A Boy Named Wellingtom

Here’s a few recent photos from our families adventures:

I decided for the first year of Welly’s life I want to take a photo of him everyday and then compile them into an album. Here’s a few photos from today that I took on my phone.

Man I love this little guy.

Bryan

Note: This is how Welly’s birth went from my perspective. This story isn’t medically sound, it’s just how it seemed to me and I haven’t consulted my charts or anybody professionally involved for this information. Also, this is a really personal story that makes me feel vulnerable to share, so if you feel negative or grossed out by birth, respectfully don’t read it. Thank you so much.

On August 23rd I was taking a morning walk with Bryan and I got the feeling that some amniotic fluid was leaking. We rushed home and the second that I walked into the bathroom, I felt a big gush. I looked at Bryan and we started laughing. I said, “yep, that was my water breaking.” I called my midwife and after asking me some questions and giving some advice, she told me to just be patient and wait for my actual labor to start.

In a surge of adrenaline we threw everything into the car, cleaned the house, and then said, “now what?” We were so excited and Bryan was grinning from ear to ear. By the end of the day I still didn’t feel anything. We picked blackberries, drove around on beautiful backroads, ate at burgerville, and kept calling the birth center a million times with questions. There was still nothing that felt like labor to me.

I went into the birth center for a checkup that evening so that I could have some peace of mind. After my CNM checked the baby and me (temp, heart rate, blood pressure, etc) I mentioned to her that I was surprised to not be feeling any contractions. I had to laugh at my ignorance because she pointed out that I was actually having a contraction at that very moment. It just didn’t feel like what I expected so I didn’t recognize it.

Gradually those contractions picked up and by the time my mom arrived at ten that night, they were fairly close together at times. It was very sporadic though. They would come and go, get close together and then space back out. They felt ridiculously easy and I was so anxious to get things started that I wishing for harder contractions, willing my body to kick into gear. But they just took their sweet time, coming and going and only feeling like a belt tightening around my belly.

Bryan and I took a walk that night and sat under the stars. We had a little ceremony to end our time alone together as a couple. We told each other how much we had valued the time we had as just the two of us, and how we looked forward to this new phase for our family. It was a perfect, warm August night.

When we got home I went to bed to get some rest, fully expecting to go into really active labor during the night. At one point my contractions were two to three minutes apart and growing fairly strong. I almost woke everyone up to head into the birth center. At the last minute I remembered the voice of my childbirth teacher saying to wait until you’re sure and that labor has its own time frame. I told myself to wait ten more minutes, and sure enough, the contractions spaced back out and I went to sleep.

My mom flew in from Boise and my sister drove down to Portland so it felt like a party. In the morning we walked and walked, ate breakfast, walked some more, watered the garden, walked some more. My contractions sped back up to be five minutes apart, then slowed back down to seven minutes apart. After a full day had passed I called to check in with the ladies at the birth center. My CNM told me that if I would feel more comfortable, I could go ahead and come in to be monitored hourly. I also wanted to go ahead and receive the doses of antibiotics I had chosen to take since I had a fairly high culture of Group B Strep and the baby was exposed because of my ruptured membranes. I had thought long and hard about whether or not to take antiobiotics, and felt in my gut that it was the right thing to do at this particular time. In retrospect, I could have chosen to stay home longer but at the time, the birth center was where I felt safe and protected and that was really important.

I think we all assumed that labor would pick up that afternoon or evening, but it didn’t. Instead, I arrived at the birth center, checked into the room, and realized my contractions had spaced back out again. Everyone was so patient with me, just telling me that the baby would come when he was ready and that labor happened on a different time frame for everyone.

I’m not sure what the medical term is for the little tube that puts the antibiotics into your bloodstream. Anyway, they inserted this once we were settled in our room and I received my first dose. We were planning to leave it in and wait a couple more hours for the next dose, but I knew that I couldn’t focus on my contractions with the distraction of something uncomfortable in my arm. I opted to have them insert it again in a couple of hours instead. I wanted to be able to be focused and single minded. This was the first of many instinctive decisions that I made about labor.

