Everly’s Birth Story: Our Unplanned Homebirth

Only in my wildest dreams could I have imagined a birth like what Everly’s turned out to be!  I know I’m definitely the crunchy, hippie type in many ways, but having a homebirth has never been part of my plans when it comes to birthing my babies.  However, apparently my body had other ideas and so an accidental unassisted homebirth was exactly what we got!

Because of how fast my last labor went (I delivered about 20 minutes after I arrived at the hospital) I had joked several times that this time it might go so fast that we didn’t make it.  That was definitely not what I intended or wanted, but in the back of my mind there was always the possibility that it could happen that way and so I guess (thankfully) I was somewhat mentally prepared.

Some background

Here’s some background to lead us to the actual birth.

My original due date was set as October 23, based on my last menstrual cycle.  After my first ultrasound they felt like she was measuring a little big so they changed it to October 17.  Due dates are just “guess dates” so I wasn’t really concerned either way, but depending on which due date you want to go with I was either 41 weeks exactly the day she was born or 41 weeks, 6 days.

In the weeks before she arrived I was getting more and more uncomfortable in my pregnancy in general but I was not seeing signs of labor.

First I dealt with back pain, then pain from what I think was something called SPD (symphysis pubis dysfunction – I was never diagnosed but the symptoms sound exactly what I was experiencing).  Both of those were painful and made me a lot more uncomfortable than I’d been in my previous two pregnancies.

I had occasional Braxton Hicks contractions starting toward the beginning of my third trimester and though those picked up some the further along we got, I never felt like I was having any “real contractions”.  These just felt different and were annoying but not intense or painful.

I did not get any cervical checks so I had no idea how dilated or effaced I was.  I never (that I was aware of) lost my mucus plug (I did not lose it and/or never noticed that I lost it with either of my other babies).

I did feel quite an increase of pressure in my pelvis/cervix toward the end.  There were times when I would think “Her head feels like it’s *right there* and could literally just pop right out.”  I was joking, kind of, just because of the pressure I was feeling but man…apparently I was right!

So anyway, while I was uncomfortable, having back pain, having a few sporadic contractions, and feeling a lot of pressure, those were all things that went on for many many days, some had gone on for months, and so I didn’t have any indication the night before she was born that there was anything out of the ordinary and that labor was about to begin.

The birth

Thanks to our own memories, the call history on Michael’s phone, and information from our outside security cameras, we were able to piece together an exact timeline of how quickly everything happened.  Everly’s time of birth was either 3:44 or 3:45am.

Here’s how it all went down in the very short amount of time leading up to that.

The night before I delivered Michael and I had watched tv, I’d bounced and rolled on the exercise ball (as I’d been doing every evening for the previous week or so), I did not have any noticable labor symptoms other than the same pelvic/cervical pressure and sporadic contractions I’d been experiencing for weeks.

We went to bed at midnight.

2:00am I woke up having contractions.  I got up and went to the bathroom then laid back down in bed to see if this might be labor.  I played around on my phone, scrolled Facebook, checked on oily stuff, that sort of thing.  The contractions were definitely stronger than the Braxton Hicks ones I’d been experiencing and I worked on relaxing and breathing through them, but they were definitely manageable.

2:30am I decided to download a contraction timer to track the duration and distance apart.  At one point my legs started shaking uncontrollably which I thought was odd.  That has happened to me in the past after both deliveries were over but never during labor so this was something new.  It didn’t last long.

3:00am I decided this was definitely the real deal and we needed to get a move on.  I got up and put in my contacts, got dressed, and started gathering up the last minute items that we needed to throw in the hospital bag.

I woke up Michael and told him I was in labor so we should start getting ready to go.  At first he was totally confused – he didn’t know what time it was and my words didn’t register so he actually got dressed in his work clothes before realizing I was in labor and that he was supposed to be loading up the car.

