Category Archives: Pregnancy

No Mother’s Day?

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Christy Turlington Burns, most of us know, is a model.  But she’s also a maternal health advocate who began a campaign called Every Mother Counts, an organization devoted to reducing maternal mortality.  The World Health Organization estimates that 360,000 girls and women die each year from complications related to children, most of which are preventable through basic, proven health care services.

To raise awareness about this issue, Turlington Burns proposes that in lieu of Mother’s Day, mothers band together for “No Mother’s Day”, encouraging mothers to “disappear” for the day,  “out of solidarity with those who needlessly die in pregnancy and childbirth.  We believe that in acting together, we can show just how much a mother is missed when she is gonefor the day in solidarity with those who needlessly die in pregnancy and childbirth.  We believe that in acting together, we can show just how much a mother is missed when she is gone.”

Without further ado, here is a two minute video clip, directed by her husband, shouting out about No Mother’s Day.

So we throw our weight behind this pressing, heart-breaking issue.

And then, from 4Mothers to you, we can’t help but wish you a very lovely Mother’s Day, for all you do, each and every day.

A Birth Story

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As you may know, I took a hiatus from this blog to have a baby.  Thanks to Beth-Anne, Marcelle, Nathalie, and guest bloggers for making that possible.  As for my return, I thought maybe a birth story would be in order?  Here it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I was convinced the baby would come early, but I was wrong.  Although  my other two boys came early, and I had been having some pretty intense contractions for several weeks, I watched with surprise and then dismay as my due date came and went.

So, as surely lots of women have done before me, I tried to encourage the baby to come by doing things I don’t ordinarily do.  Like spending several hours with a three year old hunting for drills and extension cords to install curtain rods (one package had been opened and was missing a piece of course), and then hemming the curtains and hanging them up.  More productively, I went to acupunture twice.  These appointments spurred on some regular contactions at night, but spaced out again when I lay down.

Then on the sixth day after my due date, my midwife Marlene checked me, and I was 3-4 centimetres dilated.  This buoyed me up a little; at least the weeks of early labour had made tangible results.  I was still having contractions at this point, enough for Marlene to question the cleverness of my plan to drive myself to my third acupuncture appointment.  But I was determined to go and felt it would be fine.

I arrived at the acupuncture office only to immediately experience a powerful minutes-long contraction in the waiting room.  Meaning I was propping myself up on one arm while sitting on a chair, unable to move, eyes closed, head down, trying to breathe, while the acupuncturists politely pretended to ignore me.  Then the longest contraction ever ended  and I hemmed and hawed about having at least an acupressure treatment but worried aloud about not being able to drive home or even walk downstairs to a cab, when finally the acupuncturist intervened and said “I think labour is imminent” and sent me home.

I managed to drive myself home, pausing for contractions, which were about five minutes apart, and felt like labour might actually be starting for real.  I decided to take a nap, which is interesting to me in retrospect, since I knew that doing this would likely slow the contractions down.  I think that maybe, having tracked Labour down and finally gotten a glimpse of her glory, I wanted to recede from her just a little bit to gather my strength.

For thirty minutes I slept.  I know this because for three ten-minute intervals I glanced at the clock after being woken from contractions that were not like the ones I’d had before.  These contractions, ten minutes apart or no, prompted me to call my doula Crescence and ask her to come over.  I had earlier called a couple of times but had hesitated to ask her to come because I wasn’t sure whether labour had really started.  But I wasn’t hesitating anymore.

Crescence arrived shortly afterward and I greeted her excitedly because by then I knew labour was coming.  The contractions were steady and frequent, and I was already using the breathing and voicing tools she had shown me during my 20 hour birth with my second son Nathaniel.  During that birth, Crescence and I worked our way to a place of significant pain relief and joyfulness during active labour.  It was a profoundly moving experience, and I was looking forward to getting to that place for this birth too.

But for this birth, I only remember talking to Crescence between contractions maybe three times.  Then I was draped over the birthing ball, head hung low, using all my focus to manage the contractions.  No more talking.

