After a far more dramatic home birth with my daughter in our little Portland apartment, followed by what I named my Healing Birth with our first son, I’m so relieved to title this third natural home birth story our Acceptance Birth.
When I think of Griffin’s birth, the scene I’m so grateful my husband caught in a 0:48 second video on my iPhone immediately comes to mind. I’m laying on my own bed and despite the 2:45am time projecting from my clock in the corner, my children are awake. Griffin’s head has just been born and the video opens between contractions. He’s sunny side up, just like his brother had been, so the room can all see his face before I’ve let my eyes slip open. I’m too far into my body to be able to see anyway, all of my concentration and energy is focused on moving my baby safely out of my body. I’ve been so aware this time, pushing him down slowly, despite a wild yearning for it to all be done and over with.
The next contraction begins and I know he’s coming all the way out this time. I can hear the voices of people I love surrounding me. The pride in my husband’s voice, cheering me on “Yes! Yes! YES!”, and next to him our sweet son Theo exclaiming “Pickles!”, a nick name we’ve been using for the baby for months. The calm presence of my mother in law at the end of the bed, and my daughter at my side, clapping with excitement, they’re all here with me to welcome him into our family and it’s one of the most powerful moments of my life.
Having them all there; it just feels right.
To my left, my “favorite midwife” I’d joke, a Birthways midwife I’d grown to admire and trust through my prenatal care, and her student assistant. And just next to me, a friend. I’d met Morgan just earlier this year. She had volunteered to help at a dinner my husband led as chef to fundraise for our school. When she shared she was a labor and delivery nurse curious about home birth, I’d invited her to my birth that same night I’d met her. Sometimes you just know a “birth person” when you meet one, but for it to all work out where she could actually be there is something I’ll be forever grateful for. I’d called Midwife Audrey and Doula Morgan my “Dream Team”, and for weeks it looked like I wasn’t going to get either one. But here they both were, just as it was meant to be.
Griffin’s body is born quickly, the warm weight of him sliding onto my suddenly squishy belly. A belly that’s been so firm and round with the presence of him, suddenly empty of his kicks. His first cry is loud and strong, it escapes his lips before he’s even pulled up my chest. His limbs slippery and soft, the vernix thick on his back like a white badge of armor. The relief and joy is palpable, he’s HERE.
My body has been trembling through pushing, my arm shakes with adrenaline as I pull him higher on my chest and tell him how much I love him. I say “He’s perfect” and I sink into the love that’s washing over me. It’s the best feeling in the world, after the absolute worst, it’s no wonder I keep doing this to myself.
Because great things often come tied to great sacrifice. And our whole family sacrificed in our own ways to get to this beautiful night. So, let’s back up.
Griffin’s birth story begins squarely two years earlier, July 2019, with a miscarriage on a vacation.
After having carefully planned my first two healthy pregnancies, a girl and boy, spaced a precise picture perfect 2.5 years apart, everyone knew I was “done”. Done done, and DONE. I confidently felt our family of four was functional and complete. We were loving each new stage as they matured further and further from babyhood so, we were certainly not “trying” the summer I realized I was pregnant for a third time on a trip up to Asheville, NC.
After shock, the feelings that washed over me were so surprising in their intensity. I immediately began to envision my children as older siblings to a new baby and my heart just about exploded. The way my female hormones had the ability to take everything I thought I “knew about myself” and flip it on its head gave me a true appreciation for the design of our bodies and the primal power of nature. I felt love for something invisible instantly, despite thinking it “wasn’t what I wanted”.
My whoopsie-baby turned out to be a “chemical pregnancy” and, as quickly as it all began, it ended. While miscarriage was something many of my friends had experienced, I never had before. I cried a little in the shower the morning I began bleeding, but sadness simply was never the over-arching theme of my mini-pregnancy. As it happened so very early, this extremely short-lived baby was a blessing for me. This child had come with a message, to uncover something in my heart I hadn’t seen before, and shift my perspective.
