If you missed the previous posts, be sure to go back and read (and listen to our 911 call if you’re up for that!) Here’s the Introduction, My Pregnancy, and Part 1 of Emmeline’s Birth Day.
And just a reminder if you missed it before – if pregnancy stories are tough for you to read, or triggering for any reason at all, please be kind to yourself. There is no reason at all for you to read this story if it isn’t helpful for you. Although it is a positive birth story in my eyes, it does include a very fast labor, a call to 911, and a birth at home. I’ve also included affiliate links in this post for The Birth Hour’s Know Your Options Childbirth Course. If you sign up via my link I’ll get a kickback at no additional cost to you. I so appreciate your support!
6:20:22am Our 911 call ended. I’m pretty certain I managed to say “welcome to labor land!” as the firemen walked in the door – I, for some reason, tend to think I’m hilarious when I’m in labor.
They asked me to lay down which, again, I physically could not do. I honestly really wanted to stay standing up and have them catch the baby that way. It felt the most natural and the most comfortable to me. Stalling, I told them to let me work through another contraction first. Before they arrived I’d been fully prepared to catch my baby in that position if I needed to. It was such a wild and sort of primal feeling listening to my body and doing what it told me to, knowing I’d do whatever it took to deliver our babe as safely as I could given the circumstances.
Even with the firemen there I didn’t feel like I could lay down on my own, so they picked me up gently by my arms and laid me back on towels and pillows in our front hall. Tim says the baby was decently crowning at the time they began to lay me back and he was envisioning me sorta falling back into my bum (and onto baby’s head), so he grabbed my legs to help lift me up off the ground as two of the firemen grabbed my arms. I think I had one or two more contractions before the baby actually started to be born. I remember baby’s head coming out and then contractions pausing for a moment (they suctioned the nose and mouth a bit at that point) and then with the next one I pushed twice and the shoulders and then the rest of the baby came out with each of those pushes. I felt like I roared that baby out but Mom and Tim insist I wasn’t that loud.
6:25:51am Baby made her grand entrance into the world (when we got to the hospital we found that they had recorded it down to the second.)
I remember Tim saying, “Babe, it’s.. it’s a GIRL!!” and responding “REALLY??” I definitely had been leaning toward thinking we were having a boy for most of my pregnancy.
Looking back, the thought of “I wonder what we’re having?” did not even cross my mind while I was in labor. It’s funny to me when people use that as the reason for waiting to find out if they’re having a boy or girl – like it gives you “something to push for.” While I’m sure that is absolutely true for some people, I have to admit that with both my babies that thought was somewhere in the very distant corners of my brain, not at all at the forefront while in transition and pushing. Mostly it was just “baby, out, baby, out, baby, out!” then utter relief. A beat. THEN the question mark. What did we have?? I don’t even think I had time to wonder before Tim announced to me that she was a SHE! Everyone asked what her name was and we looked at each other – “Emmeline? Emmeline, right?”
Tim also got to cut the cord (with a scalpel) and I remember asking them if I could do skin to skin with her, them handing her to me, just holding her to my chest, and I just couldn’t stop laughing and smiling. It was such a feeling of elation. I remember looking up at my mom who had been standing behind the firemen just taking it all in – she had tears in her eyes and a proud smile on her face. I so wish we had pictures of her in all of this, but it’s a mental picture I’ll always carry with me. Through tears she had called dad right before Emmeline was born to let him know things had progressed quickly and we were having a baby at home, so he was even on the call while she was born and right after to find out she was a girl.
After Emmeline was born we waited probably 10-15 min before I had the urge to deliver the placenta which happened fairly easily. In the meantime I asked Tim to grab our camera out of the car because HOW COULD I NOT have photos of us and our new babe who had just arrived at HOME? Haha!
While we waited I also remember chatting and laughing with the firemen and the two EMS guys who had arrived a few minutes after she was born. Mom remarked later on how hilarious it was that I was thanking them and carrying on a normal conversation after what had just happened. My adrenaline and endorphins must have been sky high because all I remember feeling was joy and relief, not pain. I remember asking them how many babies they’d delivered and the one who delivered Emmeline told me this was his fourth. (His name also happened to be Timothy.)
