The Home Birth of Calvin David

by Kim Robinson

This story has had many versions as time passes, things happen, and I look back and find there is yet more to uncover from Calvin’s birth.  The birth of my first son, Charlie, was a piece of cake.  Really.  A straightforward 12ish hour labor.  We arrived at the hospital in transition.  Baby was born in a few mighty pushes.  It was a blur, and it was amazing.  Calvin’s birth cannot be described without Charlie’s to compare.  I realize now the experience of the second was perhaps all too wound up in the first… expectations, and all.

Labor began in the morning as I lay in bed nursing our little Charlie.  The contractions were light, but serious, and quickly fell into a regular pattern—ten minutes apart on the dot.  Still not certain this would be “it” I ignored them as best I could, attending a parent-teacher conference at 8am, and going for a walk with friends at 9.  Of course, the contractions only became more powerful, and the time between less and less.  I called Ray to come home from work around lunch.  He picked Charlie up from preschool and took him and his little over-night suitcase to Grandpa and Grandma’s house.

This baby, for the last several weeks of pregnancy, had settled himself into a head down position with head cocked toward my left hip. Still concerned about this, I would lay down from time to time while in early labor to try to find his head.  Always, he seemed to be in “his spot,” with back to my right side and head above my left hipbone.  This acynclitism became a deep worry for me in much of my labor.  It became my mountain, and there was no other way but through.

I think we called Brandi and Deanna at Raymond’s suggestion.  It was about dinnertime when they arrived.  The time I had expected we would be birthing our baby, based on our first labor time line.  Not so.  Not even close.  Deanna and Brandi suggested we lay down for a nap if we could.  I did not experience back labor per se, more like “hip labor”.  It was painful, and a nap just wasn’t happening.  I felt like I needed to be doing something, so to the shower we went. 

The shower was a relaxing distraction, and we sang.  We sang hymns together in harmony.  And I lunged and squatted through contractions.  My leg propped up on one side of the shower or the other.  I did any acrobatics I could think of to encourage our baby boy to try a different position.  

Now, I can’t recall all the events of the evening or night.  There were many moments of “I can’t do this,” and “Why is this baby not coming down?” and “Is this going to happen?”  There were many trips to the “birthing trough” in the living room.  Many prayers.  Raymond falling asleep between contractions, head resting on the side of the tough.  Birth team people finding quiet places to nap.  Me, in the Rubbermaid talking dearly to our baby, “just a little to the right, fella.  Just a little to the right.”

There were lunges and supported squats, internal checks and external palpitations.  I remember it was determined that the baby was quite high, and nothing but a part of his head and my water bag was dilating my cervix.  Not too bad to get to 8cm with just a bag of water there.  Still, it was discouraging to be going through such active, hard labor with little reassurance that things were progressing “predictably.”

I like predictability.  Gray areas—well, not as much, really.

There was discussion about breaking my water—that it might help the baby settle into the birth canal; but also worry the baby was not well enough engaged—the risk of cord prolapse still too high.  Back into the trough.  Tears and prayers. This isn’t how it was “supposed” to happen.  It’s too hard. Reassurance is given.  Midwifery texts on the kitchen table.  More checks.  More squats.  Try this.  Now this.

There is a section in the book “Birthing from Within,” by Pam England and Rob Horowitz, about focusing on the pain of contractions as a method of relaxation during labor.  It describes the process of exploring pain.  Thinking specifically of how it feels in each part of your body.  In a way, a person can become detached from discomfort by exploring it.  At this point in my own labor I had breathed through pain, I had visualized through pain, and I’d fought pain.  And then I came to the point where I just had to pass through it.  I had to face pain and march through pain.  Every few minutes as my womb tightened with such force, I had simply to live that space of time and that incredible sensation, and surrender to its inevitability.  I needed to simply feel it as it was.  At some point in this, I even began to feel okay with it.  Accept it as my reality.  I didn’t like it—especially as the outcome of each contraction felt like such small progress with a baby who seemed to have an odd sense of direction.  It seemed all the energy was being put into width—which was essential—but none into depth.  Our baby was still high, and crooked.