Once I got up from the bed and started moving around the contractions became more intense and closer together.  However, I quit tracking because some would be long, some would be short – they were sporadic and honestly I just wanted to get our stuff packed up and get that done so I could then focus on laboring.  Starting and stopping the timer was distracting me so I just stopped while I was getting our things together and figured I’d start tracking again once I was done with that.

The contractions were hard and I definitely had to stop and breathe or count through them.  I couldn’t walk or talk through them, I needed to lean into something like the back of the couch or the counter and I found that swaying my hips from side to side helped a little.  I remember thinking through several that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do this for hours.

At this point we were still both clueless as to just how close to the end I was.  I mean, yes the contractions were not easy but there hadn’t been a lot of them and I was still managing ok so I figured I still had a long time to go.  I wasn’t needing Michael to rub my back or hold me up during contractions or anything so he was even more clueless than me.  In fact, at 3:19am he was outside breaking down boxes to put in the recycling bin!

3:20am Michael went out to preheat car and finish loading the bags I’d set by the door.

3:25am Michael asked me if I’d called my mom yet and I told him I hadn’t so he calld mom to let her know that she needed to head our way.

3:30(ish)am I am finally done with packing up all the things and Michael has loaded most everything into the car.  I sit down in the recliner and he sits down at his computer to work on some stuff for open enrollment for his insurance.  We totally had NO CLUE we were 15 minutes away from a baby being born in our house!

3:35(ish)am I realize I need to poop.  I go to the bathroom and take care of that (and looking back it’s a wonder she wasn’t born in the bathroom!  But thankfully while I was in there I didn’t have the urge to push out a baby or anything!) and was hopeful that might help ease the contraction intensity since emptying the bladder and bowels makes a little more room in there.

I returned to the recliner.  During my last labor I was much more comfortable laboring sitting down in the recliner than I was up moving around but this was the opposite!  I could not relax through the contractions in the recliner and decided I prefered what I’d been doing (leaning on the back of a couch or counter and swaying my hips side to side).

Before I got out of the recliner though I scanned myself with my itovi scanner to see what oils came up.  (I know my oily friends are going to be so curious to know so for you guys: neroli, SniffleEase, Ningxia Nitro, copaiba, and cistus)

3:37am Michael pushed our trash cans out to the street.  He came back in and I asked him to bring me some of the oils from my scan.  I also told him that I didn’t think we couldn’t wait for my mom to get there (she lives about an hour away) and that we needed to call someone from church or one of our neighbors to come sit with the boys until mom arrived.

He quit looking for my oils and went to make the call.

3:40am He called a friend from church trying to tell them that we needed them to come stay with the boys so we could go on.  They didn’t pick up.

Since Michael had not located the oils for me before he stopped to make the phone call I got up from the recliner and walked over to the counter where my oils are.  I planned to grab one of the oils I’d scanned for and use that as well as use a labor blend I’d mixed up prior.

3:41am He tried calling them again, still no answer. He asked me if I had an alternate number for them.  I was in the middle of a contraction and I think I yelled something like “JUST FIGURE IT OUT!”.

(still) 3:41am He walked outside to put something else in the car and called his boss (who is also our neighbor) asking him and his wife to come right away

I grabbed the labor roller and rolled it on my ankles and abdomen, then realized I was about to have another contraction so I dropped the labor blend (I saw the lid on the floor later!), turned around and grabbed onto the back of the couch.

Instead of leaning and swaying like I’d been doing, my body yelled at me to squat so I held onto the back of the couch and dropped into a low squat.  At that point my body pushed through that contraction and with a huge pop my water broke.  Unlike with the boys where it felt like I was peeing on myself when my water broke, this time it felt like when you squeeze a water balloon – I felt pressure and actually felt the bag of waters bulge out then burst.  But because of that weird sensation I honestly was not 100% sure if only my water had broken of or if a baby might have come out with it.

In that moment I realized that we were not going to make it to the hospital.

I screamed at Michael something about my water breaking.  Thanks to our driveaway camera we got to see him bolt into the house when he heard me scream at 3:41:50.