Soon, much sooner than I thought, I was asking for the birthing pool.  It seemed to take ages to fill and I got into it before it was full.  It was August, the windows were open, and the midwives were telling my husband Ben the water in the pool was too cool.  But I felt so hot, even in the water.

And then Marlene arrived.  I believe I lifted my head for her.  She checked me, and Crescence gave a gasp of pleasure at hearing I was 8 centimetres dilated.

Shortly after that, the back-up midwife arrived, signalling that the baby would soon be born.  I was dimly aware of her presence, but would not be able to acknowledge her until after the birth.

I knew, or somehow felt, that I was fully open but I also felt stalled and had no urge to push.  Marlene confirmed that I was fully dilated but my waters had not broken.  She told me that she could speed up my labour by rupturing my waters if I got out of the pool.  I remember that she repeated herself when I made no answer.  I had heard her but couldn’t speak unnecessarily, and was deciding what to do.

It’s not that the pool was providing much pain relief, because it wasn’t.  But I knew moving would really, really hurt.  Earlier, I had shifted my left hand to reach a handle in the pool to brace myself more effectively.  It was perhaps a foot away, but it took me the length of two contractions to inch my hand over.  The thought of moving out of the pool seemed enormous, and I doubted whether I had the strength to do it. Then another wave of contractions came searing along and the thought of many more of these convinced me to speed things along.

Until now I had been breathing and voicing my way through the contractions with a certain calm.   There was even a period of time, perhaps half an hour, that Ben described as serene, when I laboured in silence and the bedroom holding five people was still, but for the warm August breeze blowing through the window.  The contractions were intensely painful, and I was suffering with some of them, but I was able to integrate them.

Moving myself out of the pool changed this.  I heaved a leg over the side of the pool, gracelessly, and stumbled onto the bed.  Pain was everywhere.  Marlene broke my waters.  I was not on top of the contractions anymore.

Turns out I’m a screamer.  Crescence told me to lower my voice (she later told me that’s what her midwife told her when she was giving birth).  Crescence said that if I kept screaming in high tones, I would hurt my throat.  I remember thinking, “My throat?  Who cares about my throat!”

When I did lower my voice, though, it was more like roaring, and was actually helpful in pushing the baby out.  The roaring noises seemed to engage certain parts of my body (the diaphragm, maybe?) that helped me to bear down in the continued absence of any urge to push.

And then Marlene was yelling at me to move my leg, and when I finally heard her and did it, the baby was born. 8 pounds, 9 ounces.  He was healthy and crying and almost immediately suckling at the breast.

Three hours and ten minutes.  Six minutes of pushing.

My sons Sam and Nat were invited into the bedroom immediately after the baby was born.  They were curious and excited.  With his dad’s help, Sammy cut the cord.  They were untroubled by anything they heard or saw because no one else in the room was.  We had also prepared them by reading Hello Baby, which is a beautiful book about homebirth from the perspective of a young child.

It’s now been eight weeks since the birth.  I’ve had some time to think about it.  While I haven’t had any great revelations about it, I’ll share what thoughts I have.

In many ways, the birth was exactly what I hoped it would be ~

~ It was a healthy, positive experience that happened at home.  Although I would have loved some pain relief, it never crossed my mind to leave home and go to the hospital.

~ It was a family event.  The kids shared in the preparation, the excitement, and were home  at the end of the labour.  They were present for the birth, and were able to experience it as a normal life event.  My mother was also there, both helping with the children, and then enjoying her youngest grandchild in his earliest moments with us.

~ I had excellent support, not just with my husband and mother, but with the labour team.  In addition to their medical expertise, the midwives were kind.  After the birth, I was encouraged to go to the washroom and shower.  As I stepped out of the shower, my mother watched Marlene kneel on the floor before me to help me step into my clothes.  My mother, once a nurse-midwife in Malaysia, observed how caring the midwife was and noted that a doctor would never have done that.

