Rebekah's Birth Story

In April we have 2 birthdays to celebrate, Amberly's and Rebekah's.




Rebekah's birthday is the 12th. It wasn't supposed to be though. Her due date was May 5th. She has been anxious to get to business since before she was born. :-)

My pregnancy with Rebekah was not an easy one. Daniel had just been stationed in Abilene at Dyess AFB so we were moving into a strange new place.  For the first five and a half months I could barely keep water down. I lost 18lbs those first few months. It was so bad that it finally scared Daniel and he took me into the ER where they gave me about 4 bags of fluid. After that, I started feeling better.

I had sought the care of a lay midwife since there were no CNM in the Abilene area. I tried to keep my obstetrician but he kicked us out of his office when he found out that we were planning a home birth! So we finally found a midwife and started our care with her. Everything went fine after my extreme morning sickness stopped. We didn't even tell anyone that we were expecting until I was 20 weeks along. It was like it was our own little secret and we didn't have to hear anything negative about having another baby. :-)

At around 35 weeks, like always, I started contracting on and off but my midwife told me that nothing was "happening" so to calm down and relax. On the afternoon of April 11th I started having some contractions and I tried to ignore them and go about the day. I was 37 weeks that day so I wasn't really worried. We went to the grocery store and then to Babys R Us to get another package of diapers. When Daniel got home from work that afternoon I started cooking dinner and then I felt a small pop and felt a gush of water. My water had broke! 

I called my midwife who came right on over and checked things out. I was at 4cm dilated and 50% effaced. She couldn't tell if it was my amniotic sac that had ruptured or not. She left to go check on her daughter and Daniel and I put the kids to bed and settled down for a movie. I kept feeling contractions but they weren't getting bad at all. This continued all night. The next morning my midwife came over and asked to talk to Daniel outside. She told him that she wanted the rest of her payment then. He gave it to her and she told him to take me to the hospital. She said that nothing was wrong but that she had just had a mother deliver a still born baby under her care and she didn't want to take a risk. That would've been understandable but what she said next was not. She said that she would not be accompanying me to the hospital like she had promised she would do in the event that I needed to be transferred to a hospital. She just took her money and left! I had no idea what to do! Daniel called for our babysitter and then we left for the hospital. We knew full well what kind of treatment we were going to get when we got there. And we were right. We were considered outcasts for trying to have a homebirth. All the nurses were looking down their noses at us. And the doctor did too. We finally asked for a new nurse and doctor. The nurse that came in was totally different (praise God) and the doctor was way more laid back as well.

I am terrified of Pitocin so after contractions were established my nurse turned it down. She said that after I had established a good pattern of labor then it was no longer needed. She unhooked my i.v. so that I could have mobility and she even got down on the floor with me when I had to get into weird positions to cope. Less than an hour later I was pushing.

Here's where it got funny. The doctor thought that he was helping, I guess. He knew our method of coaching that we use. We use "Husband Coached Childbirth" better known as the Bradley Method. He kept telling me not to push (even though my body was pushing) and he kept telling Daniel to get me under control. HA! Then he was pushing down on me (down there) claiming that he was stretching things. It was hurting more than the actual pain of childbirth. So I told him that I was gonna kick him if he didn't stop. He ignored me until the nurse told him to watch out. I was about to let him have it and the nurse felt me pull my leg back to kick. Thankfully, he quit. Finally Rebekah was born and it was more than an hour before they let me hold her. They kept telling me that her oxygen saturation wasn't high enough even though she had pinked up and was breathing fine. Turns out, the machine was messed up.  She was our smallest baby. 5lbs 10oz and 19 inches long. But she has always been a fighter and she still is to this day.

God Bless you all!