Homebirth Turned Cesarean (My First Birth)

There are so many ways one can prepare for their homebirth experience. Diet changes, supplements, Spinning Babies, herbs, birth courses...the list goes on and on. As a mother of three and a home birth nerd who binges physiological birth information, there is one method of learning that surpasses all the others. It is the art of storytelling. Hearing other women's birth stories is the most ancient, powerful method that is free for all to develop a deeper understanding of birth & the major variations of normal within birth.

I’d like to share mine with you, and maybe you could share yours with me if you feel called to do so. 

It was April 26, 2021, the evening before the “due date” of our first baby. I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, attempting to shave down there, which is quite comical when a gal is nearly 40 weeks pregnant. I felt a pop and then had a slow trickle of water streaming down my leg. I hopped out of the bathtub, put a towel on the floor, and I started doing lunges from right to left to see if this really was my waters releasing. As I did my mini aerobics routine, I noticed that each time I moved into a lunge, I had more water leaking out. I decided that I was not peeing and it was not just bath water, but my water had definitely broken! 

I wrapped a towel around myself like a diaper and walked out to the front porch, as my husband was doing some yard work. I told him my water had broken. He smiled and then replied in his typical fashion, “OK cool, now what?” I called my midwife, and she had me test the fluid with an at-home test, which concluded it was my waters releasing. She seemed very calm, but she did tell me that I would need to be in active labor within 12 hours, or she would have to transfer my care to the hospital if labor had not progressed. She assured me that I should get a full night's rest and that labor would most likely start on its own. 

I slept some, but my nerves and excitement kept me up throughout the night. By 7 AM the following morning I was beginning to get anxious that labor had not started (I only had a handful of contractions through the night and it was after I had used my breast pump to encourage them). I spoke to my midwife, and I agreed to drink castor oil as a form of induction. The oil did in fact start my labor within about 2 hours of drinking it, along with 20+ bouts of horrendous diarrhea, to the point where my sisters were pouring cold water down my back as I sat on the toilet so that the cold water could touch my bum to soothe the intense burning. TMI (jk, this is a blog about birth- there’s no such thing as TMI y'all).

Laboring at home

Contractions went from 0 to 100. I was coping decently, but it was very tough. At some point I decided that this was really hard, and I wanted to have an idea about where I was in my progress. Around 4 PM I had a cervical exam, and I noticed my midwife making a funky face. She proceeded to tell my husband and me that she thought my baby was possibly breech, and that whatever she was feeling during the exam was not a head. 

*I use my blog to describe MY personal experiences & perceptions. In no way am I ever insinuating that another woman should feel how I felt about their birth if it was similar to mine. That is a bizarre, ridiculous, judgmental thing that is not part of what I am doing here.

Being a registered nurse, in combination with being quite naïve to the variations of normal in physiological birth, I immediately said out loud, “I know what this means. I know I have to have a C-section.” My midwife simply nodded in agreement. We rustled around and gathered our belongings. I had not packed anything for the hospital. I waddled to the car, and we drove through construction for about 1 hr. I arrived at the hospital and went through all the typical admission protocols and checks. An ultrasound confirmed my little girly was frank breech.

Ready for surgery- still contracting away.

A few hours later, after everything was prepped, I hobbled onto the OR table (still having contractions) and said to the OR team, “I think I’m going to poop.” The smart-mouthed anesthesiologist said, “That's just your baby trying to come out" (as if I wasn't aware that the sensation to poop comes when you're ready to push). She anxiously said, "We need to get your spinal block in.” Little did she know, I had sh*t my brains out for basically the entire day, and that it probably was a true need to poop considering I was around 5cm when I arrived at the hospital. I complied and got on the table. My husband and midwife came in, and I began to cry. The only birth I had seen while I was in nursing school was a cesarean, and I remember thinking how brutal and bizarre it was to watch a baby be pulled out of a mother's body in that way. Finally, at 9:22 PM, my precious baby girl, Collette Maxine, was born. I was so relieved to have her in my arms, and I was ecstatic about becoming a mother. I just stared at her and thought, “Wow, this is my baby. We made this person, and she is mine! I get to have her forever!”

For the first few weeks postpartum, I really was focused on becoming a mom. After the haziness of those first few weeks wore off, I started to feel the weight of my birth outcome. I had significant feelings of disappointment and a great sense of imposter syndrome related to the transfer from home to the hospital. I also had feelings of shame. I only shared my plan to birth at home with a small number of people, but I got deep in my head about what they probably thought of me. I would create snapshots in my head of what they were thinking….I imagined they thought things like, “I told you so” or “This is what you get for planning a home birth- you get a surgical birth instead. Why would you think this would just easily work out for you?” Nobody ever actually said any of this to me. I was actually supported well compared to some women who choose to birth at home, but man, was I in my HEAD!

I felt very much like a victim of my situation. I felt as if I had zero control over what happened. At the time, all I knew was that I needed to “induce” my labor with castor oil because my waters had broken, and I did not have signs of labor starting in the "correct" amount of time. The second thing I “knew” was that I had to have that C-section because of my baby’s positioning. My ignorance of the truth about both of these variations of normal actually protected me for a long time after this birth. Though I still had feelings of disappointment, shame, and a sense of imposter syndrome within the home birth realm…I really believed I had no other options outside of what was handed to me.

It wasn’t until I started preparing to conceive our second baby that my eyes were blasted open to the fact that my ignorance had been protecting me for nearly 2 years. 

Maybe your birth went completely “belly up.” Maybe it was the total opposite of what you had planned. Maybe it was just not what you hoped for and not what you expected. Whatever it is, if you have any feelings of sadness, disappointment, shame, guilt, or a nagging feeling of restlessness inside you that you just can’t seem to shake, I GET YOU!

I get that feeling of really, really wanting a “re-do” for your birth experience. If you get triggered when you hear birth stories, specifically home birth stories, I get you. 

If you have feelings that you “just aren't cut out for it,” I’ve been there. I know, deeply, how that feels. 

I’m here to share my story with you; and to share the good news about being on the other side. There is hope. There is a powerfully potent shift within ourselves that can happen, which I believe, leads to that redemptive home birth you long for. I know it’s possible, because I did it (after TWO home birth transfer experiences).

I want to share how I went from my disappointing, shame-filled cesarean birth to my beautiful, empowering, redemptive birth experience with our third baby, who was born in our living room. The birth was everything I wanted and more. And it had nothing to do with acupuncture, spinning babies, supplements, or finding the right midwife. We have everything we need inside us to shift on a subconscious level. Making shifts on a subconscious level regarding how we feel about ourselves and our capabilities is how we directly impact our lived experiences- like our lived experiences of birthing children.

The thing about a negative birth experience is that it’s not actually about what happened at the birth. It’s about our personal perception of the experience. Two people can have the same events happen during their births, and feel completely different about the experience. That is because of our personal perception of the event. Perception is like our “life filter,” you could say. This is all subconsciously programmed for each of us and is highly individual.

I’m here to connect with & mentor women who are in the same boat & who are ready to truly shift to find peace and confidence as they prepare for their future redemptive birth. I read my emails & I would love to hear from you. If you want to reply, let me know:

1. What is one word you would use to describe how you feel about your past birth experience?

2. If you have tried, what have you done to heal that from past birth experience?

3. If you prepared in any way for your last birth (course, class, book, podcasts, etc.), in what way were those helpful in your birth experience? What do you feel they lacked now that you have had your birth experience?

With love,

Elaina