After delivering the placenta they started to get me ready to get in the ambulance and they let me decide if I wanted to go to the closest hospital or Novant in Matthews (of course I chose Novant where we delivered Beckett, knew a few of the nurses, and hoped to see our doctor.) It’s known to be one of the nicer hospitals around for delivering babies and I knew I’d want to recover somewhere familiar.
Beckett woke up right as we were getting ready to leave and Tim got him up and brought him out to say hello. He was still pretty sleepy and out of it but really didn’t seem too freaked out that I was on the floor with a baby in my arms and there were five strange men in our living room and flashing lights outside our house.
After we took a few minutes to share Emmeline with Beckett, they loaded me into the ambulance, Tim grabbed our bags from our car, and we were on our way.
(This was another clip we were able to get from our local 911 Services after the fact. My mom happened to know someone who worked there and when she found out about our story she made sure to include this quick clip with our full 911 call.)
One of the pieces of the Know Your Options course that really stuck with me was the segment on breastfeeding and how important the first couple hours are for establishing breastfeeding well. Because that course module was still pretty fresh in my mind, I watched Emmeline as I held her on my chest in the ambulance, and within a few minutes she started doing what’s called the “breast crawl.” She was already looking to nurse, and with a little help she nursed the rest of the way to the hospital, all the way out of the ambulance, and all the way in as they wheeled me up to our room. She basically hasn’t stopped since.
The two nurses checking us into our room were wonderful but at a bit of a loss as to how to check us in and what procedures they could skip over. They figured it all out, the doctor on-call came in and numbed me and stitched me up (I did have 2nd degree tearing), the tech got me cleaned up, and we settled into our room.
We had a wonderful nurse named Cynthia who took great care of me and we enjoyed hearing her stories of being an oncology nurse before she made the switch to being an L&D nurse. We loved that she took the time to sit and listen to our stories and share her own with us.
I remember overhearing the nurses talk about giving me Pitocin shortly after I arrived at the hospital, and when I asked why they said it was pretty standard procedure to prevent hemorrhaging. They told me I likely had been given Pitocin with my first baby, but I truly don’t recall that with Beckett. They ended up not giving me anything and I remember one of the times Cynthia came in to press on my belly (one of those things no one warns you about ahead of time! Ugh.) and she remarked that I was “doing things the old fashioned way.” This time around I had a lot less bleeding afterwards but a lot more and much stronger afterbirth cramps following Emmeline’s arrival.
Later that afternoon my parents, brother, and Beckett came to the hospital to see us and Emmeline. It was so sweet to see Beckett’s fascination with the clamp on her belly button, her little bassinet, and her tiny fingers and toes.
This time around we only stayed for one night in the hospital. Those beds aren’t the most comfortable, so between that and all the adrenaline still pumping through my body I barely slept that first night. I was so ready to go home, sleep in my own bed, and start our transition to being a family of four. We also opted to not have the nurses bathe Emmeline – we wanted to wait and give her her first bath at home for a variety of reasons. That next morning when we asked if it would be possible to go home later that day, they chugged right through their discharge procedures and got us ready to go within a couple hours.
Most people’s first reactions when I share that we had a sudden unplanned home birth with Emmeline has been some variation of “oh my gosh that’s so scary!” I cannot express strongly enough how much this was not the case. I joke that I always wanted a home birth (it’s true!) but I never ever would have had the guts to plan one. For starters, home births are technically illegal in North Carolina, so my rule-following self would have stopped there. And the fearful side of me wanted to be in a hospital just in case, even though I know women have been successfully having babies at home since the beginning of time.
All the same, we planned on a hospital birth. But when everything happened so quickly there was no place for fear. I had birthed a baby once before, and both my mind and my body knew I could do it again. I had spent my entire pregnancy preparing, without realizing it, for what happened. I was filled up on positive birth stories, had been well trained via the Know Your Options course, and was unafraid to call 911 after having listened to that birth story the week before. I had Tim by my side throughout my whole pregnancy – a steady encouraging presence, and then unexpectedly but wonderfully had my mom encouraging me through transition, and when it came down to it, I trusted myself to do the thing. I felt so safe and so protected by the Lord through it all. I am beyond grateful that Emmeline’s pregnancy was an uncomplicated one and that her labor and delivery was just as uncomplicated. Fast. But pretty much a textbook birth – someone just hit the fast-forward button.
Come back tomorrow for the story of Emmeline’s name.