Marigold Willa Howard
May 15, 2020
Born at 2:56am at Home
8lbs 2oz, 20.5 inches
Dearest Goldie Girl,
Sometimes it takes me months to put these kinds of words together or for them to pour out so easily. But not with you. For various reasons, I always knew you were in a hurry to get here and be with us on Earth.
I suppose I should go back to last September when we found out you were making your way here. I had not even got to the point of a missed period with you when I thought to myself, hey… I feel a little off/different, maybe I should take a pregnancy test, why not! I saw those two lines start to appear immediately and I stood in silence in the bathroom with my jaw on the floor (the same bathroom where you were born)! I didn’t tell your Dad I was going to take a test, so when that second line appeared, I bugged out! I was in shock. My mind was racing trying to figure out a quick and cute way to tell him the news because there was no way your “wear your heart and facial expressions on your sleeve” Mama was going to be able to keep that a secret from your Dad even for a second. So quickly I rummaged around to try to find my Pregosaurus Rex shirt, found it, put it on, and went downstairs. Then I called your Dad into the kitchen. I just smiled at him and held up the stick and when he saw the shirt he said, “Are you?? Are you really?! Oh my God!” Later he said, “I was wondering why I heard you rummaging around up there!” Ha!
During your time in my tummy, you survived a car accident, a fender bender (both not Mama’s fault I’d like to add), and in the third trimester, our world got turned upside down with the Novel Coronavirus, which made its way to the United States in full swing in early March 2020. If you’re reading this far in the future, look up the history behind your birth year/month. It’s a doozy. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t shake me up in anxiety and worry as many of my birth plans flew out the window.
One day you would hear stories of women in NY having to go to the hospital alone because a support person wasn’t aloud with them. Then you would hear how there wasn’t much known or very little studies done on how the virus affects newborns. Then I hear that the hospital I planned to have you in only allowed one support person in with you (meaning I wouldn’t have had the doula/photographer with me as planned), no water births (also as planned), AND my biggest fear of all, if I tested positive for the Coronavirus (all admitted women were/are advised to be tested), you and I would have to be (or very strongly advised to be) separated for possibly 2 weeks. There was no way I would allow that. There were so many uncertainties and so many scary scenarios in my mind about going to the hospital for your birth, not to mention putting us both more at risk for exposure, that I decided to research and think about the possibility of hiring a home birth midwife.
I was induced at the hospital with your brother because of high blood pressure at the end of my pregnancy with him. That brought him into the world a little earlier than we all expected (37w 5days). However, I knew and was told that even though I had a slightly higher chance of that happening again, it could also not happen. Luckily, it did not. My blood pressure stayed normal with you your whole pregnancy. Besides all the other scary things, my whole pregnancy was very normal with you and I was low risk. I knew that there were also other reasons I could still end up being transferred to the hospital either before labor started or after and those thoughts did give me pause, but in this situation with the state of the world as it is (was), I followed my gut. I trusted that we were in good hands, and I asked my midwife at the hospital for a recommendation for a home birth midwife and they were supportive of my decision, which was unexpected. I also talked to a few women in the community who have had home births and got recommendations from them as well.
I called up a few midwives and spoke to a handful of them. When I spoke to Nicole White after another midwife recommended her, I was happy to hear she still had openings to take on another May client. Just from speaking to her, I knew I would be in good hands. I also knew home birth midwives schedules were quickly filling up because I wasn’t the only woman making this change at this time. I feel lucky that I was able to make this switch and feel good about it (Thank you, Nicole)!
There were definitely days when I second guessed myself and had my doubts as nothing with birth is certain, even in normal circumstances. However, I did my best to stay calm, not read the news, not over plan, not google too much, and stay excited about your entrance into the world! I took the time to visualize your birth everyday and I know we had friends and family doing the same for us from afar, whether it be in the form of a prayer, good thoughts, or visualizations. We had great support in different forms the whole way through.
When the virus started to spread here in Michigan, I started to get nervous about how this was all going to affect my postpartum plans as well. At the time, my immediate postpartum support team and childcare team for your brother (your Papa and Nana and Aunt Kim) were still in Houston and Seattle, respectively. They had both originally planned to arrive the week before May 9th when we scheduled to have a baby shower for you. One that never ended up happening. However, now that there was a scary virus floating around, traveling to MI started to look more scary and complicated. Papa and Nana now live in MI during the summers, so eventually, they decided to get to MI (by car with pups Thelma and Louise) a couple weeks before planned, so they could properly quarantine themselves for two weeks after travel. Then, they moved in with us for two weeks after that so your Aunt Kim could travel here from Seattle, by plane, and properly quarantine herself for 2 weeks at Papa and Nana’s house (during her birthday, I should add)! All so they could safely be with me and you (and Dad) when you arrived in this world. All to give us extra support and care after you were born. We are lucky ducks to have them.