- Post-partum care was incredibly good.  I had trouble breastfeeding, and the midwives made ten home visits to facilitate what is now exclusive breastfeeding.

~ I was as open to and prepared for the birthing process as I could be.  I like to think this contributed to the speed of the labour.

~ Recovery from the home birth was quick and easy.

~ I had a lot of autonomy in deciding how the birth process unfolded.

In other ways, the home birth surprised me ~

~ I thought that in this birth I would be able to re-enter that precious state of relative comfort during active labour that I had experienced during Nathaniel’s labour.  I forgot that each birthing experience, like each child, is unique, and that there is no pattern to follow.

~ The birthing pool didn’t help nearly as much as I thought it would.  It might have taken the edge off… a little.

~ It never occurred to me that I would have such a fast labour.  Its speed probably contributed to its intensity, and perhaps explain in part why the pain relief strategies I hoped for could only help so much.

~ It also never occurred to me how wild the process could be at the end.  Wild in the true sense, a kind of animal process.  I didn’t gently exhale the baby out, like I’d seen in some youtube videos.  I’ve come to realize that while those experiences exist, for most of us, birthing a baby is squarely painful, and that the energies of aspiring natural birthers are better spent dealing with that reality than trying to find ways to evade it.

If I were to have another baby, I would homebirth again, and be just a little bit wiser.  I noticed that the more experienced women around me, the ones who haven’t been sequestered from the natural processes of life the way I have, displayed some of this wisdom.  My mother, for example, listening to me birth the baby, was not astonished by my cries as I was but rather pleased they were so few:  “I only heard you scream six or seven times,” she said.  “Was there more?”

And a week or so after the birth, I had an opportunity to review Marlene’s labour chart and notes.  In the comments section, she had  written simply, “Beautiful homebirth”.  My eyes lingered on the words.  So it was.

4 Mothers, 11 Boys!!!

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Boy oh boy!  It looks as though we need to change our tag line to read 4 mothers, 11 boys!

Carol gave birth to an 8 lbs 9 oz baby boy at her home on Wednesday August 10.  Both Carol and baby are doing great!

This is Carol and Ben’s third baby, making them certified members of the three-boy club!

We wish him a lifetime of health and happiness.

Check out that face – isn’t he just precious!  I melted when I saw this picture.

 

Relatives and Late Night Television

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Daniel:

Despite having no evidence either way, while I was pregnant I somehow convinced myself that our first child was a girl.

Our first child was affectionately nicknamed “Bean” in utero. Having decided not to find out whether Bean was, as we put it, “A Lima, or a Garbanzo”, we worked hard to come up  with a short list of male and female names. Our criteria were simple: the name had to be compatible with Peter’s last name, and preferably, the name couldn’t be shortened in some unattractive or off-colour fashion. Whatever name we chose also needed to be common enough, but not so common that they’d be one of five in their kindergarten classroom. Whether we were hedging our bets, or just giving in to some mistaken belief that we thought we knew what was going on, we ended up with a list of girls’ names long enough to be wrapped around my expansive belly, and only two names for a boy.

The length of the girls’ list caused me some anxiety, for I was sure we were going to have to make a choice from it.  I take now the fact that we never did agree on a girl’s name as a sign that my body knew something that my brain refused to recognize.  Once we knew that Bean was, in fact, a Garbanzo, his name was obvious.

The name we chose is so perfect for him that I can barely believe there were ever other names on the list at any point. He was named for for my grandfather, who was 92 when Daniel was born and who passed short months later. His middle name is Peter father’s,  who passed away in 1995. Even though he was named for his ancestors, he now owns that name; it is him, in its entirety, and I can’t imagine having given him any other.

Sebastian:

When it came time to find out whether I was carrying a boy or a girl the second time around, practicality (and my will) prevailed, and “Chip” showed himself to be all boy. This time, I was not surprised. But what to call him? We went back to our old list, now with one name on it, mulled it about, rolled it around, and put it back on the shelf. It was….all right. It would do. Maybe.  In jest, I threatened to make Chip pick his own name using a naming ritual that I’d read about in some attachment parenting book.  We debated names. We perused the baby name books. We were stuck.

