Here it is after four and a half years. It's a very different story than the one that I originally wrote a long time ago which was filled with an agonizing amount of detail. Time spans may be inaccurate. It's true that memories of birthing are dulled over time. It's been my goal to get it written before the new baby comes.

Prelude
I got pregnant in September of 1998 and then miscarried in October, on Columbus Day. Before I miscarried, I had an appointment with a local CNM who did homebirths. She spent a lot of time explaining how inflexible she was as far as payment. I left her office in tears and knew that I couldn't use her. When I miscarried a few weeks later I didn't have any health care provider and because it was a holiday, I couldn't find a doctor who would see me. When I first started bleeding and it wasn't that heavy yet, I went to the emergency room where they couldn't even bother to check for a heartbeat. They just confirmed that I was bleeding and told me to see an obstetrician as soon as possible. Then, of course, they sent me several very large bills. Besides the obvious emotional trauma of miscarrying, I knew that I needed a Rhogam injection and I couldn't find a doctor to see me. My stepmother called her former OB-GYN in New York City, who I had seen once, as a teenager, and he agreed to give me an appointment.

I became pregnant with Aidan soon after all of this. I had never even had a period. Aidan was born September 1, 1999 and I feel like he gestated for a full year. I immediately looked into getting health insurance when I found out I was pregnant the second time and it turned out to not be such an impossible prospect. There didn't seem to be any restrictions about pre-existing conditions, though I was never completely sure and I was often nervous about my bills getting paid.

After much searching, I found a CNM in Brooklyn who was willing to do my birth at home. I was in the suburbs, and she didn't have a car, so she planned on taking a car service to my house for the birth. It wasn't an ideal situation, but I couldn't find anyone else. It turned out that her son was best friends with someone that was part of my very small acting program in college. I took this as a good sign.

New York State has strict laws governing homebirth midwives. They must be Certified Nurse Midwives and they must have a relationship with a doctor that is willing to be their hospital backup. It is very hard for CNMs to find doctors to be their designated backups. We couldn't find a doctor on Long Island to be my backup doctor, so we used a doctor at St.Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan who was accustomed to working with my midwife. I just read in Mothering Magazine that the same doctor's resignation from St.Vincent's Hospital led to the eventual closing of the Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center in New York City because they went a full month without being able to do their birth center births with no backup doctor at St.Vincent's.

There is another kind of midwife called a direct entry midwife. It is illegal for direct entry midwives to practice in New York State, though all of the states surrounding us don't see them as such a menace. Just within a short drive of us now are Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, all of which allow direct entry midwives. When I was pregnant with Aidan, it never occurred to me to seek out a direct entry midwife, and I'm not sure that there were even any in the area, or how I would have found one since they don't exactly advertise, being outlaws and all.

Days of Labor
The CNM has to abide by certain guidelines that the backup doctor requires. In my case, they seemed pretty minimal but turned out to be significant. I had an early sonogram for dating purposes since I had never had a period. I don't remember exactly now, but I think my due date was determined to be August 16th. Once I was two weeks past the due date, I was supposed to go in for testing. I am not entirely sure what this testing would have consisted of, since I never did it, but if the doctor overseeing the testing decided that there was a problem, I would be immediately sent to a hospital and set up with a pitocin drip. The thought of putting my birth into the hands of a doctor that I had never met and whose sensibilities were unknown to me was scary. I was set up to go in for testing on a Monday. Early Sunday evening, I spoke to my midwife on the phone and she gave me a recipe for a big castor oil cocktail. As with most of the decisions that had to be made around my pregnancy, she didn't really advise me to do it or to not do it, she just gave me the facts and let me make the decision.

I drank it down and it really wasn't that bad. I started getting contractions that felt like menstrual cramps in my back within an hour and I lost my mucous plug soon after that. I was so happy and excited - pretty fearless really. You are considered term at 37 weeks, so by 42 weeks I had spent five weeks thinking that the baby could come any day. Even though I had started my labor, the baby still didn't come that day. Or the next. Or even the next.

I was pretty uncomfortable through the night and didn't really sleep at all. I did a lot of pacing. I thought that the contractions were pretty strong and fast, but apparently they weren't doing much of anything. My midwife came the next day and checked me and I had hardly dilated at all. The contractions were considerably milder the next day and the midwife sent Steve and I out of the house to keep me moving around and to distract me. We stayed out for a really long time without even calling the apartment, sort of leaving my mom and the midwife and an apprentice/doula hanging. I felt really bad about that when we got home. We went to Steve's twin brother's house, my friend's health food store, a Waffle restaurant, and Steve's mom's house.

That night, the contractions were stronger again. I was tired, but couldn't sleep. I think that the midwife spent the night that night. I know she went home for a little while at some point, but I can't remember when - but I am pretty sure that she was there that night because I remember feeling like she should be doing something to help me manage the labor. Maybe she was staying out of it because my mom was there. Steve couldn't stay awake and my mom spent most of the night with me. There was a rocking chair involved - the one that my step-mom sent as a baby gift - I think I rocked through the night, or maybe my mom did. I can't remember.

In retrospect, I feel like the midwife was just there to catch the baby. I absolutely loved the pre-natal care that I had with her: I would go to her house in Brooklyn and spend an hour on her sofa, talking about how I was feeling and eating, doing blood pressure, getting my belly measured and listening to the heartbeat. At some point she suggested that I have a doula, which was a total shock to me. I thought that a doula was someone you need in a hospital, not at a homebirth. I couldn't afford one, so someone that she knew had come along as a sort of apprentice. She was very nice, but I never really felt like I had a relationship with her. Although she had attended births, she hadn't had a baby herself, and so I had trouble trusting her as someone who could understand what I was going through. So, in retrospect, maybe my midwife kind of knew that managing labor was not her thing.

