One Dad’s experience of home birth
By Rumi Massa
I'm a Dad, and I helped birth my lovely daughter at home. I apologise in advance for talking about an experience that I can never directly know myself. But Dads can share in it, and it is the greatest rite of passage that there is. I couldn't have done it without my partner, of course, and I thank the two midwives who visited weekly in the months before our birth, and helped us believe we could birth our baby at home.
The Birth
She shot out, a darkish, slivery shape from a cloudburst of deep crimson in the waters swirling around my partner’s body. I briefly wondered if there was supposed to be so much blood, but the simple act of leaning forward and catching my baby daughter held my attention. The moment was so significant: the culmination of our months of intention.
My fears were pushed into background in the immediacy of action. My partner said, “There’s a baby!” We reached into the pool and our hands easily found her. Together we raised our baby out of the warm water. She was clean and blue-white and tiny, her eyes closed, at rest in the candlelight. She lay still; she was getting her oxygen through the umbilical cord that still connected her to her mum. No blood, no waxy vernix, just clean and wet.
Her mother was half crouching in the water, umbilically connected to our baby. The midwife reminded us to pass baby back between her mother’s legs, so that her mother could take her into her arms. I leaned against the thick, inflated walls of the pool, and reminded myself that baby was getting her oxygen from the cord, before dipping her back into the dark water and handing our baby back to her mother. Baby started breathing a few seconds later. Mother’s eyes caught mine, dark, triumphant and marvelling.
Yes, I was there to take the catch. Despite all my fears, I didn’t balk at the blood, nor feel squeamish at grasping our baby in the midst of all the bodily fluids.
My fear, of course, was nothing compared to the bodily and spiritual convulsion through which my partner, the mother, had just passed. I can only imagine what it must be like when the uterus, the largest muscle in the human body, contracts to expel its baby. Such a massive muscle, which has never been used before, beginning to contract with greater force, at first slowly, but with growing urgency, to push the baby headfirst through the cervix, and then the vagina the softest, most private of human portals, which must stretch from its cosy closed-ness, to accommodate the baby’s head, the size of a grapefruit, sliding through a chicane of pelvic anatomy. The mother breathed the baby out, sighing deeper and deeper, until that vast final breath, when the mother’s body opened, and the baby sailed out into the world, for me to catch. The mother did all that, but I was there for her, and in the final moments looked into her eyes, and told her yes when she said no, and held her hands, as she let nature take control and released our baby to us.
I held our baby, as her mother birthed the placenta, and the midwife said the bleeding was not so bad. “It’s just a graze,” she said. With the placenta on the floor, still connected to our baby, the mother took the baby back to her breast, as we waited for the pulsing of the umbilical to deliver the last blood from the placenta to our baby. We didn’t want to cut the cord. Could it hurt? We wondered whether we might leave the placenta to drop away from baby naturally, as some parents do. But wild animals eat the placenta. I considered gnawing it with my teeth. Our midwife looked on in the half darkness, with a twinkle of amusement, until we decided to use a pair of scissors, and finally I cut the sinewy cord.
The midwife cleaned my partner up, while I lay still in the candle light with our baby on my chest. Baby smiled at me. I poked my tongue at her, and she stuck the tiny tip of her tongue back out at me. It was blissful.
The labour
It wasn’t perfectly the way that we had imagined it, but almost. The problem was it went so fast. The waters broke at four in the afternoon, contractions started at six, and our daughter was born at ten that night. The mother was injured; her vagina tore a little, maybe because the birth was so rapid, or maybe becuase we that was one stretching exercise we didn't really embrace. If we’d been able to slow the birth down a little, maybe we could have prevented that. We’d discussed the position which slows the birth, and even during those hectic minutes of labour, before the midwife arrived, I’d asked her if she wanted to go slower. But if we’d tried to go slower, maybe her body’s rhythm would have been lost.
Our midwife came to visit at six, two hours after we noticed a little puddle that meant the waters had burst. She then went to have some supper - we expected an eight-hour labour. My partner sat in bed as she breathed with the contractions, and I became caught up in the rhythm of the birth. She crouched and I massaged the base of her spine. I made notes - at first - noting the time and duration of each contraction. They started coming fast, a minute and half apart, so phoned I the midwife. It was too soon for them to be coming so fast. She made me time the contractions over half an hour.
I was right; the mother was in ‘transition’, from labour to birth. I phoned the midwife and she said she was on her way and to get mother into the birthing pool. By this time, mother was on the move anyway, gasping and grabbing onto whatever she could when contractions came on. She moved into the bathroom, tried sitting on the toilet, then clutched onto the sink as I protected her head from the taps. Then we dashed down the stairs into the pool. Undressing was a tangle of hair clips and clothes and moonstone necklace. Then we were both in the pool, me with the sieve to remove the little bits that get squeezed out of the digestive tract as baby’s head moves down into the birth canal. I knew this meant the birth was close.