At around the 29th week of pregnancy, I was admitted to hospital. The woman in the bed across from me was lovely – ebullient and generous. She also snored like an elephant with a head cold: long, sonorous, raspy inhalations and exhalations that made it impossible for me to sleep, and left me sobbing with exhaustion.

Desperate, I got a TV. For the next few nights, I stuffed the TV’s earplugs deeply into my ears, hoping to at least muffle her snores. Muffled they were, but not enough to actually allow me any decent restorative sleep. So, I passed the time with late night movies, including this one. I can barely remember now what the movie was about, but I was taken by the main character, and the character’s name stuck. Luckily, Peter liked the name, too, and the previous contender for a name was pushed aside in favour of the name Sebastian, with a middle name honouring my father. Like his brother, he now embodies that name, and I can’t imagine what we’d have called him had I not watched TV that night.

Cerny:

Both boys share a second middle name: my last name. This was not part of the original plan, but minutes after Daniel’s birth by forceps, Peter suggested that we also make my last name a middle name. I wasn’t in a position to argue.

A case for simple names

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Betheny.  Becky.  Mary Beth.  Mary Anne.  Ruth Anne.

These are just a few of the names that I have repeatedly been called during my thirty years.  Who knew that two simple names hyphenated together, making one, could cause such confusion?

This name-angst has followed me since childhood.  My mother tells me that as a young girl a distant relative thought that my parents had two daughters: Beth and Anne.  They would look at my mom puzzled when she would arrive somewhere with just me in tow, being so bold as to ask, “I thought Beth and Anne were coming.”

Perhaps because my name is not that common, it can be perplexing to some.  Introducing myself to anyone hard of hearing, who has an accent or speaks English as a second language usually leaves them slightly embarrassed, and an exasperated me temporarily answering to a new name.

Or else the conversation usually goes something like this:

“Hi, I am Lauren.”

“Hi, Lauren.  I am Beth-Anne, nice to meet you.”

“Betheny?”

“No, Beth-Anne”

“Sorry, Beth-Anne?”

“Yes.  Beth-Anne.  Like Beth and Anne smooshed together.  Beth-Anne.”

“So, that has a hyphen?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.  Sort of like Mary Beth.”

Not really.

My husband, after years of witnessing this exchange, is now quick to butt-in and just finishes the script for me.  It never ceases to amaze me that my two-syllable name can cause eyebrows to furrow and foreheads to crease.

Years ago, I met someone who had a tattoo that read: Hello, My Name Is Jim on his left breast.  Obnoxiously he made a show of peeling back his plaid flannel button-down shirt when he introduced himself.  After seeing, what I can only imagine as shock on my face, he quickly sidestepped to the next group of party guests to repeat his performance.

Just pointing to my inked chest could make my life easier but ultimately there are many reasons why this wouldn’t be a suitable solution least of which, after having three kids, my “name tag” would be down around my navel.

The only other regular sounding name that I have bared witness to causing such confused looks is a woman whose name is LN.   That’s right.  LN like Ellen.  After meeting her, explaining my hybrid name to strangers seems like a cakewalk.  At least my parents don’t come off as LSD dropping illiterates.

So, when the time came to name our boys the criteria was simple:  one-syllable first names to match their one-syllable last name.

Jack, Sam and Will.

May they never have to resort to name tattoos.

The Name Game

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Three of the four mothers are anxiously awaiting news from Carol- she is in her final days of pregnancy!

To honour the soon-to-be newest member of the 4mothers family, this week we will be posting all about names.  For some parents naming a baby can be stressful (read all about my angst here for an article that I wrote for the Globe and Mail, Facts and Arguments section almost one year ago), for others choosing the right name comes naturally.

After learning the gender of the baby most people immediately want to know the name.  Everyone is a critic and either secretly chastises the parents for their questionable taste or commends them on their chose of moniker.

