Birth #3 with Jackie, May 2001

This was our 3rd homebirth. I was a week overdue and starting to get anxious as I have never gone more than a day or two past my due date. I was suppose to go to Jackie’s Saturday Morning to have my membranes stripped to see if this would start my labor. I was near tears as I was struggling with wanting to get it over with yet afraid of the labor at the same time.

On Friday, before we went I took a shower and checked myself. I noted a little brown blood and thought "hmmmn?" When I went to the bathroom I had a lot of mucus and blood, so I knew I was on my way. Once again, I didn’t want to be in labor in the middle of the night so I laid really still on the couch to hold off any labor and dozed on and off. The labor was piddly all night long, and I thought "I will just go for a walk in the morning and get it going again. By morning it had completely stopped and I thought "oh no! did I make a mistake by trying to stall it off until morning?" I figured I would have to wait a few more days now and almost started crying. But I knew my husband was so tired, and I didn’t want to have Jackie up all night either.

I called Jackie and told her what happened, and she said not to worry and not come in to have my membranes stripped but to call her when I went into labor.

Finally, about 2pm on Saturday my labor picked back up, and I started to have mild contractions. When Jackie called me to check on me, I told her that I thought that it was the real thing, so she decided to come out and check. Jackie arrived around 3:15, confirmed that I was already at a stretchy 4 - 5cm. I called my neighbor, and she hurried home from the ball field and collected all of the kids up and took them over to her house.

Jackie started to bring her supplies in and get ready. She used her Doppler and checked a contraction while I was standing up. The babies heart rate dropped to around 90 and Jackie said "I don’t like this…" So she had me lay down on my left side and checked me while I had a contraction. The heart rate remained fine. Jackie said that the cord was probably wrapped around his neck and I would just have to labor on my left side so to keep the heart rate up when I went through contractions.