If you have to spend a lot of time in early labor, our beautiful birth center is really the place to do it! I was not suffering by any means. It was more like a vacation. We walked around the beautiful orchard for hours, watched movies, chatted with the midwives, and ate delicious food. One of the midwives baked amazing peanut butter cookies, another gave me tea in a ceramic mug shaped like a pregnant belly. My mom worked on crocheting and Bryan took pictures of me around the birth center. Everyone was so patient with us and gave us so much loving care. Looking back, I think those hours of relaxation got me ready for the hard work ahead. I thought that NOTHING was happening, but really my body was dealing with the contractions (slower and less intensely than I would have liked) and getting me prepared in every way.

I kept hoping that the contractions would get harder so that I would know my baby was coming soon, but time after time I could still talk through them and would only have to stop walking for a moment. I really wanted to get going on the hard work I had been planning for. All the wise people around me just smiled knowingly and took care of me. No one made me feel rushed or like there was something wrong with me. We went to bed on the night of the 24th, again expecting to awake in hard labor during the night, but again my contractions slowed down and I slept soundly until morning.

When the sun came up, I was frustrated that I still had no baby. In the back of my mind I had an irrational fear that I had imagined everything. I thought that I might never have my baby. I prepared myself to be eternally pregnant with my water broke, stuck in early labor/

My midwife was so very patient with me, not giving me answers that didn’t exist, but also reassuring me that my baby and I were healthy and in a safe environment. She didn’t try to offer a reason why I wasn’t having the baby sooner, but just treated it like it was something normal, and for me it was. It was normal because it was the journey that my body needed to go on to deliver my baby. I remembered reading in one of my birthing books that “labor has it’s own time frame.” I tried to remove the voices of judgment from my mind that told me I should have a baby by now, or that s0mething must be wrong with me.

The teacher from my childbirth class was working at the birth center and she came in to talk to me and offer some words of encouragement. She told me that I needed to clear my mind of any lingering fears I had about the birth process or negative stories I had heard of other labors. She reminded me to trust in the design of labor and to trust my capable midwife who had recently guided so many women through wonderful births.

My midwives checked me and the baby every hour, monitoring our temperatures, blood pressure, heart rate, etc. to make sure there were no signs of distress or infection. Everything checked out perfectly fine time and again. There was nothing wrong with this baby, he just wasn’t ready to come out yet. I will never know why. It was just our journey.

On August 25th, two days after my water broke, I decided to take some castor oil to see if it would encourage the process. As much as I loved the birth center, I knew they wouldn’t be crazy about me taking up permanent residence and eating all of their cookies. I was ready to get things moving! Castor oil is something that you can take that can sometimes help move labor along if your cervix is already ready. At about noon, things really started happening. My body completely emptied itself out and the contractions came on strong. They felt like a strong squeezing from the outside in.

By this point I was so ready to meet the challenge head on. Without even having to tell each other what to do, Bryan and I rushed around the room, picking things up and arranging them. We were so excited and smiling as we did all this. We got the ipod ready, picked up the clutter, and made the bed. Meanwhile my attentive midwife started quietly moving about the room and running water in the tub. I remember looking out at the sunny summer day and thinking what a great time it was to be having a baby.

Eventually the contractions were so strong that I couldn’t focus on anything else. I felt so excited I could hardly contain myself. I threw all my energy into moving around in whatever way felt good. Looking back, I think I must have looked pretty silly because I did some pretty weird dance moves. At the time though, it just seemed like what I needed to do. Bryan asked me what music I wanted playing, and I instantly knew: the new John Mayer CD (Battle Studies). Random. Who knows why.

Sometimes I squatted and swung my hips around, sometimes I kneeled on the ground. I tried the yoga ball but it didn’t feel right. I got in the tub for a while but felt too confined so I got back out. I held onto the posts on the bed and leaned backwards. I leaned on the side of the tub with my face buried in my arms, I got down on all fours on the floor, etc. I didn’t think hard about what to do, I just did it. I had read a lot about how my body would know what to do, but I didn’t really understand it until it was happening.