It was now approaching early morning, and I was about 9ish-cm dilated, I think.  Deanna can now better tell that the cord is not near the cervical opening.  Let’s try breaking the water and jimmying this little guy down into position.  POP!  Relief!  Baby slides down perfect—head squarely in place.  I hang on to the shoulders of Brandi and Raymond for a few contractions in a supported squat.  A few more contractions while I lay on the bed.

And, Finally!  I need to push.  It feels so gratifying!  I push on my back, then on my side.  It’s easier than it was the first time.  He’s almost here.  I can feel him begin to crown.  I touch his head many times during this process, but cannot much focus on the image in the mirror.  It feels as though he has a small amount of fine hair—just like his brother.  I forget everything that has happened up until now.  I forget all that gray area of not knowing and wanting to know.  I am focused, and it feels so good to be focused.

It takes fifteen minutes.  Maybe twenty, and he is born—silky with generous vernix, and a barrel-chest.  I think he is big as I hold of him for the first time.  He looks at Ray and I.  He is very alert.  He cries a gurgly cry, and looks like a very serious person.  The cord is long and healthy; we keep it attached as he works to clear his lungs.  It takes a while for that gurgle to clear up, and we lay him on a cookie sheet.  This is supposed to help, Brandi says.  He is pink and looking wonderful, still attached to his placenta.  Brandi gives him a couple of puffs of air from the ambu-bag to help him with those little lungs.  It’s a big change to make, you know—to start breathing air when all the breaths you had taken up until birth were theoretical.  The puffs from the bag seem to help.  I nurse him.  THIS he knows how to do!  It is insanely simple compared to Charlie, and feels like instinct.

Deanna declares no tears or scuffs for mommy!  The placenta comes out and sits in a mixing bowl on the bed beside us.  The midwives continue their work, and our babe continues to nurse.  We haven’t named him yet.  We felt so strongly he was a Calvin, but when he arrived he did not look like a Calvin at all.  His face was squashed, and his head seemed to have a multiplicity of foreheads.  We think he looks much more like a David—a regal name.  We debate this, and put off the decision.

Soon the cord is limp, our baby is breathing robustly.  He finishes nursing, and we cut the cord.  We weigh and measure him.  More than a pound larger than Charlie, at 8lbs 8oz, and 21inches long, or so.  His chest is large. I remember it so clearly.  Such a large, pink chest. 

Mommy is up showering in no time.  Recovery is easy (so much easier than the first time) and wonderful in my home.  I’m back in bed with our little Calvin snuggled skin to skin.  Yes, he looks much more like a Calvin now.  We name him Calvin David.  It is light outside the window beside the bed.  Soon we begin to call our families.

This birth—the immediate memory of it—feels like too much at first.  I think, “What happened to easy?  Why did it happen that way?”  Calvin has his head cocked to one side most of the time in the beginning.  I wonder what it was like for him.  I feel like it was too much, but I also feel deeply grateful.  Grateful for the support to birth such an oddly presenting baby in my home.  I am thankful to have avoided interventions that would have been too convenient for a desperate feeling mother had I birthed in the hospital.  I come through my birth without having to justify any part of it.  Nothing happened that left any “what-ifs”.  I did what felt impossible in the moment, because my support team held on to “possible” for me. I believed them, and pressed on.

As time passes that gratitude grows further, goes deeper, and is easier to come by.  Brandi mentioned to me once, had it been my first labor I would not have known that labor was anything but what Calvin’s was.  I would not have expected “easy” only to struggle with complex.  And yet, through it I gain greater appreciation for my body, and its amazing capability to birth a baby.  To press on physically, and find my way emotionally through the unknown.  To rest on the shoulders of others.  To ride the wave until it’s complete.  In fact, as I rehash and rewrite these events over again, Calvin’s birth continues to teach—the lesson that sometimes the only way is through.