Then my partner told me to come and feel between her legs, and I could feel the smooth bulge of our baby’s head: we were crowning. That’s when my partner said there was a bit of skin in the way; she could feel the part of her vagina that hadn’t yet stretched quite enough. I asked her if she wanted to go slower.
The doorbell rang: our midwife had arrived and I needed to climb out of the pool. I was grateful the midwife was there, but the rhythm was disrupted, and my partner didn’t want me back in the pool. But we linked hands and I looked into her eyes as the hugest wave of contraction pulsed through her, and she said “no” for the first time, maybe feeling the stretch, and I reminded her “yes”, as we’d rehearsed, and there was an empathic moment as she relaxed, and breathed our baby out, in what I imagine was a mighty cry, but I can’t remember hearing anything.
The afterbirth
Which brings me back to the first moments of our baby’s life. The new mother was standing in the birthing pool, holding our baby. I stood outside. I held her and she leaned on me. She was trembling, and there was blood in the water. Our midwife said we needed to check on the bleeding. I supported the mother as she lifted one shaky leg over the wide air-filled walls of the pool, and then sat, and wiggled the other leg over.
Then my partner told me to come and feel between her legs, and I could feel the smooth bulge of our baby’s head: we were crowning. That’s when my partner said there was a bit of skin in the way; she could feel the part of her vagina that hadn’t yet stretched quite enough. I asked her if she wanted to go slower.
The doorbell rang: our midwife had arrived and I needed to climb out of the pool. I was grateful the midwife was there, but the rhythm was disrupted, and my partner didn’t want me back in the pool. But we linked hands and I looked into her eyes as the hugest wave of contraction pulsed through her, and she said “no” for the first time, maybe feeling the stretch, and I reminded her “yes”, as we’d rehearsed, and there was an empathic moment as she relaxed, and breathed our baby out, in what I imagine was a mighty cry, but I can’t remember hearing anything.
The afterbirth
Which brings me back to the first moments of our baby’s life. The new mother was standing in the birthing pool, holding our baby. I stood outside. I held her and she leaned on me. She was trembling, and there was blood in the water. Our midwife said we needed to check on the bleeding. I supported the mother as she lifted one shaky leg over the wide air-filled walls of the pool, and then sat, and wiggled the other leg over.
The curved surface of the pool wall was smeared with blood where she had crossed. The midwife said she was bleeding quite a lot. Mother sat on the pile of towels we had laid over the futon. Our baby daughter lay in her mother’s arms and started seeking her breast. She soon latched on and tasted her first mother’s milk. Then I sat by my partner, and held our baby, as our midwife checked mother’s bleeding. She seemed OK, but the midwife wanted to examine her more closely.
Before that could happen, my partner had to give birth to the placenta, even though she was exhausted. Those were scary minutes; maybe twenty of them, while my partner struggled to birth the placenta, and we both feared that the bleeding might signify something worse than a superficial tear on the edge of her vagina.
I still thought the birth was just about perfect. What our midwife called vaginal grazes were only to be expected. At first I didn’t realise that the pain of the mother’s vaginal tears would past the first few days. She didn’t want to spoil my impression of a flawless birth. Then she told me, and we expected them to heal within a couple of weeks. But three months went by, and the scar tissue and discomfort were still noticeable, as a sting or pulling stiffness that mean we couldn’t have sex. We feared this might be a permanent part of our lives. But six months later the tissues of her vagina had completely regenerated themselves.
I shared a wonderful birthing experience with my partner. I’m left feeling profoundly grateful that we birthed the way we did: at home, after a spiritual and physical preparation, and with a midwife we grew to know over the five months.
Notes:
1. This birthing experience took place in 2008. Since then, the NHS has become more sympathetic to midwife led birth, but the NHS still does not have enough midwives to provide the level of service that our private midwife team provided. I believe that it is wrth studying whether it would be cost effective to save the money involved in hospital birth, and spend it instead on midwife teams for suitable parents.
2. If you're wondering what we did with the placenta? It lived in our freezer for a year. Then we knew it was time for it to go. I did try a little fried, but the rest was given a decent burial under an ivy bush.
Notes:
1. This birthing experience took place in 2008. Since then, the NHS has become more sympathetic to midwife led birth, but the NHS still does not have enough midwives to provide the level of service that our private midwife team provided. I believe that it is wrth studying whether it would be cost effective to save the money involved in hospital birth, and spend it instead on midwife teams for suitable parents.
2. If you're wondering what we did with the placenta? It lived in our freezer for a year. Then we knew it was time for it to go. I did try a little fried, but the rest was given a decent burial under an ivy bush.