After your Aunt Kim’s two weeks of quarantine were up, she moved in with us and Papa and Nana moved back to their house. Aunt Kim has been with us since and will be here until June 12th! She has been so helpful with your brother and making sure we are being well fed on the daily! She’s the best! Papa and Nana and other family members have also been very helpful too, either in person or from afar. Our original plan for when I started to go into labor with you was for Nana to come pick up your brother and Aunt Kim (and Sneakers, our pup) and then they would hang out up there at Nana and Papa’s house for a few days. This plan was made thinking we would have plenty of time to execute said plan. Well, we did not.
This is where the story starts to pick up a little.
Well, on the evening of May 14th, the eve of your 38 weeks gestation day, I went to bed feeling what I thought were the same old Braxton Hicks contractions I had been having for months. I did mention to your Dad that they seemed to be coming more often and with some sort of pattern, but I didn’t think much of it. I went to bed thinking, wow, we’ve made it to 38 weeks! 2 days longer than we made it with your brother! I had planned to take another bump picture that day and everything. Haha!
You had different plans. I had a feeling your whole pregnancy that you would probably come a little early, but I didn’t expect to be two whole weeks early! Since I didn’t go into natural labor with your brother, I had nothing to go off of. I wasn’t even sure what to expect natural labor to feel like in its beginning stages.
Anyway, like I said, I went to bed not thinking much of the Braxton Hicks I was having and was able to fall asleep. Thank goodness for those couple hours of sleep. Around 1:55am on May 15th, I woke up to the familiar feeling of having to pee. Once again, nothing out of the ordinary! Once I did that, I stood up again and felt like I had to pee again but instead of being able to hold it, some trickled down my leg. In my mind I thought, “That’s odd! Did I just pee myself a little?” Then literally a minute later I started feeling cramping. This was my first 5 minutes of denial after trying to get back in bed, only to walk to the bed and start to feel the cramping again not even two minutes later. As I stood back up, more liquid trickled down my legs and when I got to the bathroom again, I wiped a little up from the floor and realized it was probably my water breaking and not pee. BUT I was still in denial even about my water breaking! Since it didn’t happen like when your brother’s water broke, I guess I still wasn’t 100% sure. At this point I figured I’d just take a bath to see if the warm water helped with the cramps. It did not. They kept coming every few minutes.
At that point I figured, what the heck and downloaded a contraction counter app on my phone so I could time them. (Just so you have an idea of the timeline, this was probably only 10 minutes after I woke up). When I got in the tub, the contractions started to get very real and uncomfortable and after about 5 contractions, the app popped up with a message saying, “Time to go to the hospital!” I stared at that message for about a minute, shot out of the tub, woke up your Dad and told him to get moving on “the plan” because I’m probably in labor. Maybe.
After another contraction ended, I called my midwife and basically told her my contractions were about 1-2 minutes apart, and me still being in semi-denial, I told her that I wasn’t 100 percent sure this was it, but the contractions were starting to get painful! Hahaha. She told me she was going to be on her way anyway because she knew my history. My induction with Oskar was also very fast for an induction and the midwife at the hospital missed his birth. His birth was nurse assisted.
Nicole (our midwife) lives half an hour away, so she thought ahead and called one of the other midwives who lives in the same city as me to come as back up. This midwife, Stacia, happened to be one of the other midwives I talked to on the phone when looking for a home birth midwife. She also told me to remember to call my doula. I called my doula and told her the same deal. Still way in denial about how far along I was, but she said she would start making her way over too.
Once I got off the phone, I heard your Dad moving around furniture in the room where we were supposed to blow up the birthing pool. I was shouting orders at him from the bathroom between contractions. “Remember to put the other sheets on the bed with the protector on it! Roll up the rug! Remember the birthing tub needs to be wiped down with disinfectant and the liner needs to be put on before you blow it up all the way!” Your Dad had woken your Aunt Kim up to let her know what was going on. Turns out she was up anyway because there was a centipede crawling around in the room where she was sleeping! Haha! She wasn’t about to sleep until she took care of that!