Be sure to read Friday’s post by our hilarious guest blogger, Lori Dyan.  Lori, a mom of two, is a writer of all sorts including both children’s and contemporary women’s fiction.  Her uproariously funny blog aptly titled Lori Dyan is about her life as a parent and wife to the “Serb”.   Her recent post about her celebrity doppelganger is one of my favourites.  If you are looking for a pick-me up that is legal before noon, I would suggest checking out her blog.

As always we invite you to join in the discussion by leaving a comment. 

And then my heart grew

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I have a vivid memory of sitting cross-legged on the playroom floor, amidst colourful Duplo blocks and balls of various sizes with ABC playing softly in the background.  My very pregnant belly rests on my thighs and contracts every few hours while my first born, just over a year old, quietly plays beside me.  When he crawls over my legs and slobbers on my cheek, I cry.

The birth of my second child was imminent and while I was longing for the moment we’d meet, I was terrified that I could never love him as much as I love my first.  But the second he was placed in my arms, my heart swelled to new proportions and tears of joy rained on his face.

Pema Chodron reminded me of my uncertainty when I came across a quote.  What beautiful sentiments to include in a card to a mom-to-be.

When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless.

What about you?  Did you have similar fears before your children were born?

Mothering Through Adversity

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“He’s the luckiest unlucky baby,” says his mother, Marina with a wide smile.  You wouldn’t know from talking with her that her infant son is recovering from major surgery.  Her optimism is as authentic as her love for her family.

More than six years ago, Marina and her husband, Robin, decided to have a family.  When things didn’t go as smoothly as planned, they turned to fertility treatment and were fortunate to have a healthy daughter.   A few years later their joy multiplied when another daughter joined their family.  Counting their blessings, Marina and her husband decided to graciously accept the gift of their daughters and considered their family complete.

I remember three years ago, sitting with Marina at a children’s consignment sale.  She was giddy at the thought of no more Exersaucers cluttering her family room and when I asked her if this meant that there were no more babies in her future, she emphatically replied, “Nope.  We’re a two-kid family.”

Life certainly does laugh at our plans.  Almost two years ago, Marina unexpectedly became pregnant for a third time.  She and her husband were overjoyed albeit a bit surprised.

“We were shocked!  I couldn’t believe it when I found out that I was pregnant.  How did that happen without fertility meds?” Marina says followed by a playful laugh.  “I guess you can’t plan everything!”

Marina endured the usual question during her third pregnancy: “Are you hoping for a boy?” to round out her family of girls and she answered people sincerely by saying that she didn’t care what the sex of the baby, all that she wished for was (s)he be healthy.

Secretly, Marina was anxious.  She felt as though she had tempted fate twice before and won.  She had two healthy babies.  What more could one ask for?  Marina’s fears were brushed aside by most everyone she talked to as “normal” especially for mothers with more than one child.  Nonetheless, she couldn’t let the suspicion go.

After a fairly uneventful pregnancy, Marina went ahead with her planned C-section.  Robin was by her side when they welcomed their baby boy into the world on an early June morning.

Immediately, Marina sensed something was wrong.  Having had two previous C-sections she knew what to expect and reading the expressions on the faces of the medical staff and her husband, she knew her worst fear had been realized.

“They definitely didn’t handle it well at all.  I guess everyone was in shock.  It’s not something you come across every day.” Marina says casually, having forgiven the medical team for their lack of composure.

At first glimpse her tiny son looked dark purple.  His skin wasn’t the pinky hue she’d been expecting and seen twice before.  Immediately the doctors began calling for specialists to make their way to the OR.  Marina felt helpless lying on the table, her stomach being tethered back together, watching her son being examined under lights on a table a few feet away from her.

What seemed like hours later, but in reality was probably minutes, a nurse handed Marina her son.  With her husband by her side, she held baby Niklas in her arms for the first time and instantly fell in love.  Their special moment abruptly came to an end when not even a minute later, Niklas was taken the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) because he was experiencing difficulty breathing.  That turned out to be un-related to the skin condition, but Marina was unsure of what was happening and feared the worst.