Anyway, that night was very difficult, and the next morning I was terribly discouraged to find that I still had barely dilated. I did all sorts of things that next day. I vocalized. My midwife sent me out for a walk around the block. I couldn't do it. The Jamaican grandmother across the street who had had all seven of her children at home saw me hobbling down the street and gave me some herbs. We went back in the house and I drank a tea from them. We put hot packs on my back. My midwife checked me and my water broke. I took a bath, which I hated, and got the impression that there was meconium in my water. I told Steve that I was never going to do this again. I rocked, naked, in the rocking chair. We started to talk about going to the hospital. I was dilating finally, but it was very, very slow going. I had missed two nights of sleep and spent the entire day and much of the night before in terrible pain. I labored on the bed curled up in a ball for some time, starting to feel like I was in an altered state, but it wasn't that altered state that is the end of labor, it was simply exhaustion. We finally tried an enema. I was already pretty empty from the castor oil and two days of labor, so it wasn't that bad. I tried the altered state on the toilet for a little while - maybe an hour - I had no sense of time at this point.

My midwife checked me and I was at eight centimeters. I said that I wanted to go to the hospital, and that's what we did.

Since it really wasn't an emergency, we drove 45 minutes to St.Vincent's in New York City where the backup doctor was. When we got there, I was still at 8 centimeters and the doctor detected meconium. I was set up in a hospital bed with a monitor around my belly and IV. I asked for an epidural before being given pitocin. I had read enough birth stories to be very scared of pitocin, especially in my exhausted state. The anesthesiologist wasn't the least bit interested in my worshipful praise. I guess he gets that all the time. I couldn't accurately relate how long things took at that point. It seemed very quick, but I know that I slept for a while.

I remember hearing another woman give birth before me. I remember the weary faces around the small room - my midwife, my mom and Steve. The doctor came in and checked me and said that I was at ten centimeters and they started coaching me to push. My midwife had told me that I could tell him that I wanted her to deliver the baby, but I didn't have the nerve. Afterwards, my midwife told me she thought that the epidural had worn off by the time I was pushing, but I can't be sure. I did get up and walk right afterwards, but the pain of actually birthing Aidan seemed so insignificant compared to my labor. Maybe it just was. I needed some coaching to know when to push because I wasn't really feeling like pushing. I could see the contractions happening in my belly more than I could feel them. And how to push? What was I pushing? I had to be told that it was like pushing out a bowel movement. I could feel him coming out in the end, and I think that the doctor had his hand inside of me at some point because I could feel that and I asked him WHAT he was doing. I think that I only pushed for about 20 minutes.

Aidan came out face up and ten pounds, so I was laboring with a really big, posterior baby.

I tore, I don't know how much, and the doctor stitched me up pretty quickly. My midwife later commented on what a good job he did with the stitches, but felt like she could have delivered the baby more gracefully, with less of a tear.

My mom, who has red hair, was delighted that he had red hair. Steve and I were shocked that he was a boy. Everyone commented on the huge size of his hands. He never, outside of the womb, had those miraculously small baby hands.

They whisked Aidan away really quickly and suctioned him and gave him some oxygen. Steve was with him and feels like they did this really dramatic resuscitative thing, but I am not so sure. They smeared his poor eyeballs. A nurse did that awful kneading on my belly, which I also didn't think was necessary. Then they wanted to give him sugar water instead of breast milk because he was so big and might be diabetic. Then they didn't want me to breastfeed because I hadn't had an HIV test while I was pregnant. I did breastfeed fairly quickly and he nursed like a pro immediately. My short experience in the hospital just confirmed for me that homebirth was the right thing for me, it just hadn't completely worked out.

I wasn't nearly as disappointed as I would have expected. I was totally high on adrenaline, I think. I was wide-awake and terribly happy and in love. Aidan was born at 3:26am. He was just gorgeous, with very little of that bruising or misshapen head that newborns sometimes have. He had these blisters on his wrists and it took us a couple of days to deduce that he had been sucking on them in the womb. He was probably hungry from me hardly eating for two days. Steve went out and got some food, came back and shared some with me. We had a stunning view of the sunrise and the West Village out the hospital window. Steve went home to get some sleep. I hardly slept for the next 24 hours or so.

Epilogue
I had a dream while I was pregnant - that I had a ten pound baby in the hospital and I was so very happy. I told a few people about this dream because it puzzled me so much. I thought it was a sort of anxiety dream, but how could I have been happy having my baby in the hospital? It was a huge lesson for me, to remain flexible and open to unexpected possibilities. I didn't recognize the dream as at all prophetic until it was all over. My midwife never thought that it was a particularly big baby. If I hadn't told a few people about it, I would have doubted my memory. I wasn't 100% right on though. In my dream it was a baby girl.

If I was going to do it all over again, under those same circumstances, I would still have tried a homebirth, but I would have gone in for the testing at 42 weeks instead of inducing with castor oil. I would have just waited for my body to do it's thing on it's own and trusted that the doctor wouldn't find anything wrong where there was nothing wrong (though my latest sonogram experience doesn't support this). The only other regret that I have is staying in the hospital after Aidan was born. I would have been much more comfortable going home right away. Both were decisions made out of fear.