At that point the pain had gotten pretty bad, but with my high pain tolerance, I was still walking around between contractions doing stuff like trying to put my hair up, put a little makeup on, and texting Aunt Kim and Dad Oskar’s to-go bag list so they could start packing a bag for him for Nana and Papa’s house. Aunt Kim asked why I was putting on makeup and I said “I dunno, I feel naked without it!” She’s said, “you’re already mostly naked!” Ha! Anyway, in my mind I still had hours! HOURS! This was maybe around 2:35- 2:45am.
It wasn’t long after my half hour of denial that I starting feeling some familiar pains. I finally told Andy to forget the blow up birthing tub and to quickly fill up our tub in the bathroom. As the water was starting to fill up, I got back in the tub to ride out more contractions. After a couple minutes I felt that familiar can’t-control-it-anymore pushy feeling I felt when I was close to delivering Oskar. This had me tweaked out a little. I sent a text to my doula saying “It’s definitely the real deal, I’m feeling pushy!” She later told me she was already driving here when she got that text and was surprised I could even send a text at that point! I’m not sure how I was still doing that either. In my mind I was just thinking all was fine and I’ll just breathe through it and try to control the pushes. I also knew Nicole was on the way and had called for backup. Oh, did I forget to mention that it was storming out! Rain! Thunder! Lightening! The whole thing. My birth team all had to make their way to our house in crazy weather in the middle of the night! That certainly wasn’t in any of my visualizations. More on being born during a storm later!
At some point (and I have no idea how long I was in the tub or what time I got out), but I felt the need to poop (hahaha…yes I’m human) so I figured I better get myself out of the tub. Your Dad told me he helped me out of the tub. As soon as I stood up and got out of the tub, I realized it wasn’t poop that I was feeling, it was your head crowning. I don’t remember this well, and I’m sure I was making crazy noises, but as soon as I felt your head I shouted, “It’s happening now! She’s coming now!” I was hovering over/near the toilet which is right next to the bathtub. Your Dad was right there next to me. Aunt Kim was downstairs putting dog food in a bag and doing her best to get the to go bag ready. As soon as she heard me say “She’s coming now,” she ran upstairs quick, saw what was happening, grabbed the first thing she could find out of our linen closet, which happened to be a flannel pillow case. We had a good laugh about this after the fact. Then I said, “Just don’t let me drop her! Help me catch her!” I kept my hands down there because when I had your brother, I didn’t know to keep my hands down there and it was my greatest wish to deliver and pull you up with my own hands since I missed that chance just barely with your brother.
With the next surge, I felt my body push you out with one or maybe two big pushes. That memory is fuzzy. Your head came out, then your body followed swiftly after! I caught you under your arms and your Dad and Aunt Kim made sure you didn’t fall. We all were holding one part of your body to protect you. All we had to do was unwrap the cord from around one of your legs and I immediately put you up to my chest. It was 2:56am! Born into the world in the smallest room in our house! Your labor was just about 50 minutes long. 50 minutes! Who would have thought. Your Dad helped me back into the tub and when there was a little more water, I laid down with you on top of my chest and we covered you with the pillow case (but don’t worry, we got the previously prepared receiving blankets after that). You made a cry noise and I could see you breathing. Your color looked good so I knew we were okay. I just sat there staring at you in disbelief in how fast that all happened! I also told your Dad to take some pictures!!! Even though we missed out on my visualized water birth, I can’t believe how amazing it was to welcome you with my own two hands and the fact that it was just you, me, your Dad, and Aunt Kim was pretty freaking amazing. Once again, I gave birth without a midwife in attendance! I’m starting to get a reputation around town! Haha, kidding. [Here is Oskar’s Birth Story]
Here is our first photo together
About 5-10 minutes later, everyone started to show up. Midwives Nicole and Stacia and then our Doula/Photographer Carly. I can’t believe the timing! It was no ones fault that they missed it, but had you waited just 10 minutes, you would have had a midwife there! But that’s not how you chose your entrance to be! I keep thinking that if this Global Pandemic never happened and I stuck with hospital care for your birth, I never even would have made it to the hospital! You could have been born in the car or an ambulance or in front of a bunch of EMTs! Who knows!
We are all not sure what time Oskar woke up or what he heard, but he stayed quiet in his crib until he heard you cry! Then Aunt Kim went in to get him in his room across the upstairs hall and when he came out he looked at you and me in the tub and he said, “baby!” Aunt Kim kept him busy as he didn’t go back to sleep until later that morning. He did so well with everything that happened since he was way more involved than I thought he may be. I’m glad I prepped him a little by showing him some birth videos beforehand and explaining to him that Mama has to do that soon but it’s normal and how we bring babies to Earth and Mama will be safe. Two year olds understand so much more than we give them credit for and if other situations did not teach me that, this one definitely did.