An hour later in the recovery room, a young female doctor made her way over to the bedside and gently explained to Marina that her son was born with a very rare and potentially fatal disease, Giant Congenital Melanocytic Nevus.

“I didn’t know what to make of all she was saying.  All that I was heard cancer, and mortality.  I think that I blocked it out.”  Marina says of those first few minutes when she learned her son wasn’t born “perfect”.  In a daze of operative drugs and post-partum hormones, Marina continued to sit in the recovery room frightened that her son might not make it.  She was told that she wouldn’t see Niklas again for at least 24 hours because of his status in the NICU and that she was unable to sit in a wheelchair due to her c-section.

“I didn’t think, at first, that it was that bad until Robin went to speak with the doctors.  We had always agreed that immediately following the delivery; I would stay in the hospital with Niklas while Robin attended his graduation (from an MBA program) that afternoon just a few blocks away.  He’d come back to the hospital later and in a few days we had planned to head home.  But when Robin came back into the room after his meeting with the doctors and told me that he wasn’t going to the graduation, I knew something was wrong.”

Staying in the hospital to recover from her C-section ended up being a temporary reprieve for Marina.  Without Google at her fingertips she was able to digest what information the doctors had told her.  Keeping positive was easy without the evils of Wikipedia permeating her brain.  Robin wasn’t so fortunate.  He went home and preceded to do the very thing the doctors had advised against: he went online to research more about his son’s condition.

Marina explains to me that most people are not born with moles but acquire them over their lifetime.  By age 20 most people have 20 moles but because Niklas was born with so many birthmarks, particularly the large birthmark on his back, his propensity to develop skin cancer is much, much greater.

Congenital Melanocytic Nevus is a dark mole, which cover the body.  There is usually one main nevus that can have hundreds of satellites.  These moles have a high likelihood of either being cancerous or turning cancerous, even in childhood.

The reason the medical staff cautioned against self directed research is that they were still uncertain the extent of Niklas’s diagnosis.  Statistics pummeled Marina and Robin.  Only 0.02 percent of babies are born with Congenital Melanocytic Nevus.  Of those, 1/3 will have nevi on their brain or spinal cord and a very small percent will develop complications that can result in death.

“He’s the luckiest unlucky baby!” Marina says again.  Niklas’s MRI determined that he does have a nevus on his brain but so far he has been developing like any normal infant and recently celebrated his first birthday.  However, it is the fear of the unknown that has weighed heavily on both Marina and her husband.

That is not to say that Niklas hasn’t had his share of challenges over the year.  He has had surgeries to remove nevi (called excision) and is going to undergo tissue expansion surgery.  Like a sci-fi movie, doctors insert a balloon under his skin that will cause it to stretch.  Once the skin has expanded enough, it will be stretched over the area where the birthmark will be removed.  Marina admits that she feels very lucky to live so close to Sick Kid’s Hospital home to some of the world’s leading physicians and surgeons.

In addition, Niklas must stay out of the sun, or completely covered and visit with a dermatologist every six months for the rest of his life.

In spite of this adversity, Marina and Robin remain optimistic and thankful that this all they have to contend with.  “Sitting in the waiting room for Niklas’s plastic surgeon or meeting with other specialists puts things into perspective.”

Please watch for Part Two of my interview with Marina as she shares how Niklas’s diagnosis has changed her family and how she has used social media as a support network.

photo credit: babygirlslipsonsshoes.co.cc

From Hospital to Home Birth

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Do you ever astonish yourself?  I don’t, very often.  But as I enter my eight month of pregnancy, an older version of me is more than bewildered at the current me.

Midwife.  Doula.  Breathing.  Voice.  Red raspberry leaf tea.  Birthing pool.  Natural birth.  And – wait for it – home birth.

I wasn’t always like this.

