After Sabine's Birth

Onward with the story, because the birth is only part of the magic that was the care we got from nancy and therese.

BEWAREThis part of the story will likely have more 'sordid' details about things like the afterbirth and the state of my body etc. i'll try to warn you but reader beware!

Immediately after Sabine was born and we lifted her out of the water we were able to just cuddle and stay close. max says we stayed there in the tub for at least twenty minutes just looking at her and rubbing in the vernix. sabine was making a strange grunting noise and wasn't crying, so nancy rubbed her back hard and encouraged her to cry to help bring up the mucous in her throat and esophagus. nancy was totally not intrusive but was also very attentive to making sure sabine was ok. eventually she did little bits of suction for sabine but she said she really didn't want to do too much because she didn't want sabine to be adverse to having things in her mouth.

after a little while nancy asked if i'd felt the placenta contractions. i said i didn't, but she said she thought she'd seen the cord get longer and invited me to push. two little pushes and i delivered the placenta. they put it in a bowl floating in the water and immediately covered it with a washcloth so max wouldn't have to see it. then nancy asked if he wanted to cut the cord. max declined. then she asked me if i wanted to do it. at first i said no, then she asked if i could do it if she needed me to and i said 'yes'. so with some strange angling of our arms i was handed the scissors and cut sabine's cord while nancy secured the clamp. out of the womb, into the world!

the first few hours after the delivery of the placenta is the time of the whole birth that was most dangerous for me because of risk of hemhorrage due to expelling the placenta. they looked in the water and couldn't quite tell if everything was alright because i'd had some bleeding. so it was time to get out.

Out of the tub. sabine was handed to max in a big towel and he held her for the first time. therese helped me climb out of the tub and they asked me if i felt alright. i felt really good still. maybe a little shaky but not too bad considering a person just came out of me. they helped me take off my bra that was all wet and had some blood on it, then they covered my bottom with pads to catch the bleeding and they helped me into my own bed and brought me gatorade to drink. that has to be one of the best parts... they helped me into my OWN bed!

by now it was nearly 11 on sunday i'm sure. i knew my mom would be worried by now since she hadn't heard from us at 8 am. and max's parents and much of his family were at a wedding the night before and so we hadn't been able to call to say that labor had started. i knew they'd be at the brunch in the morning and i wanted everyone to get to know before they left to travel home. and katie needed to know... she'd been in a wedding out of town the night before. so as i climbed into bed to rest, i sent max off with his cell phone to call everyone.

in the meantime, therese asked what i'd like to eat and i said cheese and crackers so she went downstairs to fix me a plate of food from our pantry. nancy brought Sabine to be right beside me at the bed. sabine was still doing the grunting noise and nancy didn't like it, so she went to work. nancy rubbed her back and finally used the bulb syringe to suction her, but as little as possible. i didn't feel worried because nancy didn't seem worried AND i was really high on hormones. This is the other moment of the birth experience that would have gone drastically differently in a hospital. in the hospital they would have whisked Sabine away, suctioned her very hard and possibly taken her to the nursery for 'observation' and i wouldn't have been able to see or nurse her for a while. instead, nancy kept her right by my bedside where i could see her and wouldn't feel worried about her at all. soon she got a good cry and some good bits of mucous. nancy told me that this was NOT from the waterbirth it was natural mucous. she said many babies did this even not born in the water. she also told me what to watch for in the next 24 hours and told me we could suction her if needed. finally she said it was important for sabine to fill her lungs and cry hard so that she could get all the amniotic fluid out and all the tiny little branches of her lungs filled with air and working. so it was good when she had a hearty cry.

next we tried nursing. nancy helped me get her positioned and we found a good latch. of course, when babies are born there isn't really milk there but she worked on her sucking and was pretty good from the beginning. with a good latch it didn't hurt too bad for my first time nursing anyone.

about this time max came back and brought me a little snack. then therese came up with a plate of food that was so beautiful. i know it all came out of my pantry and fridge, but i have no idea where. it was amazing. so max and i sat on the bed and snacked while nancy and therese loved on sabine and checked her out. nancy did a full assessment on sabine and pronounced her totally well and in good health. she tried to stretch her fully to measure her but she was SO strong and did not want to let her leg extend. then nancy weighed her and we were all SHOCKED to see that she was only 5 lbs 10 oz. even nancy said 'i can't make her be any more than that' then therese dressed and swaddled sabine and brought her back over to me. oh, i think they gave her the vitamin K shot sometime around in there. nancy wrote up a description of sabine's birth for us to take to the pediatrician. she told us she used to always put WATERBIRTH on the descriptions because she was proud of it. but now she doesn't because it causes problems for the people... babies get hospitalized unnecessarily because of it... like for reflux that the MD blames on the waterbirth.. not the case. max asked 'what if they ask us' and nancy and i both said 'they won't ask' why would they think to ask that? they won't, homebirth is strange enough.

somehow in all of this therese and nancy were also cleaning up the huge mess (though not bloody mess). they drained the tub using a pump, they put away all the supplies and they did ALL the laundry they could find in the whole house. AND therese went downstairs or maybe it was nancy and started cooking up the herbs for my herbal healing bath.

