The Birth of William Lewis 11/19/22
Shelby and Ryan, repeat clients of mine, welcomed their third child in a homebirth on November 19, 2022. I met Shelby when she was pregnant with her second child, longing for a different birth experience than her first. It wasn’t a bad experience, as she said, but she wanted choices and options. Her second birth was closer to what she desired, being an unmedicated birth. However, her membranes were swept without her express permission, leaving her feeling out of control in her birth.
Shelby’s birth journeys awakened a passion within her for supporting others in birth as a doula. And over the course of her third pregnancy, almost exactly, she worked hard and became certified as a birth doula. Her eyes had been opened to all of the options available in birth and she was eager to explore them all with her third birth. She selected a homebirth midwifery practice, and she was sure to incorporate all of the details about her birth she desired – a birth photographer, delayed cord clamping, cord burning, waiting to discover the gender at the birth, and more – knowing she would have full freedom in her own birth space at home.
But God had different plans for her! Much of it would align with Shelby’s imaginings, but the location did not. Ryan was offered a wonderful job opportunity in the final month of pregnancy which had them selling and buying a house and settling in temporarily with Shelby’s grandmother until their baby was born. Shelby did a lot to prepare her birthing space in a home that wasn’t technically her own. Ultimately, she did the mental and emotional work to prepare a space for her baby in her heart. With all of the moving parts she had been forced to let go of, she could control her readiness within herself. And when the time was right, Shelby was ready.
She had bouts of contractions in the final weeks that were exciting, irritating, and confusing all at once. Those third babies have reputations for being wild cards, and Shelby’s was no different. Her uterus was experienced with two previous births, and it contracted in rehearsal for the big day. Shelby became a master at minimizing the discomfort and trusting she would know when it was time to rally the birth team.
On November 19, around 4:20 pm she texted me to say she had bloody show. I went into detail about how that wasn’t important enough to report and to wait until she had escalating contractions. Of course, being a doula now, and having given birth twice, Shelby knew this. But she replied telling me she had been crampy and felt different that day. She was intentional about giving herself some alone time to prepare for the baby and to pamper herself as well. She did yoga, took a magnesium bath, and did some meditation. She even made arrangements for the kids to be in Richmond for the weekend so she could really hunker down and focus on having a baby if it was truly time.
And it was time. An hour later, Shelby texted to say she was contracting regularly at 7 minutes apart. She had already alerted her midwife and told Ryan to drive back down from Richmond. She felt quite sure it was the real deal but was still content to lay low. Her midwife was with another birthing client, and she didn’t want to interrupt that. (How sweet and thoughtful!)
But a couple of hours later it was clearly time to come. Shelby was having to focus and couldn’t chat anymore, and her husband felt uneasy without the birth team present. She rallied the team at 9:45 pm and I was there by 10:40 pm. And with all of her birth team present and accounted for, Shelby was able to let go and have her baby. She relaxed and smiled, and at one point grabbed her sister’s hand and cried a little at the awe of it all.
Shelby was calm but excited and breathing confidently through her contractions and laboring standing up. The midwife and her team trickled in soon after me and set up their things. She had her eye on the tub that was being prepared for her in the center of the room. It was filled with air, then the water was started around 11:15 or so. The temperature needed to be right, so that would be another detail. It’s not a fast process but it was a process we thought there would be plenty of time for based on how calmly Shelby was laboring. But we were wrong.
Shelby was very in tune with what she felt, and she would tell us. She felt more bulgy pressure at 11:17 pm and by 11:25 she leaned forward into Ryan and scolded him because he leaned on her, a totally active labor sort of thing to do. I pressed on her back, which initially felt good to Shelby. But soon it didn’t. She was quickly spiraling through active labor into transition, and we didn’t quite see the active labor.
Shelby moved easily through each contraction, following her instincts about which positions felt best. She didn’t ask for any advice from anyone but rather owned her space and her birth. She told us what she needed, and we gladly obliged. She went from standing to sitting on the birth ball and there she would remain until right before she birthed.
Her contractions were very close at 2 minutes apart, and her labor behavior changed rapidly from casual talking between and breathing with eyes closed during, to very focused deep vocalizing and short bursts of comment between. I rubbed her back and shoulders between her close and strong contractions to remind her to let them go. But there was hardly time before the next one came.
At 11:31 pm Shelby said, “These feel slightly transitiony.” She expressed the need for counter pressure, and I did it. She was nauseous and requested some peppermint essential oil and her midwife and I scrambled around for some. She even told Ryan where and how he could best hold her and support her. And he was a humble and willing partner for it all. I mentioned after the fact how Shelby was her own sports commentator for her labor. “They are back-to-back! Why are they coming so close? I have no breaks,” Shelby said. And I quietly reminded her that her baby would be born soon. The tub was still too hot, however, and she so wanted to get in. Her midwife leaned in and told Shelby to let her baby come if it was time, and not to hold him in waiting for the tub.
Shelby’s transition contractions, both of them, brought her to her feet. She told us she didn’t want to be on the ball anymore. Later she would tell us how it felt like it was in the way, obstructing the birth of her son. And then she reported to us that her water broke. Like a pit crew, someone helped bring her bottoms off and she stood and breathed through her contractions and felt his head. “Fire in the crotch,” Shelby exclaimed, making it clear to the room that her baby’s head was there.
Her midwife crouched behind her, and Shelby reached down to catch her baby herself. She brought him up to her chest and said, “What the actual heck?! Did that just happen?!” Bringing laughter from the room. William Lewis was born at 11:38 pm, not even 10 minutes after Shelby’s 2 difficult contractions. She stood there and looked at her baby, then up at Ryan and they shared a moment of pure euphoria and amazement. And she was soon escorted to the couch nearby to properly snuggle her baby, birth the placenta, and begin her immediate recovery.
Shelby and Ryan had not found out the baby’s gender, so the great pronouncement was made by Ryan that they had a son! It was a sweet moment of revelation for the two of them and was an immediate perfect addition to their matched set of girl and boy. The placenta was born at short time later, and when the time was right, the separation was made with a ceremonial cord burning, using a handcrafted wooden box built by Shelby’s dad. They were still considering names so we didn’t know it yet, but they would settle on William Lewis.
The scale displayed an impressive weight of 9 lb. 6 oz. for this chunky baby with the 9-lb. neck roll to prove it. He was Shelby’s largest baby but born the fastest without any tears. What a testament that is to the power of a birthing woman’s body when she is given the freedom to follow its lead! We helped Shelby get situated upstairs in the room in which she would do her long-term recovery. And we showered her with all the compliments so deserved for a calm and intuitive birth that had about a 10-minute span of no-longer-chatty-to-transition-and-baby!
The midwives got another labor call, that’s three in one night! So, they cleaned up and gathered their things to go. I left soon after and played Shelby’s journey over and over in my head. There was a point where she felt like the rug had been yanked out from under her when the homebirth, she had already prepared a space for would move to a completely different place that wasn’t her home. But instead, she found her peace within and from her God, and welcomed her baby boy in the manner she had always imagined—on her terms, with her chosen support people present, and surrounded by nothing but birthing freedom and respect, two things she never felt before in her births.
This was a transition to mothering three babies, but it was also a transition for Shelby in her doula journey as well. She will be such a gift to the women she serves in her personal journey about options and advocacy, but also in her personal experiences with letting go and following your baby’s lead. I am so proud of her and will forever be honored to have been chosen as her doula twice.
