My Birth Story

I've had several people ask about my birth story and tell me they are eagerly waiting to hear how my precious Rahziel (AKA Rahzi) came into the world. I think the sooner I can get it out on paper (or computer) the better, because like a dream, the details are fading rather quickly. I can't possibly give an accurate play by play of my 21 hours I spent in labor, but I will do my best. The times aren't exact, and there are some details that only my partner and midwives remember, but I'll give you the good good. Hey, I'll even throw in a graphic pic that feels pretty vulnerable, but hey, it's real. Oh, and I am going to give details, so if you're not into all that, consider this your warning.

I'll start by saying that this isn't going to be the blissy blissful home birth story that you might be hoping for. Don't get me wrong, it was that at times...mostly at the end and when it was over, but for the most part it was hard work. Very. Hard. Work. And that's okay, too. After telling some people about the experience, I've been asked if I would have a natural home birth again, given what I know now, and my answer is absolutely yes, hands down. Considering some of the things that happened in my personal experience, I am so glad I was at home. I also am so grateful that I got to feel every bit of the birthing experience and know what it's like. It has forever changed me, in the best way.

So, let's back up about a week before I go into labor. My voodoo witchy sissy tells me that she thinks I am going to go into labor on the morning of October 27th (My EDD is Nov. 2). Ya, ya, whatever, what does she know? Well apparently she knows a lot and sits in her closet with her Chantel voodoo doll and a needle. At 10:30am on October 27th I get out of bed to go to the bathroom and fluid starts running down my legs. After I pee I wipe myself and I see that I have bloody show. I instantly knew that this was it, I am in fact in labor and for like a split second I started to panic. It was REALLY happening, I REALLY have to go through with this and push a baby out of my little vagina and I have to do it like, really soon. But the panic was only there for a very short while and then I started to get in the zone and do all the things I knew I should...and something I probably shouldn't. I laid down to rest, text my midwife, and Mariano went to the store to get some groceries. I relaxed and decided to tell my sister that she is weird and that I am now in labor exactly when she said I would be. Well, I told her not to tell my mom because I wanted to tell my mom, and silly me, I thought I would be able to think later on in the midst of labor, let alone send out a text message or make a phone call. Anyway, despite my request, my sister immediately told my mom. Shortly after, I completely forgot about my mom, and everything else in the universe for that matter.

I actually thought it was pretty intense at this point. Ha, I had no idea...

I started feeling contractions almost immediately. They were only what I would describe as mild for a little while. Honestly, I don't remember hardly anything in the beginning of my labor, but I'm pretty sure I just laid in bed with Mariano, had a little make out sesh, and rested until the midwives came over. I think I finally called them to come around 3pm when my contraction were obviously closer together. I just wanted that tub so bad, and I thought my water had broken so I couldn't get in my bathtub. When they (there were 2 midwives and an assistant midwife) arrived they started setting up the tub, checking my vitals, listening to my baby's heart beat, and then just let me be. By this time things were really getting intense and the hot water felt soooooooo good...but not for long. I labored in the tub for a while and it wasn't long before I started getting really loud and vocal and maybe even crying, I don't remember, during my contractions. It was getting to be night time and I thought for sure it was almost time for me to push this baby out. I was having the most intense back labor. I felt it all in my back, like it was on fire times a million. When I told my midwife she said that usually indicates the baby is stuck in a less than optimal position. When she checked me, she looks up and says very calmly, "Well, you're about 4cm dilated." My heart dropped. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. It had already been about 7 or 8 hours and there was NO WAY I could go on much longer. I still had 6cm to go. Because of my back labor, my amazing midwife calls a chiropractor she knows well who practices in the shopping center right next to my house. She agrees to see me and give me an adjustment that will hopefully loosen up my pelvis enough to move things along. I've known I've had a tight/tilted pelvis for a while now. I was told by another chiropractor about 3 years ago. We think it got shifted when I was in a bad car wreck as a teenager. Anyway, in the middle of my oh so intense labor, we all pile up into my midwifes car and go to the chiropractor. By now it feels like I am on a low dose of  narcotics, even though I didn't take anything. When I think back on this whole experience, it's like recalling a memory when I was on Xanax as a teenager. When we get to the chiro she does different things to adjust me and shows the midwives and Mariano what they can do for me during labor. Almost immediately I feel the contractions shift from my back to my lower abdomen and all down the front of my legs. When I say that I feel the pain shift from back to front, my midwife says that it's a good sign. Then we go back home and I labor longer. At one point I decide to lay down and see what it would be like to surrender to the sensation of the contractions. Up until this point I had been loud, vocal, and sort of fighting them. Mariano and I lay down in bed and I tell myself to melt into the mattress and relax my body completely, and don't tense up when the contraction comes. So for about an hour or more, I did just that. And here's what happened:

