{"id":3992,"date":"2014-04-16T08:26:05","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T12:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=3992"},"modified":"2016-05-21T17:05:08","modified_gmt":"2016-05-21T21:05:08","slug":"my-messy-beautiful-homebirth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/16\/my-messy-beautiful-homebirth\/","title":{"rendered":"My Messy Beautiful Homebirth"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been almost a year since I welcomed my sweet little man into our world.\u00a0 Almost one year since my beautiful homebirth dream became a reality. \u00a0Almost one year since I undertook one of the messiest experiences of my entire life which is one of the most beautiful memories in my entire life.<\/p>\n

There is nothing neat or tidy about giving birth<\/a>.\u00a0 No matter what choices (and\u00a0every woman deserves to have the choice<\/a>) you make or how your baby comes into the world, it\u2019s messy.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t until my third birth, my first homebirth<\/a>, that the messiness was evident.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re in a hospital, you don\u2019t worry about the mess.\u00a0 You don\u2019t notice it.\u00a0 The staff is really good at cleaning up the messes before you even know they\u2019re there.\u00a0 Plus you\u2019re so focused on the task at hand you don\u2019t really care what kind of mess you\u2019re making.<\/p>\n

A homebirth <\/a>is a little different.\u00a0 There are fewer people to clean up after you. It\u2019s your house, your mess and so you pay more attention.\u00a0 I had two great midwives that cleaned up everything when it was all done, but I definitely was more aware of the mess during, and especially after when looking at the pictures.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve noticed that a lot of waterbirth pictures are shown in black and white and when posting mine originally, I changed them to a sepia tone in order to mask the messiness.\u00a0 My waterbirth at home was messier than most seem to be and it was definitely messier than my hospital waterbirth<\/a> with Sugarplum.<\/p>\n

The water after Doodle\u2019s arrival was brown, murky, bloody\u2026messy.\u00a0 When I moved from the bathtub to the bed for a check over, blood ran down my legs.\u00a0 I left a trail of bloody footprints along my path.<\/p>\n

Doodle had not been crying heartily and was not a robust pink color.\u00a0 It took a few puffs of air to get him going and while I had immediately placed Sugarplum and Honeybun to my breast, with Doodle I didn\u2019t think about it.\u00a0 I was so excited to share him with my girls and the midwives were so eager to move me to the bed I didn\u2019t get to feed him right away.<\/p>\n

My uterus wasn\u2019t contracting as it should have been, resulting in what I believe was probably excessive bleeding.\u00a0 My midwife wanted to do a Pitocin injection but I asked for an alternative so instead I was given a dose of Shepherd\u2019s Purse to stimulate my uterus to contract.\u00a0 I never even thought to ask to try nursing Doodle, who was getting to know his daddy, sisters and grandparents in the other room.<\/p>\n

I also had a perineal tear (an almost 9 pound baby who exits in just a few pushes will do that to you!) that had to be repaired and it was over an hour after his arrival that I got Doodle back and was able to feed him.<\/p>\n

But despite all the stress, struggle and what I now see might have been something out of the ordinary (no one ever showed concern at the time), it was still the most beautiful experience of my life.\u00a0 The births of my daughters were beautiful in their own way, but birthing my son in my own bathtub with my husband, daughters and parents looking on was truly a remarkable experience.<\/p>\n

This is what birth is. \u00a0This is why women choose homebirth. \u00a0This is why I chose homebirth.<\/p>\n

This is MY Messy Beautiful Homebirth (in full color):\"My\"My\"My\"My \"My \"My<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

This post and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project<\/a>. \u00a0Learn more about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback,\u00a0CLICK HERE!\"messy-beautiful-450b\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been almost a year since I welcomed my sweet little man into our world.\u00a0 Almost one year since my beautiful homebirth dream became a reality. \u00a0Almost one year since I undertook one of the messiest experiences of my entire life which is one of the most beautiful memories in my entire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,16,9,15,388],"tags":[39,46,100,113],"class_list":["post-3992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baby-business","category-breastfeeding","category-family-life","category-family-ties","category-the-pregnant-life","tag-baby","tag-birth","tag-homebirth","tag-sisters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3992"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10823,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992\/revisions\/10823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}