BEWARE Sordid details! after checking sabine, it was time to check me. i guess max had sabine at this point but i have no idea where they were. nancy had me lay down on the bed and therese came over and held my hand and said 'you can squeeze my hand as hard as you want' and nancy went to work to check me out. SERIOUSLY stop now... SORDID first i heard her say ' i know the perineum is intact because i was holding that' then she went to work checking the rest of me. she knew there'd been a little bit of something because they'd seen the blood. finally she found two small tears. the one on the right side was very small and nothing to worry about. the one on the left initially wasn't too much but upon further inspection it was deeper than she'd expected. i was definitely squeezing therese's hand hard by now. so then nancy had to decide if it was bleeding enough to need stitches. Once again a midwife's care changed my outcome. in the hospital they immediately would sew it up, no questions, but nancy hesitated because she knew if she did stitches it would be harder on me in the next week AND the next time i had a baby i'd need stitches again. whereas if she let it heal on its own, next time it would be fine and probably not even tear. she just wasn't sure so she decided to put me in the healing bath and see how i looked afterwards. otherwise she said 'you don't even look like you just had a baby' THANK GOD!

so just like in the hospital, they make you pee as soon as they can. i guess they want to make sure you're still working AND if the bladder is full it gets in the way of the uterus contracting back down. so she made me do that on the way to the bath. as we opened the door to the bathroom where therese had filled the tub with the brown herby water i said 'it smells like christmas!' because of the cloves in the water. they helped me lower myself in. then nancy came and sat beside me. again she said 'this is what we don't tell you about the post partum' and she did the dreaded uterine 'massage' luckily i'd been reading everyone else's birth stories and knew it was coming. and it didn't last too long. then she told me to make sure to get the water on all my tissues and she was trying to check the water for excess bleeding and still trying to decide about stitches or not. i told her 'i'd like to avoid it if we can' which i laugh at now... i was afraid of stitches after just going through NATURAL CHILDBIRTH. ha!

after 20 minutes in the tub i showered the herbs off and nancy helped me dress. and she gave me those rockin' mesh undies that you get at the hospital. nice. back into the bedroom she checked me out again. on the way in i heard therese say something like 'sarah's strong' and i raised my arms like rocky... i think it was in reference to my ability to pee and not complain too much about the stinging. anyways she checked me and was on the edge. finally she decided to try a natural cure first. Nori... SEAWEED. yup. she packed my womanly parts (they're not girl parts anymore after you have a baby) with seaweed. she said it was essentially like a salt pack on the tear. at first it was stingy but then it went away and i felt fine. seriously, seaweed. i don't think they do that in the hospital. she left me with a sheet of Nori and instructions to re-pack it if it fell out when i went to the bathroom. she also left the herbs on the kitchen stove so i could have two more herbal soaks to help heal everything over the next few days.

nancy also brought the placenta over for me to check out. she said she'd searched all over the bag for a tear and didn't find it. so she didn't know where the leaking came from. her best guess was that there was a hole at the top of the bag, the water dripped down the sides and then gushed out when i moved and that's why we didn't get a drenching soak. it was good though because it made things nicer for me and sabine in the delivery. she said they did see the waters fully break at one point while was pushing in the tub. then she showed me the rest of it. the placenta was interesting she said. first it was odd that it implanted on the left. next it was SMALL and it had branches of veins rather than one good strong vein. AND in the most interesting part, it had a smaller node with its own veins to it off to the side. she said it seemed like it had to work hard to implant. so the smaller node could've meant sabine briefly had a twin but i think that's pretty common. and that the placenta was small was the reason sabine was so small. and the placenta got her right through 40 weeks and then said 'that's it i'm DONE' and couldn't support her anymore. it isn't a problem, but it's lucky for us that everything went as well as it did through the pregnancy. they packed up the placenta and it's still in our freezer, by law we're to bury it eventually.

while i'd been in the tub max had first built the stand for sabine's bed, then he'd been handed sabine for the first time to watch her while nancy took care of me. AND therese and nancy had completely cleaned up everything and my bedroom looked totally normal. AMAZING! (you can see in the pic below what craziness it was) they'd also called my mom and called katie to tell them they could come over. i was put back in bed and they brought sabine to me.

then max came and it was quiet. and suddenly i realized nancy and therese weren't there and i asked if they'd left. no, they were outside gabbing away. by now it was nearly 3 pm.
then i heard people on the stairs. i saw my mom hovering in the doorway. then nancy came in and gave me a big hug and kiss, therese did the same and i told them THANK YOU so much, but that could never cover the gratitude and amazement i have for them. it was sad that they left. but then there was my mom coming in and holding her grandbaby for the first time. she told me 'nancy said you did Awesome!' and a few minutes later katie came in with sunflowers and told me she was so proud of me. i know it was sad for both of us that she didn't make it for the birth but i'd already decided that whatever happened, everyone was where they were meant to be. it all happened for a reason, who knows what that was though.

and that's the end for that day. nancy came back the next day. weighed sabine and checked her out, helped with nursing again. checked me again and gave me a homeopathic medicine to help with the healing. she decided i didn't need stitches and was healing well. nancy said 'you could have sex tonight' and i said 'don't tell max!' and we laughed. she sat on the floor and chatted with me and my mom about the birth. she kept telling me how wonderful my birth had been so that was really nice. it was just wonderful all of it. i don't know how i'll ever go back into having normal OB/GYN appointments again. ugh! and pediatrician and MD appointments. ugh! maybe i'll find another midwife for well-woman care, but there's no other nancy in all the world, that's for sure!