In between contractions I felt peaceful and intensely aware. I was able to appreciative every little thing that was happening in the moment without thinking ahead or behind. I remember how beautiful the  sun was shining in the window and how the blackberry bushes looked outside. My senses were heightened and I felt a lot of gratitude. I told this to one of my apprentice midwives and she advised me to just try to enjoy those moments and live in them as long as possible to give me strength for the next contraction.

In what seemed like no time at all, my midwife asked if I would like to be checked to see how far I was dilated and we found that I was at a six. This was my first vaginal exam during birth which I was thankful for because I didn’t want to fixate on how far I was dilated during my earlier labor. I knew this was a process that I couldn’t measure just by one number. It was also safer for my baby to not have a lot of vaginal exams after my water was broken.

I was encouraged and surprised to realize that the labor had progressed farther than I thought already. At this point things started getting really intense. The contractions felt like an insane amount of pressure squeezing my entire middle. It felt like they would knock me over. If I panicked at the beginning of one, it felt like I was being attacked and needed to retreat. But if I relaxed and faced them head on, I could ride them out.

I started to memorize the rhythm of them so that I could just feel what was happening in my body. I would kind of space off and almost try to sink as far into the feelings as possible. Then surprisingly, I would come out the other side and I would get a break. They really were like waves, rising and then subsiding and always manageable if I just accepted the moment for what it was and didn’t panic or give in to fear. I had to work with them and not against them. Sometimes I would start to tense up and I would have to tell myself to relax my facial muscles and then every other part of my body. I tried to think about opening up and letting the baby move down through my body. The waves of pressure just kept building and building. By now it felt like they were throwing my body around and they took all of my energy and concentration.

I remembered what my teacher said at childbirth class and kept repeating it to myself: “Here is a contraction and it will pass. There will be a beginning, a middle, and an end.” I tried to just think about one contraction at a time and empty my mind of complicated voices that tried to gauge the discomfort. I didn’t ask myself if I was in pain, but just tried to take it for what it was and surrender. I never felt completely overtaken by the discomfort because my body was able to send clear signals to my brain to create the exact right amount of pain coping hormones to match the difficulty at different stages of my labor. Nonetheless, it was the hardest work I have ever done and it was very intense.

I remember looking up at one of the apprentices and telling her how strong the contractions were getting and that I was feeling overwhelmed. She told me to hold on because that meant things were really moving along. She said she couldn’t tell me how much longer it would be, but that I was doing great. I loved how they never tried to put a time frame on things, but just let everything unfold the way it needed to.

My mom and sister got back from a shopping excursion and our photographer arrived. The hours seemed to be flying by to me, but also one moment would drag on forever. I started to lose some energy from moving around and asked my midwife if I should get in the tub. She told me that it would probably feel good. I climbed in but wasn’t sure how to position myself. At this point I must have been in transition because I remember starting to drift off to sleep in between contractions and then I would wake up shivering. The whole room would go silent and I would fall into a strange, dreamlike sleep. Then when a contraction came I would come alive and have the strength I needed to get through it.

Eventually, my midwife asked me if the babies head was getting ready to come out. I said that I wasn’t sure, but that I thought so. I asked if I should start pushing and she said that my body would tell me when it was time. Shortly after, I felt a strong urge to push. Nothing could have kept me from it. I felt like the baby was going to shoot right out of me because the urge was so strong. However, several pushes came and went and the head was only barely starting to show itself. Time and again I would feel like the baby was going to come out immediately, but only a small part of the head would emerge.

Luckily, I had no concept of what was “normal” or how fast people were expecting me to push out the baby. Nobody in the room had these kind of expectations for me. There was only positive and accepting energy being sent in my direction. I felt that it was a space where everyone was allowing me to do whatever I needed to do. Many loving people were sitting in a circle around the tub and supporting me. I could tell that there was no judgement coming from anyone, only love. There was so much spiritual energy in the room and I have never felt closer to God.

