. The gal behind the counter at the overpriced cupcake store looked pleased.

“What? The baby does not like pink!” Stacey insisted.

Cupcake lady grimaced momentarily but soldiered on. “When’s the baby due?” she chirped.

“Tomorrow!”

Stacey was one day shy of forty weeks pregnant and we were as ready as we would ever be to welcome this much-planned baby into our one-bedroom apartment.

A month earlier, we had laundered all the supplies on the homebirth checklist and wrapped them in brown paper. We tested the Canadian Tire pool (an affordable alternative to the designer birth pool). It covered most of our floor space. I tracked down an attachment for the garden hose so we could fill it from the kitchen sink. We attended the last prenatal visit with our midwife, Celeste. Stacey bought all the ingredients needed to bake a chocolate cake—the Labor Cake was Kim’s job. Kim was the only other person invited to the birth.

The last item on my to-do list was the pile of baby books. I knew that, statistically, first moms deliver eight days after the due date. I had reserved week forty-one for baby research.

“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” asked the cupcake lady.

“Nope. But everyone thinks it’s a boy,” said Stacey. Inquiring minds are always obsessed with baby gender but in our case, the curiosity was over the top. Lesbians seem to have a striking number of boys. Boy, girl, intersex—it was irrelevant to us. Whoever was in there, we couldn’t wait to meet.

Though I still felt I needed a week to prepare the final details. Kim was convinced the baby’s arrival was imminent and we should plan a party. Hence the cupcakes.

“I don’t know why, but I have a feeling about pink and the baby wants a party,” Kim said. She was the only one who expected a baby girl. We left the store with four cupcakes—one was pink.

Week thirty-seven had been a milestone. We visited the back-up midwife, Sarah, that morning.

“You’re thirty-seven weeks,” she reminded Stacey. “You’re at term.” Not having read the baby books, I had no idea what this meant.

“Are you ready for the homebirth?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “We have the handout.”

“Well I hope you also have the supplies, because if Stacey goes into labor, she’s having this baby at home.”

On cue, the frantic cleaning and nesting began. In my case, it was organizing. We couldn’t find the right house to move to, so we decided to stay in our cozy apartment. There was no space for a nursery (though Stacey planned to co-sleep) so I decided to reorganize and downsize.

I had secretly hoped that our lack of a house might prevent the homebirth. Early on, I was leery about a homebirth and apprehensive about being at the birth. I get faint at the sight of blood and I have a low pain threshold. But I tried my best to hide my wimpiness from Stacey—it was my job to be the strong, supportive birth partner.

At our first appointment with the midwife, Stacey declared that she wanted the most natural birth possible and no epidural.

“Can I have the epidural?” I asked.

Somewhere around week twenty-five I had asked Celeste if an apartment building was suitable for a homebirth. “Sure,” she said, “just warn your neighbors.”

Stacey with the blow-up tub.

Stacey went into labor at 11 p.m. on the eve of her due date. Celeste showed up at 1:30 a.m. At around 2:30 a.m., while Stacey rested in the birth pool that was taking over our living room, Celeste checked the baby’s heart rate for the umpteenth time. It had dropped to 110 beats per minute. Not dangerous, she said, but she wanted to be cautious. She recommended we transfer to the hospital. It was a surprisingly easy choice. The baby’s safety was paramount. Throughout the pregnancy, Celeste reminded Stacey that she was “they”—there would be no doctor coercing Stacey to make choices she didn’t want to make. Celeste was in charge, even at the hospital, and she respected Stacey’s birth plan.

Ruby was born at 6:30 a.m. Everything went as expected, except that we weren’t at home. There were no medical interventions and I don’t even think Stacey noticed the putrid color of the paint.

When they delivered breakfast two hours later, we realized there might be some perks to a hospital birth. The food wasn’t great but it was warm. The nurses came to help every time we rang the buzzer, and we didn’t have to clean up the mess.

Ruby’s one-week-old
birthday!

Stacey, Ruby, and Maureen: one week old!

Maureen is a Canadian filmmaker, media artist, and Associate Professor in the writing department at the University of Victoria. Maureen’s partner Stacey is a dancer.