After the baby passed and my body got back on track, I asked Matthew if he was ready to have a third, but on PURPOSE this time. He was…more hesitant. Where was his shift in perspective hiding???
To be fair, we had already taken on a lot of change in that chapter of lifer: moving 3,000 miles cross-country, buying a house sight-unseen that (still) needs so much work, and the Florida employment he’d taken on wasn’t nearly as satisfying as he had hoped for. I quietly shelved the idea.
Fast forward to Fall 2020. After it was made painfully clear the school we had moved across the street/at a bus stop for was no longer a viable options, after we had explored home school, and then months researching and looking at buying a sailboat to live on while we world schooled, instead my kids are happily enrolled in an excellent little private school just around the corner I never would have otherwise found. While finding things to complain about amidst the covid-chaos has been vogue, our family has managed quite the hefty list of covid-blessings and this school tops the list.
My youngest starts Kindy, and just like that the baby of the family is off at school all day long and I wonder, “Where did he suddenly go?”
Babies are so wildly needy. The way they cling to you and pull from you: needing constant supervision, unable to do a thing themselves, waking you through the night to eat from your body or to poop in a fresh change of clothes. Sometimes it literally felt like my babies were sucking the life out of me. It’s not that I didn’t love having babies or being a mother, it’s just that I didn’t understand what it would be like to have someone TOUCHING ME 22 hours a day, and then … suddenly not anymore.
We all know logically they will grow up, but in the thick of it, when you have a toddler throwing the third tantrum of the day and it’s barely breakfast time, there are moments where it simply feels endless. So, when my two babies quietly slipped into being elementary school aged children, I found myself a bit taken aback. Where was everyone? “You made it to the promised land!” my husband said “They’re both in school now! You can do whatever you want!” But, while I’d told myself all these years what I wanted was to work more again, wasn’t I already doing that? Hadn’t I just spent years striking the balance between my creative outlets/photography career and motherhood?
I felt a new type of determination, had another very real talk with my husband, and an ovulation test kit arrived in the mail. We were getting old. If we were going to do this, it was time. Our son had been in Kindy squarely one month and I was pregnant. When I decide to do something, I DO IT.
Morning sickness is always awful, but this time I had long stretches to myself to rest. I would get the kids off to school in the morning and crawl back into bed if I needed to. It was a luxury I didn’t take for granted. As the weeks passed, it eventually looked more like: get the kids off to school, go to dance class for an hour, THEN crawl back into bed if I needed to. And soon enough, I didn’t need to any more. My body felt strong. I was back to dance classes like normal again and mostly just sort of ignoring the fact that I was pregnant so I might just roll on through it.
Maybe I was ignoring a bit too much, because I had mentioned to Matthew I’d been feeling a lot of “Braxton Hicks” after Mother’s Day weekend and started wobbling quite a bit more. My body was suddenly so tired in the evenings and I got nervous about an upcoming wedding we had booked on the east coast of Florida on the horizon. Then, we took a (wonderful Bradley Method) birth class from a fantastic local doula named Laura on a Monday evening and I think we both really accepted on a new level that this WAS in fact happening, and soon. We were headed back into the birth rodeo and finally gearing up. But, I had no idea how soon it would become a potential reality.
We got home from the class and got the kids to bed, but past 10:30 at night, I was having trouble sleeping because of all my “Braxton Hicks”. They woke up me up at 4am, and continued to increase in frequency and intensity. But, because I was only 33 weeks, I was in denial of what was happening. I bake my babies clear past their due dates. I kept saying it wasn’t as if I was in actual labor or anything. When they refused to die down, we eventually called a midwife and by 6 am or so, we were sent into the hospital.