I kept pushing off and on for about two and a half hours. Every once in a while I would look up at my midwife with questioning eyes like, “should this still be happening?” Time and again she would reassure me. Everyone just reminded me over and over that my body was stretching and making progress with every push, even if it didn’t seem like it. One of the apprentice midwives locked eyes with me during every push, willing me through it. I would moan and make really low sounds sometimes. At one point we were all laughing because I was shaking my hands and saying, “come out baby, come out!”

I felt an intense need to squat, but my legs were shaky and worn out. My sister jumped into the tub instantly and got behind me. She lifted up my bottom so that I could squat, supporting all of my weight from behind. Bryan sat in front of the tub so that I could grab onto his arms and pull myself up when I needed to push. They were literally giving me their strength when I had run out.

Finally I was able to push out his head. Everyone waited silently while he turned himself around on his own which is amazing. Once this happened though, he still didn’t come the rest of the way out. My midwife felt for the cord and found that it was wrapped loosely around his neck which was no big deal.

She also found the culprits: both his hands were held up around his head, making it so his head was more difficult to push out. As she said, I was trying to “push out a triangle.” She gently pulled one arm out and then the other and then with one more push, Wellington Ray Rupp dove out of me and into the warm water.

His daddy picked him up and placed his squirmy body on my chest. I can still remember the feel of his wet and wiggly body. I have had many great moments in my life but it seems like they were all just leading up to that big white bath tub.

I held him close and talked to him while everyone else moved around us, checking things out. I was in my own little world with my baby so I have no idea what happened in the rest of the room. Eventually Bryan climbed in the tub with us. I shifted Wellington to my knees and he lay there quietly alert with wide eyes and looked up at us, responding to our voices as we talked to him. He didn’t scream or panic, he was just very present. I have never seen anything more amazing.

I think that my active labor lasted about eight and a half hours or so.

Eventually we moved to the bed to be cared for while we worked on nursing. We left the umbilical cord connected for a couple of hours to benefit the baby. Then we had a ceremony to set my baby boy free in the world as his own person, separate from me.

Wellington came into the world peacefully and in his own time and I was given a safe and loving environment where I could bring my baby into the world in a way that worked for me. The room was full of people who cared about us and gave us the time we needed to bond as a family in the first minutes of his life. That is all that any mama could ask for. I would pay a million dollars for these things. They are priceless and I am beyond grateful.

I think about his birth every single day. It was the most beautiful beginning to my journey as a mama and the most incredible thing I have ever experienced. I have a new found appreciation for the beautiful design of birth and what a woman’s body and spirit is capable of. Thanks for reading my story and I would love to hear yours!

Leah

 

These pictures were taken by our dear friend and photographer Emily G.

It seems I have hijacked this blog a bit to write about our parenting journey. Today I’m watching my big boy sleep and thinking about the day he was born. I think soon I will post his birth story.

Waterbirth

Before you were born
you held your hands
tightly to your head
keeping you wedged
in the only dark
you’d ever known.

Perhaps you’re like me, my son
at first timid and holding on too tight
then suddenly diving,
fearless in the face of your decision.

I wanted to give you calm waters
and a gentle welcome
once you decided to join us,
so that you would always know
it’s safe and good,
to jump in when the time is right.

Today I was remembering what it felt like (with just a touch of nostalgia) to have Welly tucked safely inside my belly. I dug up the one and only poem I’ve written in the last 9 months or so. I have to give credit to all the women who frequent the pool for this one.

After Swimming

In the heavy steam of a locker room
I shuffle across murky tile
with my towel tucked to cover
a beach ball belly of child.

From the corners with blow dryers
they salute me and from the showers
with suds in their armpits
they admire and measure,
shaking silver heads to spray
drops of water towards my swollen body.

They pull flaps of skin
from around their own middles
and swing the loose flesh below their arms,
giving each roll the name of a baby they had
and announcing the time of year
when they were ripe like me.

As they croon and wrap me up
in a cloudy circle of experience
my towel drops and i raise
my bulge of baby trophy high.

The spread of my hips
has become pride and joy
under their honoring eyes
as they warble out
a welcome to motherhood

where nothing is as firm as it used to be
and the softness becomes us all.

photo by my dear friend Heather