Five years ago, I gave birth to my first son prematurely by caesarean.  It was an emergency – at eight months, the placenta partly abrupted from my uterus.  It’s not the fact of the caesarean that bothers me, for I am forever indebted to the medical world for that surgery and the safe delivery of my baby.  But it’s the way in which I half expected to have a ceasarean that’s troubling, my own lack of confidence and professed disinterest in my body to carry a child to term.   I even requested general anaesthesia for the caesarean rather than regional because I didn’t want to be awake during the surgery.  (This request was refused.)  And when I overheard that a colleague at work was planning a natural (unmedicated) birth process to see whether she could do it, I responded with (and I quote), “Who cares?”.

Fast forward five years.  I have my heart set on a home birth.  What changed?  So very much.

Somewhere in between I had a second son.  In my eighth month of pregnancy, a friend recommended an inspiring book by a remarkable woman.  It was filled with stories of women who had had positive natural birth experiences.  I hadn’t heard anything like them in real life (just the opposite, actually), but I was moved.  I committed more firmly to having a vaginal birth after caesarean (VBAC), in spite of my OB’s nervousness.  And I hired a doula, and laboured with her for a long time at home.  Here is an excerpt of my thank you letter to her:

As you may remember, my birth experience wasn’t perfect.  I was and remain horrified at how things unraveled at triage at Mt. Sinai [the hospital].  This process, this birth, that had been so carefully and lovingly nurtured until then was so quickly taken out of our hands, and taken over, that I was stunned with sadness.  But I also have the memory of labouring at home with you until then, which is one of challenging satisfaction and accomplishment to me.  And to have been awake, wide awake, to watch Nathaniel come into the world and then take him to my chest – the memory of this can still leave me breathless.  It is the only birthing I have ever seen.

So I carry a basket of great things:  the labour at home; the vaginal birth; a process largely unmedicated; your companionship and guidance; the big, beautiful baby; my intact body; the ease and pleasure of breastfeeding.  I have joy.  These early experiences with Nathaniel cut such a sharp contrast against those with Sam, and only now do I understand how much I lost that first time. 

…

Now I know the [caesarean] scar will hold.  If I ever have another baby, I will seriously consider labouring at home, with midwives and with you, if you are still doing this work by then.  I’m 37, and more importantly, Ben seems to think two is enough (“If you want to have another baby, Carol, you’ll have to find another husband.”).  But for me, I wouldn’t rule it out, and often feel like I would love to have another baby.  This is such a far cry from what I felt equipped to do only a few years ago, it’s hard to express.

…

I imagine your work to be very challenging, especially because of the generally unreceptive climate in which you do it.  I guess that you see a lot of unfulfilled potential, of women, of their bodies, of the babies within.  So I wanted you to know that you have helped to reveal, one contraction at a time, my body’s potential – for me to want to birth at home, naturally, is a far distance to have come, and I want to claim it with you for its entire worth.

Somewhere in the last couple of years, my husband’s stance on a third child cracked, and here I am, with a belly full of baby and over the moon with gratitude.  And part of that gratitude is being gifted with the chance to have a baby intentionally, governed by my own values and experiences, rather than fear.  Part of the blessing of growing this child is the excitement I feel about being able to experience labour again.

I’m not foolish; I know there are no guarantees.  If I need medical intervention, I will accept it and be thankful.  But I’d basically be denying my own life experience if I were to fail to try to have a home birth this time around.  Plus I’m a researcher by trade and I’ve done my homework, so I know that the statistics repeatedly demonstrate that home birth for low-risk women cared for by midwives is at least as safe as hospital birth.  (More pragmatically, the data on this point would have to be rock solid in order for the government to fully fund home births attended by midwives in Ontario, which it does).

If you’d told me five years ago that I would be a home birth enthusiast, I would have said you were crazy.  But then again, if you’d told me back then, when I had the unbridled freedom to go for a walk without telling a soul, that I’d find my greatest happiness tethered to two tykes wrapped around my knees, only partly visible under my watermelon tum, I’d not have believed you either.   So maybe stranger things have happened.