Ep 25: Mia Advocates for Herself and Baby During Transport

Show Notes:  Mia and her fiancé have been together for 7 years and have two precious sons together. She comes for a naturally minded family- some of her aunts had had homebirths. However, she was not very educated on the subject.  She planned for a hospital birth and had a pretty good experience.  She later experienced a friend’s homebirth (about 8 months after her own hospital birth) and realized that’s what she would want to do with any subsequent children. Mia found out that she was pregnant with her second son right after her first son turned one. When she found out she was pregnant, she knew she wanted her friend’s midwife to act as her own midwife. Interestingly enough, both Mia and the midwife did not make it in time for the actual birth of Mia’s friend’s child! However, Mia loved how the midwife interacted with her during the home visit and immediately postpartum enough to know that homebirth was the way she wanted to go.  “It made me more aware that homebirth isn’t a scary thing.” Mia admits that she procrastinated a bit with her prenatal care- she began going to prenatals at 20 weeks. One way that Mia educated herself was by joining several homebirth and natural birth Facebook groups. Every afternoon when she would scroll through her feed, she would gain more insight into the choice she was making.  With her first birth, her water broke before labor began. Once she went in, Mia mentions how many steps there were before she was actually able to focus on her labor: She had to get checked in through labor, assigned a room, they had to bring a birthing tub in in pieces, her water line was broken in her room so she had to wait for maintenance—Because of this the hours seemed to pass by like minutes.  “Looking back at it now, the hours passed by like minutes.” After laboring for 3-4 hours in the tub, Mia was checked and found to be 9 ½ centimeters. After a few more contractions, she was ready to push. Mia says that pushing was the time that things became more uncomfortable. She was on her back, bright lights shining directly on her, nurses and doctors hustling and bustling, etc.  Mia felt that the discomfort of the situation slowed her labor dramatically.  She ended up pushing for 3 hours, and when her baby finally came, he was tangled up in his cord.  Mia wishes she had been able to push in a better position, thinking that could have helped her situation dramatically. With her second child, Mia had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks. She woke up at 3 am one morning with contractions that were different from what she’d been experiencing.  Her fiancé works nights, so unfortunately this was right when he was coming to bed.  She remembers having to tell him, “Hey, you can’t go to sleep- I’m having contractions!” They decided to wake up and straighten up the house a little bit. After, Mia decided that it might be a good idea to eat a little something and begin timing her contractions.  She was contracting every 5 minutes and they were lasting about 30 seconds.  However, because they were consistent for an hour, she decided to call her midwife and let her know what was going on.  Her midwife agreed that she was in labor, but recommended that she try to go to sleep for a bit. Mia took her advice and after about an hour of trying, she was able to fall asleep and stay asleep for 4 hours. She woke up and had a normal day. Mia was even able to get a small nap in when her son did later.  Once she awoke, she decided it would be best to head to the grocery store to get a big haul of groceries so she wouldn’t have to leave her house any time soon! She remembers her son running away from her in the store. As she chased him, she began having a contraction and though people must think she was crazy! “I think that I was so busy trying to relax that day that I didn’t nourish my body the way that I should” Mia stayed in touch with her midwife throughout the day. At 7:30 pm, Mia’s mother arrived at her house.  Around