I’d never been hooked up to fetal heart rate monitors or a contraction monitor before. They checked my progress, checked on baby with an ultrasound (he scored an 8/8) and gave me a shot of terbutaline. It felt like I’d drank far too much coffee, but did seem to work, so they let me go back home. Two hours later, however, the shot wore off and I was right back into labor-still-in-denial-it-was-labor. It just… didn’t seem like it was real. But, the midwife (rightfully) sent me back to the OBECC and when I walked back in this time, they told me I wasn’t leaving again so briskly. We hadn’t planned for an overnight stay, or much of any stay. None of this was going according to plan. Then they checked me again and I had progressed, my cervix had dilated and things were thinning, effacing, all the things. Before I knew it, I was getting a steroid shot “to help the baby’s lungs develop quickly” should he be born soon. Then they started the Procardia. Next, thing I knew the hospitalist was back in the room, talking about the “next step” and ready to check my cervix again. I’d fallen straight into an intervention tornado, and I started getting scared.
Why so fast? Thanks to the wonderful birth class doula, I was emboldened enough to advocate for myself and refuse the check. If the idea is to keep my cervix closed up, why are they insisting on poking at it and measuring it? I also slowed them down on more aggressive measures, and sure enough, with a bit more time the Procardia seemed to be working. The next morning, they sent me home with a RX and midwives ordered me to take it easy.
That weekend’s wedding was suddenly off the table and I was heart broken. I’d never left a client high and dry before and I wasn’t about to start now. I called a wedding planner friend in South Florida and started reaching out to all the most talented artists in the area before finding a perfect match, getting in touch with the planner, and ironing out all the details so that when I called my bride, I had a plan in place. She was, thankfully, so relaxed and unphased, and her wedding photos turned out absolutely beautifully.
Now, it was mission Make It To Full Term! When my mother-in-law chose to throw me a shower, she couldn’t have possibly known the date would be squarely on the day I’d hit full-term at 37 weeks. And yet, it was. This became my goal date. My son made a sweet little paper chain countdown to hang in my room, tearing off a ring each day as we counted down. I tried not to set my heart too hard, but I couldn’t help but be hopeful for a celebration after so many weeks cooped up at home baking up baby.
Finally, the day came to put on make-up and a dress again, and to cut out the Procardia! I felt amazing. Being surrounded by all these incredibly beautiful, loving, strong women I’d connected with over our past three years here really made me realize what a tremendous community I’ve been blessed with in Florida. Having my Fly Family, TCA Family, and Family-family all in the same room had me permanently smiling and hugging everyone endlessly a party I won’t ever forget.
Our birth center in Oregon had a candle in the front window they’d light when a mother was in labor, so you might share your good vibes, prayers, or well-wishes with her. I remember the weight of seeing the candle lit, and reaching out with my heart to whatever woman was laboring in the next building over. It didn’t matter if she was a stranger, she was becoming a mother and for that, we were connected. As a party favor, I gave the women in my life candles they might light when I was in labor because what I really wanted was that female support. To know there were cheerleaders in our corner and we weren’t alone in this. To get the texts of photos of candles lit when labor started made my heart sing.
Our birth center in Oregon had a candle in the front window they’d light when a mother was in labor, so you might share your good vibes, prayers, or well-wishes with her. I remember the weight of seeing the candle lit, and reaching out with my heart to whatever woman was laboring in the next building over. It didn’t matter if she was a stranger, she was becoming a mother and for that, we were connected.
As a party favor, I gave the women in my life candles they might light when I was in labor because what I really wanted was that female support. To know there were cheerleaders in our corner and we weren’t alone in this. To get the texts of photos of candles lit when labor started made my heart sing.
Let’s get to that bit! So, after all the hype of needing to keep the baby in, of course 37 weeks came and sailed on and the baby did not come. The contractions never stopped, but they also never developed into anything more.
His due date came on a sunny Saturday morning, and my family granted my wish for a family beach day. I celebrated making it to 40 weeks, and while I’d felt ready for him at any time for weeks, I wasn’t anxious. Yet.
