The Story of Jake Matthew’s Birth…

by Tania Smallwood

 

I became pregnant with Jake just before our first son Sam turned 21 months old. We were living in Cairns at the time, and after the initial shock, I called our beloved friend and midwife in Adelaide and told her I was pregnant, and that we were coming home. Cairns had been a challenging place to be, and the decision was made unanimously almost immediately after the two pink lines came up, that we needed to be back ‘home’ to have this next baby. Sam had been born at our home in Prospect, and in my heart I knew that was what I wanted for this baby too. To be surrounded by those we loved, and who loved us, to welcome another little person into our lives.

With the decision made to pack up and leave, I started to enjoy Cairns as I hadn’t before. I think knowing that our time there was finite made the endless rain and the overwhelming feelings of isolation from family and friends easier to cope with. I also really enjoyed being pregnant, and started having distinct movements at around nine weeks. I do however have some funny memories (strange how they fade from gross and distressing to ‘funny’ with time…!) of having to leave Sam on the change table to rush outside into the pouring rain to vomit over the balcony mid-nappy change! I’m not sure what Sam thought of all this strange behaviour, but he took it in his stride.

I saw a local independent midwife for some antenatal care. In many ways she reminded me of Roz, our Adelaide midwife; kind, honest, with a gentle but firm belief in rest and looking after yourself in pregnancy. She, like Roz, also exuded a wonderful enthusiasm about the joy of birthing at home. We spent some time discussing options regarding testing with her, and made the decision not to have an ultrasound scan unless it seemed medically indicated. It was a process for Tom and I, of talking it out with each other, and then coming to the conclusion that we already knew everything we needed to about this baby - the rest would follow.

Finding out I was pregnant again was also great catalyst to get my act together to finish my Midwifery degree. I had been dawdling through it, ok, to be honest, I was going at snails pace, flying back to Adelaide several times for clinical placements during our time in Cairns, but then putting off the assignments with endless extensions and excuses to my educators. Knowing that I was having another baby made me sit up and get cracking.

We left Cairns at the beginning of May 2001, and even the knowledge that we would only be home for a few weeks before Tom needed to travel away for work, didn’t phase me. I was going to be HOME! We moved back into our old house, and my Mum and brother moved into a rental property, next door! It was perfect. We had family support at our fingertips, but at a distance when we needed it. What a blessing.

I felt really strongly that I needed to connect with this baby, and spend some time doing something just for me in the last months of my pregnancy. I rejoined a pregnancy aquarobics group with a Physiotherapist who was excited to see me back with a second baby. I had been in her class during my pregnancy with Sam, and I think she became a bit concerned when I turned up to class at 41+weeks, that I might go into labour right there and then! (Sam was born 2 days after that last class, one day short of 42 weeks gestation, in water, but not in the Norwood pool.)

I also started doing yoga again, at a centre in the city, where I met some wonderful women, who have become some of my closest and dearest friends. It was exciting for me to be back amongst other pregnant women, and to share my plans to birth at home again. When Sam was born I gained a real passion to raise community awareness about continuity of midwifery care, and homebirth. Going along to these classes enabled me to gain personally, while quietly spreading the word!

As my due date neared, Tom came back from being away, I stopped stressing out about having a premature baby (how funny that seems in retrospect!), and we met more frequently with Roz to discuss the birth, how we would integrate Sam into the experience, our lives, the universe and pretty much everything! It was such a joy to know that the warm and loving guidance we had received during the birth of our first child would be again present for this baby. Sam loved being involved in every aspect of my antenatal visits with Roz. He developed a fine technique with the Pinard, and was chief goo-wiper after turning the Doppler on and off. I felt a real peace about having another baby and Sam being there to help us. I knew he would be fine. We lined Mum up for the big day, to take him outside or next door if he got bored or restless. I felt very strongly that it was right to give him the opportunity to see his sibling being born, with the support and ability to walk away if it wasn’t right at the time.