He ran in the house and saw the huge puddle on the floor as well as spraying out everywhere (he said when he came in I was mid-contraction and it literally looked like a garden hose was spraying) so he grabbed some kitchen towels and tossed them under me to soak up the puddle then ran to the bathroom to grab more towels.

While he was grabbing towels he looked over and saw me taking my leggings and underwear off – I’d soaked them of course when my water broke but also I knew baby was on the way and I needed to get them off.  He still didn’t realize how close we really were so he said he was thinking to himself “WHY is she taking her clothes off?!  We need to get in the car and go!”.

(To be fair, my water broke hours and hours before delivery with both of my other labors so completely understandable that he thought we still had time)

3:43am He took one of those towels out to put in the passenger seat of the car for me to sit on then called my OB to let him know we were heading that way.

I was still just standing by the couch.  It all happened so fast I can’t even write it all out, plus I don’t know how to put such an experience into words.  It was like I knew I was about to deliver her but I couldn’t communicate it or do anything quick enough to move into a different spot or anything.  My legs were trembling and I remember saying “Oh shoot, oh shoot” and maybe whimpering a little bit, I think I whispered a short prayer.  But it was all quick and I was not fully aware of what I was doing.

3:44am I felt another contraction coming and yelled at Michael something along the lines of “SHE’S COMING!!”

He started redialing my OB back intending to let him know that we weren’t going to make it in time and while he was doing that my body just took over – I squatted, my body bore down and pushed, and out came Everly.  One contraction, one push.  It didn’t matter whether I wanted to do it or not, there was no holding her in – my body knew exactly what to do.

I was squatted so low that I was nearly touching the ground and she just slid right onto the towels Michael had tossed down when he saw my water had broken.

As he ran in the room with the stack of towels after I yelled the first thing he saw was a leg or arm sticking out from under me – she had arrived!

He scooped her right up and handed her to me.  I think I was saying (or more likely shouting) “IS SHE OK?!”.  She was fine – breathing, crying, moving around.

3:45am Michael called 911 and set the phone on the back of the couch to talk to the dispatcher while I continued squatting there clutching Everly to my chest and just starting at her in amazement.

So based on the two phone calls from during that contraction (to my OB) and after she was born (to 911) her time of birth was either 3:44 or 3:45am.

3:47am Our neighbor (Michael’s boss) and his wife came in.  Michael met them at the door and told them that Everly had already arrived.  I think he was trying to usher them to our bedroom to wait so that they didn’t have to see anything but Cindy rushed right over to help me.  Billy went to the end of the street to point the ambulance our way.

Cindy put a blanket around me and she and Michael grabbed some pillows and towels for me to lean back on and they helped ease me out of my squatting position and down onto the floor.  I had not delivered the placenta yet and I wasn’t sure how exactly I was supposed to sit down with the cord still hanging out.  It was totally not a big deal but I remember the thought going through my mind that I didn’t know what to do about that.

During all of this we had the 911 dispatcher on speaker so he was asking us some questions to check on us, instructed Michael to tie off the umbilical cord with string, that sort of thing.

At one point we heard one of the boys upstairs waking up so Michael ran up there.  It was Parker and he told Michael “Hear something!!”.  Michael covered him back up and told him to go back to sleep and he did – it was a wonder that they slept through it all!

4:00am Three paramedics arrived followed by three firefighters from our local fire department.

In that wait time between delivering her and the paramedics arriving I just sat there on the floor holding Everly and marveling at how perfect she was, how tiny she was.  We were so calm.  I mean, the delivery itself was fast, furious, and frantic, but once I realized that she was just fine I was totally chill.  Michael was answering the 911 dispatchers questions, finding string for the cord, washing up, etc.  Cindy was making sure I had plenty of blankets if I needed them, telling me what a good job I did.  She told Michael she thought I was in shock because of how calm I was.