That would shift as the week matured, and I was excited for my first cervical exam the first Tuesday morning I was “over due”. If I’d already been 2cm dilated in the hospital at 33 weeks, and all the prodromal labor since, I could only imagine how close I must be getting! So, I was completely disheartened to hear I was… 2 cm, 65% effaced, still station -2. “Wait, what?” I’d said. It just didn’t make sense to me, wasn’t my body “doing something” all this time? Why had I missed all the parties and end of school year festivities in May? Why had I stopped dance class so early? It was difficult not to be disappointed, but again, I just had to accept that this is how this was happening for us.
Mission go into labor kicked into high gear: red raspberry leaf tea, walking, sexy time, acupuncture, spicy food, homeopathies, whatever was suggested, I was going to try (short of castor oil).
Thursday morning I was sent into SMH for a non-stress test to check on babe, and this was far more encouraging as the hospitalist there did a bit more aggressive sweep and I left a solid 4cm dilated and told to come back Saturday if I still hadn’t had him.
I wanted to have him that night, I could feel my body teeter on the brink of labor each evening, but something was keeping it from developing. My contractions would come on stronger each evening, but they wouldn’t become regular or increase in intensity. I went to bed disappointed, ready to wake up pregnant still, just as I had every other night since October. But when I got up at 2:30 am to contractions and went to the bathroom, I was thrilled to also find ”the show”. This had always happened the day I went into labor with the other two, so it was proof that I was so close.
Friday morning was met with determination. I whispered “Happy Birth Day, Griffin” to my belly as I got up with the sun. Amelie was curled into her usual spot on the couch in her pjs with a library book. She greets her days quietly, reading alone until the house wakes up around her. We slipped our sneakers on and snuck out the door for a hike up the Celery Fields across the street. I watched her run up the hill and my heart swelled as I realized this was her last day as a big sister to just one baby brother.
The day was dreamy. If my prior births had taught me anything, I knew my body wouldn’t kick into gear until evening. I tried to rest up, but I was anxious. Grandparents took the kids for the evening and it was so helpful to have that time just with Matthew. We took the most magical walk around the neighborhood and I bounced on the yoga ball after dinner. listening to pre-labor guided meditation as I felt the contractions pick up so I might encourage them into “actual labor”. They were coming often and quite strong, but certainly not regular enough. Still, Matthew eventually insisted we call the midwives, and in hindsight I’m glad he did.
I called Theo’s birth the “fish bowl birth”. It had felt a bit like everyone was just… watching me labor and not participating somehow. I didn’t want to be watched. I wanted my labor to build into something stronger before anyone was in my space. I lit some candles in my room and played soft music, I walked back and forth and talked to the baby. I timed some contractions, but got discouraged by their irregularities. When the midwife did come about 11 at night, she looked at my log and her voice took on the same tone it had when we she had to tell me I was only 2cm dilated the Tuesday before. “This is what we call prodromal labor…” she explained. True labor would have a pattern. She did a cervical check anyway and sounded legitimately surprised to tell me I was 6cm dilated, wait no, more like 7cm! And all thinned out and stretchy, except still station -2. And then she figured it out. His head was stuck on my pelvic bone. He wasn’t dropping.
She suggested a few positions to labor in that might help him descend, and as if on cue, Morgan’s bright energy entered the home at midnight. I think my midwife could tell she’d killed my vibe and I was stalling out. She retreated to the living room and left us alone, which was absolutely perfect. Morgan brought in the fresh bubbly vibe I needed and immediately started googling and texting the most seasoned nurse she knew. Before I knew it the three of us were giggling like school children building pillow forts, except the pillows were being stacked on the end of my bed and I was kneeling over head first off the bed to balance on a yoga ball being held in place by Matthew. I tried any and all the ridiculous things suggested to me and the contractions came back and started building. And it was working, I got up from the bed and in the next contraction, I felt the shift. He was now up front, and far lower. We were going to meet our baby tonight.
Matthew called his mom, she was going to be in charge of the kiddos for us and lend her beautiful energy. She had even baked homemade cookies for everyone helping with the birth! I remember the contractions had really picked up, only a couple minutes apart and getting far less manageable by the time she walked in at 1 am. The tub was filled and it was go time. The warm water helped, and was a convenient place for my water to break. I felt like I was going to be sick, but knew enough about transition to know this meant I was nearly at the finish line. I was still smiling and able to communicate a little between contractions.