Throughout my pregnancy Sam continued to breastfeed. In Cairns he had been a frequent and voracious feeder, no doubt due in part to the hot climate, and possibly the fact that there was little else to do. I weathered tender nipples in the early weeks, and then felt that my supply dropped substantially, but Sam just kept feeding. He was no longer feeding during the night, as a result of tiredness taking its toll and forcing me to put a stop to night time feeds at around 4 months pregnant. He coped incredibly well with this, drank water from a cup instead, and continued to feed frequently during the day. As my pregnancy progressed I started to wonder whether he would wean before the baby was born, or if I would enter the strange and unknown world of tandem feeding. I contacted the Australian Breastfeeding Association and obtained a booklet about feeding during pregnancy and beyond, which was invaluable both as a resource and as a reassurance that it would all work out. A few days before I went into labour, Sam announced that one side was “broken” and refused to feed from that breast for the rest of the day. I began to wonder if this was the beginning of him weaning himself, but he somehow “fixed” it, and it was all systems go again by the next morning.

I had gone what the medical world would call “significantly overdue” with Sam, with his birth occurring 13 days past my due date. I recall now with a certain sadness and regret the stress that I felt to get him out, and the methods I employed at that time to do just that. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say our health insurance fund was stretched to the limit with complementary therapy rebates, and Tom was very tired! This time, I was sure I would also go “overdue” but I felt a real peace about just letting my body go into labour on its own. We talked with Roz about a plan, should I go to 14 days post my dates, but I felt really sure that I would have my baby in my arms before then. It felt really liberating to make the decision to do nothing. Like a real freedom. I just truly believed I could let go and trust this time. So I did.

As my due date loomed I became more convinced than ever that I would go well overdue, and so when I started to have niggles and some slight period pain before dinner on the night of my 8th day over 40 weeks, I was a bit skeptical as to whether it would eventuate in labour. In my mind, I had at least a few more days to go! I had spent the day at a ‘wise women’ sharing day with a midwife from Queensland Vicki Chan, and had been surrounded by the trust and faith in birth that I really needed at that time. One of the things I’d talked about that day was a fear that I’d had my ‘good’ birth, and that I couldn’t possibly expect things to go as swimmingly this time. The strength and encouragement I received from that circle of women is, I’m sure, what helped me to truly let go and allow my baby to come…

I kept quiet during dinner that night with my Mum and brother, keen to tell Tom that something was going on, before anyone else knew. There is something really special about being the only two people in the whole world that know that your baby might be born soon. Of course, the baby probably had the date circled in his diary long ago…When they left, and Sam was in bed, I told Tom that I’d been having a few little pains, and a show, and that I thought it might be the beginnings of labour. He was quite excited, but then sensibly (with half a bottle of red under his belt) suggested we try and get a bit of sleep and see what transpired. We called Roz just to let her know that something might be happening and then hopped into bed around 10pm. Tom had set up the pool in our bathroom, but didn’t begin to fill it, all the while my mind telling me that this was all just a trial run.

I woke at around midnight, feeling the tail end of what I believed to be a mild contraction. My memory of the time between midnight and three am is that of being sleepy but lucid, and having a knowledge that my body was doing something to prepare for the birth, but not enough to wake me completely. At three am I woke with a start, a sharp pain in my pelvis, right down low, and I then started to believe that maybe, just maybe, our baby was beginning to make its way into our world. I lay in bed, feeling awkward being horizontal, and so got up on my hands and knees with my head on the pillow, to try and see if I could continue sleeping for a while longer. This seems hilarious now, thinking of me kneeling on the bed, nearly 42 weeks pregnant, trying to sleep in that position! I woke Tom, worried that I wasn’t doing the right thing, but feeling like I should rest for as long as I could, after all, it had taken 18 hours of strong labour to get Sam out, who knew what this journey had in store for us? In his bleary eyed state, Tom told me that he thought Roz would say sleep if you can, but if you need to be upright, your body will tell you. One mild tightening later, I was up out of bed, making myself a cup of Raspberry leaf tea, and setting the scene for the birth of our second child. I lit candles, put on my music, and sat on the birth ball which had been beautifully decorated by Sam with black texta, sipping my tea and reading from a lovely book Roz had lent me, called “Mother’s Nature – Timeless Wisdom for the Journey into Motherhood”. It was very surreal, I felt like I was in a romantic movie, everything just felt so calm and lovely and perfect.

Tom came out to join me after about half an hour, and I protested, telling him that it was probably a false alarm; after all, I was only 9 days overdue! He decided to get a cuppa, and we sat talking and reading, and occasionally I’d get a tightening that I needed to get up and walk and breathe through. There was no real regularity about them though, and they seemed short and sharp, with no real build up or peak, so I really didn’t believe they were real contractions. Tom busied himself with timing them, but after half an hour we both agreed that they were all over the place, and that they weren’t lasting for long enough to be classified as established labour contractions.

