I met Arienne during her first trimester when she decided that her healthy lifestyle deserved a healthy birth! Arienne knew home birth was the best option for her and her sweet baby and I was honored to serve her! Her pregnancy progressed completely normally and by 38 weeks, Arienne was feeling more “ready” to be done! While I waited for calls from two mama’s nearing their 41 week marks, it was a text from Arienne that shocked me most telling me that she had been up since 2am with contractions and thought she might be in early labor! She was only 39 weeks and 3 days! I went about my day as planned and was surprised as I climbed into bed that night that I had not heard from her the entire day! I assumed labor must have fizzled out…
As I was falling asleep, my phone rang (always) and I was shocked it was Arienne! I answered the phone and it was her husband. They had some questions but wanted their doula to talk with me to better explain. They were concerned about her excessive bloody show and mama wasn’t convinced she had felt baby move all day. I talked with her about Arienne’s contraction pattern and she was only contracting every 5-7 minutes and they were sporadic. I assumed her bloody show was from quick cervical change but her contraction pattern had me wondering how far progressed she really was! I decided to just go check on her to ease concerns. When I arrived, Arienne was laboring on the birth ball. I did a set of vitals and put my hands on her belly with an immediate kick response from baby! Baby’s heart rate was perfect and in the short time I was there, it seemed like Arienne’s contraction pattern was increasing in frequency! I decided to check her cervix just to see if I should stay or leave and I was SHOCKED to find her at 8cm’s! She was not acting like she was in transition at all! We decided to do some lunged and walk the stairs and added some clary sage to her belly and back to increase contraction frequency and by 1am, Arienne was vocalizing with her contractions and clearly tired! We decided to take a break from walking and she laid in her bed in exaggerated Sims but this position slowed her contractions down dramatically. About 20 minutes later she mentioned she felt like she needed to push and I was surprised with how spaced out her contractions were so I checked her again and found her completely dilated but baby was still high. We tried some squat pushes by the pool and with two pushes, Arienne could feel baby on her perineum. We got into the pool and two pushes later, little River was born at 1:36am! Not bad considering she didn’t even look like she was actively laboring when I had arrived 2 hours before! Another first time mama and her successful home birth, what an honor it was! Baby weighed in at a healthy 7#14oz! Great job family, what a beautiful baby boy!
