Sheree's story of Sage Annalina's homebirth

 

The night that I went into labour, I was in a motel with my partner, Steven, and my 3 kids were staying at their Granny's. We had this night organised for weeks. It was the only day that Steven's Mum could take the kids, and that was fine with me. I needed a rest. Steven and I decided a night of luxury before our 4th baby arrived was necessary! We booked into one close to home, just in case I went in to labour. And of course I did! But we were there for most of the day and we had a fantastic time relaxing. There was a spa in the main room, and I think I was in there most of the time we were there. Water was most relieving for me during my pregnancy and the spa in the room was huge. I could have went to sleep in it. The evening was so wonderful and easy. We had a couple beers and I remember watching Mrs Doubtfire on the tv. It was around 11pm that I started feeling sick. I had a stomach ache and thought it must have been all the food I ate, because I had been indulging all day long! Something inside of me told me to go home. I was having cramps, but thought nothing of it. I told Steven I just wanted to go home, I felt more comfortable there and thought that if nothing was happening, we could always come back to the motel for breakfast! So we went home and I had a shower and got myself a heat pack for my tummy and went to sleep.

I must have slept for a few hours because when I woke up it was 3-30am. It was definate cramping that i was feeling now and I wanted to get into the pool straight away so I woke up Steven and got him to start filling it up. They were not contractions, but they were cramping and I just wanted some relief.

Once the pool was full enough I hopped in and felt instant relief. I wanted music and Steven went and got the music we had talked about playing. We played Josh Pyke, Abby Dobson and Jose Gonzales and this music played until Sage was birthed Earthside.

The pool was delicious. And so was Steven. He was so present and helpful. He listened to my every word and responded to everything that I needed, even in the times when I could not speak words.

The music was helping me ease through the contractions. They were definately becoming more intense but they were not too painful and there was no pattern to them. I assumed I was in early labour and that ‘established labour’ would start some time in the morning. I thought of what one of my beautiful friends, Jacinta, reminded me about in my blessingway about labouring women going to the stars to collect her baby to bring home. I felt that space in which to travel, and during labour felt so far away in the cosmos but also so present and earthed.

I think it was about 5-45am when I told Steven to ring Anna and Grace, my doula’s, and tell them to come over when they are ready. I was still thinking I was in early labour as the contractions were not really very painful and that it would be a long day for them, but I knew I still wanted their presence around me soon. My contractions were not too painful, they were full, and they made my body move and respond, and I made sounds and Steven rubbed my back, but early hours I thought, as I moved between Heaven and Earth.

It was just before Anna arrived that the contractions got really painful which I guess was around 6-30am. It was really difficult to get comfortable, and there was a lot of things going on in my head:

- trauma from Lala’s birth was coming up. I was having flashes of the intense part of her labour which lasted for hours. Her head was still high and I was swinging off bars in the shower trying to bring her down, but I was also so scared that I was trying to stop the contractions from coming (which i did for a while). I felt that the pain I was experiencing now in this birth was the beginning of hours of pain. I didn’t actually realise t that I was nearing transition.

I could feel when Sage was rotating inside of me and it was really intense. As she was rotating inside of me, I was rotating around and inside of the pool. I couldn’t get comfortable, and it must have looked chaotic, but it was the absolute perfect way to be at the time. Such perfect order in the seeming chaos!!

Anna arrived, and then Grace, and they arrived when I was entering my perfect chaos.

I was teary and couldn’t get comfortable. The contractions were really irregular and I started to feel pushy - which I didn’t believe was true. Then I began to cry because I was pushing and felt devastated because I thought the baby must have been posterior and I was pushing against a cervix that was not fully dilated. I was convinced that my labour still had hours to go, so I told myself to not actively push with the contractions. Some contractions I tried really hard to not push, but my body just roared with power and when I pushed with the power, it felt SO much better!!

There was one particular point after a time of weeping, where I reached my hand down and felt that familiar bulge of my perineum. Baby was not far away! It was actually true! Baby was coming soon! Anna, Grace and Steven stayed totally present the whole time. They held the space and were like guardians from the otherworld. Even though my eyes were always closed, I see their presence and was totally consumed by it. I was supported, and they loved me, and trusted me and my body. I am forever grateful for my birth team who held me through birth with their awesome presence.

Steven was pounding my back, I remember telling him that he had to punch my back harder than the contractions, and he stayed totally with me, and was pressing and moving my back with me.

I held hot facewashers to my perineum and I would feel her head come down further and further. I remember feeling inside and feeling the membranes bulging and her head was just sitting inside. In one contraction her head came out into my hands and I remember turning towards Anna and Grace, and saying ‘the heads out’. They both just nodded and smiled. The world felt so surreal.

In the next contraction her body slipped easily into my arms, and I held my new baby under the water as I gazed upon her. When I bought her up closer to me, I realised that she was born in the caul. She was still surrounded by her amniotic fluid and her membranes. She looked like a space/sea creature, and the sac and fluid looked like a jellyfish floating in the water. I peeled it from her body and bought her out of the water.

She was Earthside. She was divine. She was here with me. After a moment, I untangled the cord which was wrapped awkwardly around her body and I saw her gurgle and bubble and then take her first breath all on her own.

I looked at her perfection, her divinity, her ‘all-knowing’. I looked at her perfect body in my arms and then saw that she was a girl! 3 daughters! I turned to Steven and said ‘we have a daughter! We have 3 daughters!’, and lay there in awesome bliss, looking at my daughter.

Her placenta was birthed with absolute ease, within 10 minutes of the birth, and Anna held the colander as I put the baby’s womb sister in there.

It was just after 7am, the sun had woken the world for the day, and the Earth had welcomed Sage Annalina on Jan 9th, 2009

 

See the photo montage of Sage's birth