At five am I got up to go to the toilet and felt a ‘pop’ and then a trickle of warm fluid down my legs. I remember vividly I said “this is it!” and ran to the loo trying not to leak everywhere. There really wasn’t a lot of fluid, probably because my baby’s substantial sized head came down to plug the gap pretty quickly. It was the beginning of what I see now as established labour, and my contractions started to pick up in intensity and frequency after this. They were still fairly quick and sharp, so we didn’t feel the need to call Roz straight away, but by 6.30am I was keen to let her know what was going on. Tom was just lovely, rubbing my back and just helping me get through each contraction, but he encouraged me to wait a bit longer before waking Roz up, as we had both agreed that we didn’t want to get her to come too early, or for her to have to spend the whole day waiting for our baby like last time. I agreed to wait for a bit longer, but inside was feeling like I really wanted to call her, and by quarter past seven, was telling Tom in no uncertain terms that he had to make the call NOW! Even though my contractions were only coming every three or four minutes, they were strong, and I was feeling like things were speeding up. Tom very calmly spoke to Roz and told her what was happening, that I had ruptured my forewaters, and that my contractions were getting stronger. When she heard me in the background she scrapped her ideas of getting her daughter organized for school, and got in the car straight away. Roz used her amazing midwives instinct and just knew that I needed her soon, in fact, she probably had more of an idea about where I was in my labour than I did at that time!

Sam had woken with my groaning at around quarter to seven, a sleep-in by his standards. He came into the bathroom and saw the pool erected for the first time, and asked with wide eyes if it was the Wiggles pool! We all had a laugh, and he went off into the kitchen with Tom. We called Mum over, and she was there in a shot, Craig had gone to work, but had said to call him straight away if anything was happening. Mum stayed around to look after Sam, but he quickly got bored, and was hungry so Mum took him next door for some breakfast, with instructions to call over the fence if we wanted her to come back.

At eight am, Roz was on our doorstep, and I was already in the pool. As is customary, I greeted her by bursting into tears. She brought with her all the wonderful confidence and calmness that I needed to relax and get on with labouring. I remember telling her that I was fairly sure that this wasn’t a false alarm! We had run out of hot water and Tom did a mammoth job of boiling and pouring water into the pool to heat it up for me. Sam and Mum popped over for a few minutes and Sam kindly floated some of his bath toys in the pool for me to play with. He also offered me a drink from his sippy cup, we have photos of these gorgeous gestures, and they are moments that will stay with me forever. He surprised my Mum I think, with his nonchalant attitude to my loud moaning during contractions. It really didn’t faze him at all. I’d like to think it was all our wonderful preparation but somehow I think the term that Tom has used to describe Sam as a “low reactor” is probably more likely the reason.

By this time I was ‘vocalising loudly’ as they say in midwife speak. I could feel our baby moving down, and the contractions were quite intense. I felt like it was all a bit of a blur, like being swept up in a whirlwind. Things seemed to be going too fast, and I couldn’t quite keep up. I remember telling Roz that I needed her to examine me, because if I wasn’t dilating, then I’d have to go to the hospital, things were so intense, and I knew I could only do this for so long. In retrospect, I see that this is my way of dealing with that time of transition. My insecurities about my body and it’s abilities became really obvious, and I needed concrete reassurance that things were happening. Roz told me what I wanted to hear, which was that I was fully dilated, but that my baby still had to make it’s way down, so to just breathe through the next few contractions and listen to my body. Whilst these waves of intensity swept me up I felt like I just wanted to be under the water. I tried to put my face in, but got the timing all wrong and remember coughing and spluttering while I was trying to have a contraction – not a good look!

The next 15 minutes or so are quite a blur in my mind, I remember pleading with Tom to get Craig home from work, and then when Tom left my side to go and phone him, I howled for him to come back. Craig was crawling around in a roof space somewhere, and didn’t hear his phone ring, but Tom had left a message making it clear that he needed to get his skates on if he was going to see this baby being born. Mum brought Sam into the house and they floated around in the kitchen and lounge room, waiting for the call to come into the bathroom. I was all over the place, feeling like I didn’t know where to put myself, and that it was just all happening too quickly. I wanted pressure on my lower back, but I didn’t want to be touched. It then dawned on me that this baby was being much more an active participant in its own birth than Sam had been. With Sam, being a first birth, I felt that everything was much more slow and steady, and that it was me who had done most of the physical work to get my baby out. The penny dropped metaphorically, that this baby really wanted to be born, and was making it’s own way into the world, and my body was just following it’s cues.