As a contraction came on I could feel precisely when it would "peak" or be at it's highest level of intensity. Instead of feeling it in one area, my back, or lower abdomen, or legs, I felt it in my entire body, and my entire body felt the size of the universe. It was as if I had lost my physical form and was pure consciousness that was everything, and everything was pain. As they would peak, I would tremble and it felt like an earthquake inside my body. But on the outside I was dead silent, and the house was dead silent. Mariano laid behind me, holding me, and the midwives laid resting in my living room. After a while, my midwife came into the room, and because I had suddenly gone silent and seemingly calm she says, "It seems as if things have petered out?" I replied with a very convincing NO. I explained things had definitely not slowed down and in fact were only getting more intense. "Oh good," she says. I then labored more. In the shower, in the bed, in the tub, hanging on people, etc. Thank God I could move around. Not that it took my pain away but I was able to manage it better and that's just what I naturally wanted to do was move. Laboring was very natural and intuitive for me. No one had to really tell me what to do. I was just doing whatever felt right in the moment. Noises, movement, squatting, eye contact, breathing, etc... The freedom was so vital and I don't know how I would have done it if I felt constricted in any way.

At the Chiropractor in the middle of labor. She was showing Mariano and my midwife
how they could help with my pelvis as labor progressed.

Fast forward and it's midnight, maybe 1am. My midwife checks me again and I am 6cm. Dear effing God, this is never going to end, were my thoughts. Then I get thrown another curve ball. She looks up and again, calmly asks, "Have you ever had surgery or anything on your cervix?" I tell her no, not that I know of, and she continues to tell me that I have a cervical lip covering the baby's head and that he (or she) couldn't come down with it in the way. Oh, and it was one of the bigger ones she had ever seen...about the size of a golf ball. She has me doing cat cow position, getting in the shower, and other things in hopes that it would go away on its own. Well....it didn't, so she now wants to push the lip back, over the baby's head. She tries and it was so painful I have to tell her to stop. She respects my wishes and I labor more, still trying things that might have the lip go away by the time I am fully dilated. By about 5:30am, I am squatting in the shower and feeling more pressure in my rectum when I am contracting and sort of feeling the urge to push. During one contraction I start to push a little and feel a big POP. I yell, "I just felt something pop!" and the midwives say, "oh it sounds like your water!" I thought my water had broken already, but turns out I was just leaking a little.

My midwife checks me and says I am about 9 1/2cm and she needs to go ahead and push the lip back so that I can start pushing. She says it will hurt but once it's done my baby will soon be here and I will feel so much better. Just the fact that I was 9 1/2 was a huge relief. She puts her fingers in me and tells me on my next contraction to push against her fingers. So I do, and Mariano says I let out the loudest scream he has ever heard, and the lip goes back. The energy in the room instantly felt better and the midwives tell me I can start pushing now if/when I felt the urge to.

I couldn't believe it, we were finally here. The room was dark and the sun was about to come up. Everything felt so beautiful and surreal. They set up the birthing chair for me to sit on (basically just a chair with the middle cut out). I sit on it and immediately with my next contraction feel like pushing. I push with every contraction in the chair for I dunno...30 minutes to an hour? I was making progress, slowly but surely, and I was getting verrrrryyyy exhausted. They asked me if I wanted to see my baby's head and I said yes. I remember looking at the head and saying, "It doesn't have any hair. I thought it would have more hair."

Then they suggested I lay on my side on the bed. That felt really good, like I got good leverage when I was pushing. I pushed like this until he had just about crowned, and then rolled over onto my back and pushed out the rest of him.

I remember feeling his entire head come out, and with it I felt a huge relief and couldn't believe we were already here. It was almost over. My eyes were closed but I could hear everything and feel his body, turning, then shoulder by shoulder make his way out. It was so surreal. Mariano is sobbing and I can't stop saying, "My baby. You're my baby!" I wish I could relive that moment over and over again. It was so sweet. So perfect. Like time had stopped and everything in existence was in that moment. Well, for me, it was.