After delivery

The paramedics came in and determined pretty quickly that we were both fine.  They clamped the cord and Michael cut it.  Then they helped me onto a gurney and at 4:07am they wheeled me into the ambulance.

As they were rolling me down the driveway I remember looking around as the sun was rising and thinking “Today is October 30th.  Good job not being born on Halloween, Everly!”.  Then as they were backing me into the ambulance I saw that our friend from church had arrived during the commotion and was standing out in our driveaway.  I waved really big and yelled “Hey Sherry!  We had a baby!!”

Like…as if she didn’t know that by that point!  I giggle every time I think of myself waving and yelling like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Michael jumped in the car so that he could follow behind us.

There was no emergency so we didn’t go in with sirens blaring or anything.  It was a nice, calm ride.  They checked a bunch of things but I don’t remember all the specifics – my blood pressure, her blood sugar, some other things.  They did her Apgar and she scored a 9.  They were super nice and just chatted with me about how quickly the delivery had gone.

When we got to the hospital they wheeled me into a delivery room and my doctor met us there.  One of the nurses on duty was also a friend of mine so she came in too.

I still had not delivered the placenta at this point so he helped me deliver that.  I had a minor tear so he stitched that up, checked me for any excessive bleeding, just made sure everything was fine and thankfully it was.  They weighed and measured Everly and checked her out as well.

When I was holding at home her right after delivery I remember thinking how small she was and that I thought she was closer to Hudson’s birth size (6 pounds 14 ounces) than Parker’s (8 pounds 11 ounces), despite being 41 or almost 42 weeks, depending on which due date we were using.  When the nurse weighed her I was surprised to see that I was right – she was 7 pounds, 5 ounces so only a smidge larger than Hudson had been!  She was 21 inches long (Hudson was 19.24 and Parker was 21 inches).

After that we did an hour or so of skin-to-skin and I nursed her for the first time.  Then we were moved to a recovery room and the rest of our hospital stay proceeded just like it had when I had the boys.

Back at Home

How on earth do you say thank you to your friends who clean up the mess left behind after an accidental homebirth?  Because that is exactly what Cindy and Sherry did after I left.  I honestly didn’t even think about the mess or who was going to clean it up until my mom told me later that they had taken care of it – cleaned the floor and put all the towels and blankets in the laundry.  Y’all.  Talk about going above and beyond the call of friendship!  I am so grateful!

At 4:46am my mom arrived.  She knew nothing past the 3:25 call for her to come on so she had no idea that Everly was here and had been born in our living room!  She just assumed that we’d had to rush on the hospital so Sherry and Cindy filled her in and let her know that everything had been cleaned up.

Final thoughts

It is so hard to put this experience into words!  I mean, writing out the timeline of what happened was one thing but trying to put the emotions and feelings into words is a totally different ball game because it was seriously indescribable.

I’m amazed at how calm I was (and Michael too, although he’s always calm so I’m not quite as surprised at his reaction but I am surprised at my own).  I’m amazed at how instinctual it was to deliver her.  I didn’t make any conscious decisions and yet my body knew what to do.  It wasn’t scary at all.  I’m sure it helped that I’ve given birth twice before and so I recognized the feelings of pushing, of the baby emerging, and knew (though only seconds before it happened) what was happening; that took some of the fear away but I still am surprised that I wasn’t scared. mTalk about the ultimate proof that our bodies are amazing!

While I would have never have chosen such a birthing experience, it was also super cool and super empowering and I felt like a total warrior mama.

It didn’t feel traumatic at all in the moment but I wondered if I’d have nightmares once the adrenaline wore off or if seeing “the spot” when we got home from the hospital would trigger anything but so far I’ve been totally fine.  I don’t feel any negative feelings toward the situation but lots of amazement, humor, disbelief, incredulity, thankfulness, peace, pride, and a lot of other emotions that I can’t quite verbalize.

What.An.Experience.

Welcome to the world, Everly Kate!  Your entrance was one that will never be forgotten!