When Nicole arrived, I was still in the tub with you and I asked her to help me to deliver the placenta. Always a good time. She guided and instructed me, and with another push, out it came. We kept you attached to the placenta for awhile and while Nicole was helping me out of the tub and to the bed, your Dad held you. The rest of that night/morning was a blur, but I had such a great team helping me. The midwives made sure I was okay by checking me out, making sure I was fed, making sure I was drinking a ton of water, instructing your Dad not to let me get out of bed without assistance for the first couple days, and all the things!
Carly our doula/photographer took a ton of beautiful photos of us in these early hours and I am excited to share the slideshow she made for us. I love how she captured not only us and the quiet moments, but also all of our surroundings as chaos whipped through the upstairs of our house before you were born. I am a ball of tears every time I watch.
Here is a link to her work and services: http://www.a2doulatog.com/
[Music Credit: The Greatest Gift – Sufjan Stevens & Forever Young – Bob Dylan]
Soon after getting in bed, we breastfed for the first time and you had a very strong latch! You must have been ravenous! Nicole then checked you out, made sure you were well and doing all the normal newborn things. She weighed you, measured you, and gave you a little pep talk! It was very cute.
Your brother and Aunt Kim then came in to formally meet you. My heart grew so many sizes in that moment! It was amazing to see you two together for the first time. I have no words for that feeling, just love. We all sang Happy Birthday to you as your brother wiggled around on the bed. What a special moment in time that I will treasure forever.
After we were all taken care of and snuggled in bed, the midwives and Carly made sure we didn’t have any other questions or concerns and went on their way. It felt like they were only there for an hour in my head, but by the time they left, the birds were already starting to chirp! Time flew. You seemed content after having some milk and we swaddled you up for your first bassinet snooze. I, of course, was supposed to be sleeping, but the adrenaline in my body kept me up just staring at you! Now having experience with both hospital birth and home birth, it was amazing to just be in our own bed experiencing the first day or so with you snuggled in the comfort of our own home. I am so happy I went with my gut and decided on home birth. I heard from one of the midwife accounts I follow on Instagram that because of the pandemic, 2020 will most likely have the highest number of home births on record since the early 1900s. I hope this year has proven the importance of home birth midwives in our country to low risk pregnant women.
Around 7:30/8am, we started calling family to tell them about your swift arrival! I had what they call precipitous labor, meaning your labor was less than 3 hours. They were all shocked, excited, and amazed! I keep thinking about how women always say you will forget the pain of labor and birth. I wouldn’t say that saying is entirely true as I remember your brothers labor as quite painful. BUT, yours happened so fast, I can barely even remember how everything went down exactly, let alone any pain. Good job, baby girl! I checked with your Dad and Aunt Kim and I think I got my timeline pretty straight with your story.
Here are a couple photos of our herbal bath on your birthday. I added extra dried marigold flowers for you. Marigolds have a ton of healing properties.
A few days after your birth, I was curious to know what the internet has to say about going into labor during a thunderstorm. This is what I found:
“Barometric pressure is also known as atmospheric pressure and refers to the weight of particles in the air above the Earth. Days with high barometric pressure tend to be sunny, whereas low barometric pressure occurs during stormy weather. Since barometric pressure impacts the tides, and humans are largely made up of water, it makes sense that changes in barometric pressure that occur during extreme weather could also affect our watery human bodies. This may be especially true during pregnancy when the uterus is stretched and filled with amniotic fluid. Essentially, the amniotic sac is a water balloon and when pressure on that balloon lowers there’s an increased chance it will pop — AKA Spontaneous Rupture Of Membranes.”
Source: https://blog.everymothercounts.org/storm-babies-e0cdbf2872ac
I still can’t believe your entrance into the world, but you were always meant to be with us and you knew that. I’m guessing you knew how you wanted to come too. You just wanted to get here as fast as you possibly could. We love that about you. We are so happy you are here with us and we love you to the moon and back.
Love,
Your Mama
P.S. – I’ll try to add some more video clips very soon!
A special thanks to my wonderful husband, my awesome sister, and these badass ladies: Midwives Nicole White and Stacia Proefrock, and Doula/Photographer Carly Montgomery. Thank you again for driving through the storm in the middle of the night to get to us and for everything else! I am eternally grateful for it all.