By now, the kids had been woken up. At first, they kept to the background looking excited, holding their favorite stuffed animals. They made me smile even more. Amelie offered her delicate hand to hold in the tub, and Theo was clearly fascinated by it all finally happening after so many talks about what to expect.
I remember someone asking me something and replying “I just want my husband”. And I did. Time and time again, Matthew has proven to be such a stable rock, not only in birth but as a husband and father. Then, I began to feel the urge to push. After a couple more in the tub, I was back in the bedroom to labor by the bed. I tried all kinds of positions but couldn’t quite figure it out.
I was encouraged into the bed and then the baby was here! 2:45 am, a fast and furious labor, but also the longest ever labor because in some ways it felt like it had started two months earlier in the hospital. When we let Theo tell Amelie we were in fact going with her top name choice, Griffin, she cried happy tears that warmed my already tender heart beyond measure. I held our fresh British lion (I’m 1/2 British) / American Eagle combo Griffin for the golden hour, that always flies by in a flash.
The kids were ready to help with the newborn exam and we chose to honor big sister with the cord cutting. Our little squeamish lefty was literally not even looking as she attempted to free Griffin from the placenta, so the scissors were passed on to ready-to-roll Theo. He didn’t shy away from a thing, and they clearly enjoyed the experience in their own ways. That’s the thing about choosing to involve them, it’s not only a night they will never forget because their brother was born, but because it was the night they truly learned what birth is. What is looks like for humans to birth humans, what it feels like to welcome a new life, and the power a mother gains when she’s able to trust her body and trust her baby.
It’s never been that I’m against hospital births, not in the least. I’m so grateful SMH was there for all 4 visits this round, they were great, but I’m also all the more grateful I didn’t have to birth the baby there, under their lights, their protocols, their rules.
Morgan commented on how incredible it was to see me just do what I needed to do, to move and not have to be told how to have my baby. How simple and straight forward it all was, when in her head she was going down the checklist of all the things that she would be doing if we were in the hospital. What a tremendous thing to share with her, and how powerful to have one more birth worker in our community that truly celebrates and understands home birth.
This birth was FUN.
It was full of smiles, of light hearts, of my children’s excitement, of our home. I had my baby in the nest I’d built, what could be more natural a cycle?
I call it my Acceptance Birth because I had to accept that I might have a pre-term baby at 33 weeks, that’s when we named him during a foxhole wish session in the middle of the night holding hands in the hospital. I had to accept I might not make it to my special party at 37w. I had to accept that my “favorite midwife” was only on call one night, from 6pm till noon the next day, that Morgan had been scheduled to work that night. I had to accept I wasn’t progressing into regular pattern contractions, and in return I was gifted everything I could have wanted and then some. The baby came in the small slice my midwife was available, Morgan’s hospital put her on-call that afternoon so she was able to come over. And the baby came, just as he was meant to.
Now I feel meant for new things too. Not only do I feel I was meant to be a mother to a larger family, I also feel more sure then ever that I was meant to document families as they grow. I connected with Morgan over that dinner because she felt passionate about birth. The excitement I feel discussing birth options and our choices as mothers combined with the joy I get from photo journalism is the perfect storm. To create story-telling images for families as they welcome a new baby, or to capture families just as they already truly are. Not just as orchestrated beach sessions or walks up the Celery Fields, but in their own homes. Even messy homes with piles of laundry on the couch and dogs that need to be fed, children in mismatched pajamas rather then coordinating outfits. The details that make up our real lives. I’m just so fired up right now and my own birth experience has left me yearning to document more babies entering the world.
And jazzed to see what this new little tyke is like too. I already can’t imagine our lives without him. Thank you again friends, from the bottom of our hearts, for all the support this round. For lighting the candles. For the generous gifts. For sending the texts. We feel it all and we love you.