At 8.50am Tom told me that he could see our baby’s head and I called out “Get Sam!”. I didn’t want him to miss this, unless he let us know that he didn’t want to see it. Sam sauntered in with my Mum, and came around to the business end, declaring loudly “It’s got hair Mum!” All of a sudden I felt the overwhelming urge to just push my baby out, and that my baby was actually propelling itself out too…one contraction later and the head was born. He sat there for a couple of minutes, and I think it took me all this time to just mentally come to terms with the fact that my baby was about to be born. Two minutes later, at 8.56am, our baby was released, and with help from Roz I brought him up to the surface. He was pale and wasn’t breathing, but I knew he just hadn’t quite joined us yet. Roz put some oxygen to his face, and we watched him turn pink from his toes up to his substantial head, and then he just seemed to wake up, and look at us all in amazement! I felt absolute peace as all this was happening, I could feel the cord pulsating under the water, and I just knew he was fine, but it was lovely for everyone else to have the knowledge that he was fine too when he started to breathe and become alert and alive looking.

I needed to catch my breath, it had all happened so quickly at the end. We looked at our baby and decided to take a peek and see what we had – another boy! I remember saying out loud “Well at least he’s not as big as his brother”…Sam had been a big boy, at 10lb (4500gms) and quite a tight squeeze to push out. Jake slipped out easily in comparison, and I remember making a joke about how good it was he was attached by the umbilical cord, or else he might have hit the side of the pool! It wasn’t until much later on when we weighed him that we discovered that Jake was in fact 3oz bigger than his ‘big’ brother, tipping the scales at 10lb3oz or 4625gms in the new measurements. All I can say is what a pelvis!

Following the birth of our baby, and before I got out of the pool, Craig materialized to meet his newest nephew, just 5 minutes after he was born. He’d left work as soon as the message had got through, and I think was secretly pleased to have missed out on all the heaving and hoeing that he so stoically endured at Sam’s birth – hung over and all! It was lovely to have him there so soon after, and I really think he has a very special bond with both the boys having shared in their first few moments – something not many of us get to do unless it’s our baby. We were also able to bond Craig inextricably to Jake by honoring his best friend Matt, who died suddenly 6 months before Jake’s birth, by naming our son Jake Matthew. Craig was deeply touched and phoned Matt’s family straight away to tell them of our good news.

We did all the normal things from then, got out of the pool, gave birth to the placenta on the toilet, kept the cord intact for a couple of hours afterwards and then cut it when I felt ready. I needed a couple of stitches, not surprisingly, and Roz did this with all the gentleness and professionalism we had come to expect from her. It really was a non-event, with Tom sitting by me on our bed, and listening to my Mum and brother cooing over our new baby just outside the door.

We have since moved to the Hills, and having almost finished some extensive landscaping, have decided that it’s nearly time to bury the placenta…these things take time! The wonderful thing about having put it off until now is that I’m sure the boys will both be fascinated to see what sustained Jake inside me, and will hopefully have some respect and appreciation for the plant that we decide to place over it!

Sam’s reaction to seeing Jake breastfeed for the first time was priceless. “Oh dear!” was the worried little exclamation from my still breastfeeding 2 ½ year old. I reassured him he could have a feed as soon as Jake had finished. Sam continued to breastfeed, waiting his turn until after the baby had fed, for another 8 months. I tried feeding them at the same time, but only once, that was not such a good idea! Poor old Jake didn’t really need someone’s fingers up his nose or in his ear as he tried to latch on…

As I sit here with my now 4 ½ year old, asking me to play on the computer, it’s sometimes hard to remember with any clarity those early days. Jake has continued to be the warm and affectionate boy he appeared to be when he first arrived, kind and considerate, and very loving. He slept in our bed with us until he was about 2 ½ when he decided a big bed for himself was a better idea. He breastfed until 3 months before his 4th birthday, when he sat up after a feed and declared that he had just had his last mouthfuls! And despite (or maybe because of) all this, he is fiercely independent, and incredibly confident. He is also quite keen now to be at a birth himself, after some needling from his brother about how important, and what a great helper he was at Jake’s birth. I suppose that’s something only time will tell…