After a few minutes of saying, "My baby, my baby," I realized that I still didn't know what my baby was. A boy or a girl? I actually assumed it was a boy, but I told Mariano to check. "It's a boy!" he says.

After that, I hold him as they do their midwife things and wait for the placenta. Once the placenta comes out I actually lose quite a bit of blood. It wasn't an emergency, just "more than I like to see," my midwife says. I start to feel dizzy and a bit loopy, so Mariano holds the baby for some time. I actually had a pretty rough day following the birth. I was up all night, lost blood, hadn't eaten and my appetite was shot...oh, and I like, birthed a baby....so I was pretty wonky to say the least. I couldn't even sit up without feeling like I would pass out and I wasn't really able to eat or hold food down. I kept asking the same questions over and over, and had to pee on myself because I couldn't get up. Ya, it was rough. The only thing that really helped was laying down with my baby right by my side. Seriously, it put me at ease. The midwives gave me some meds for the bleeding, and put me on a bag of IV fluids and I started to feel better. Everyday that goes by I feel better and better and more like my normal self. Well, my new normal self. I don't think I will ever feel like the old me again, in a good way. I even like my body more now than I did pre-pregnancy. That was a relief. I feel healthier, sexier, more turned on, and more mature since giving birth. I feel more excited about myself, my relationship, and all the possibilities in life. After giving birth, I simultaneously realized why women do it, and why some women don't do it.

Oh ya, remember how I mentioned my sister told my mom I was in labor at the beginning of this story? Well, I never got around to telling my mom myself, and she was also up for 24+ hours wondering what the heck was going on and worrying since it had been over 20 hours and she couldn't get a hold of us. The thought of my phone during labor was...non existent. I felt so bad when she burst through my door at 9am with this look of relief. I didn't realize that she had been up and trying to contact us. It was actually perfect timing, as Rahzi was just born about an hour and a half before.
Anyway....

There have been a few questions that often get asked that I'll go ahead and answer here:

Where did you get his name? 
We didn't name Rahzi until he was several days old, and I'm surprised it only took that long. When I was pregnant, the name Rossi came to me (but still pronounced with a 'Z' sound like Rahzi). When we didn't have a name by like day 3 or 4, I threw that name out there again. We told a friend that we were gonna try that name out on him for a few days to see how it felt. Later that night she text us and when mentioning him, she spelled his name like Razi. We really liked that, and so I looked it up to see if it had any meaning that resonated. Well I found that Razi is short for the Hebrew archangel, Raziel. You can read all about Raziel here and here. 

It felt really good. Then, without knowing about the Archangel, Raziel, our same friend had a dream that our baby was speaking universal wisdom and then going back to being a baby. This pretty much sealed the deal. So Raziel it was. Except then Mariano said Razi looks too much like Nazi, so we changed the spelling a bit. Rahziel, AKA Rahzi :)

And because neither Mariano or myself aren't too fond of our last names, we gave Rahzi the last name Requena. This is Mariano's moms last name.

What were his stats? 
He was born at 7:41am on October 28th. He was 8lbs, 7oz, and 20 inches long. Yes, we were very surprised by how much he weighed. I'm just glad I didn't know his weight before he came out of me ;)

How is breastfeeding going? 
Pretty damn good. I couldn't ask for it to be going much better. He's a nursing champ and latched on almost right away. We had a little trouble for the first few days. My nips got terribly sore and raw and I was basically crying through feedings. We discovered he had a bad latch and from the help of my midwife, a lactation consultant, and this awesome video, we corrected it right away and the soreness was gone in just a few days. I've heard so many women say that it just hurts the first 4-6 weeks and you just have to nurse through the pain. I've learned that it's not supposed to hurt. Pain is a sign that something is not right and you don't have to cry and cringe through feedings. Great news, huh?! I'm really thankful that I had these troubles in the beginning because I got to learn a lot more that I didn't know about breastfeeding (yay, knowledge).The only complaint I might have is that I often wake up in puddles of breast milk, but I'm actually not complaining. Just really thankful when I think about it.

Did it hurt?
Ha, uhhh ya. Like effing hell. AND, I would do it again. But not now or anytime soon, or maybe never, I dunno I haven't decided. I can't imagine having an experience as profound as birth and not be able to feel every bit of it. It was very empowering on so many levels.

And so, there you have it. That's how Rahzi came into the world and that's why we are so in love now.  K, Thanks, bye :) <3