Bumps, Births, Babies

Red Tent Mums hosts a FREE holistic health conference online!

Who are they? They are a team of two women from Australia, (a yoga teacher and a doula!) who are passionately advocating natural pregnancy, mindful births and postpartums. I totally love the combination, it just reminds me of my relationship with my doula and partner in SPCB (Sacred Pregnancy and Conscious Births) retreats and workshops, Irina.

I'm a little bummed that I totally missed out on Day 1 with some really juicy talks by my favorite speakers on gentle birthing like Sarah Buckley and Debra Pascali-Bonaro. Once the talks are out live, they will only be availabe for 24 hours. You also have the option to purchase all the talks and ge to listen to whenever is most convenient for you :)

Sign up here now!

Sarah Maya's Lotus Birth

Minutes after her birth, my midwives, Deborah and Lornie finally arrived congratulating us for the unassisted birth. Apparently, if no midwives or doctors were present at the time of birth, it is considered unassisted. Yay! This was totally unplanned but isn't LIFE in general?

They checked on me and the baby and then we waited for the placenta to come out. After 20-30 minutes waiting in the birthing pool I suggested that gravity might help placenta out so I transferred to the birthing stool they brought with them. We waited some more then eventually I pushed my placenta out. 

Unlike hospital procedure, there was no clamping or cutting of the umbilical cord. 2011 CNN hero of the year, Fil-Am midwife, director of Bumi Sehat Yayasan Birthing Homes in Bali and author, Ibu Robin Lim advocates against this. “When you clamp and cut umbilical cord right away, you lose one third of the baby’s blood supply”, she said in her book launch in Mt Cloud, Baguio.  I was glad to attend this and have met during my first trimester of pregnancy. She opened my eyes to what a gentle birth is. And I wanted exactly that for Maya.

I was doing a full lotus birth, the practice of non-severance of the placenta from my baby. We chose to wait until it naturally falls off.  Obviously, there are physical, emotional and spiritual benefits to this practice for both baby and I.

So, my doula, Irina brought a bowl of water where placenta was washed right next to baby. Deborah asked me if I wanted to try having some raw to eat and I agreed. She cut off a small piece which she blended into a banana yogurt smoothie for me to drink. I gulped it down at once, afraid of any foul tastes but there was none.

Most mammals eat their placenta raw after birth and regain their strength. Traditional Chinese have been using placenta for its medicinal value for thousands of years.  Some choose to preserve the placenta by drying and made into pills. This is called placenta encapsulation (which is what I eventually did using a dehydrator). Many doulas and midwives abroad do this as part of their service.

Irina proceeded to place some salt on placenta (I noticed that my baby cried a bit as she massaged salt onto placenta so maybe it was too harsh to do so at that point?) and poured drops of Lavender pure essential oil afterwards. Later on I added dried rosemary. I continued to add salt, Lavender and rosemary everyday on each side of the placenta.

At first I used an adult diaper to contain the placenta to absorb the excess blood but my sister in law pointed out that the lining of the diaper has chemicals so I moved it into a cotton blanket and placed it inside an open basket to help the air dry process. I also changed the cotton blanket daily.

Having the placenta attached to the baby is very tricky. We managed slowly. Everytime I breastfed, I had to skilfully move baby and placenta in basket to one side. The good side is I had lots of skin to skin time with baby since I couldn’t clothe her fully because of her umbilical cord. I read that other couples found a way to swaddle baby with placenta attached but I didn’t get to learn this. Another advantage is that people don’t normally want to see the placenta (which really looks like a huge chunk of meat) so that also kept visitors from coming too soon. This lessens my worries for germ-phobic Virgos like me.

Three days after Maya’s birth, just after having dinner with my family, she was crying inconsolably. I carried her, attempted to breastfeed, and tried burping. Maya was almost hysterical. Then one legged kicked off the almost completely dried out umbilical cord and she suddenly stopped crying. One helper barged in saying that she moved her wet clothes hanging outside indoors. She went on saying that babies usually cry when their clothes were left to dry outdoors when night falls.

I’ll never know if her version of why Maya was crying is true or perhaps she cried because she was saying her final goodbye to her companion in my belly for 41 weeks, her placenta. Maybe it’s a combination of both. We’ll never really know. But I like how the story of Maya’s lotus birth ends. It’s all a mystery.

To learn more about how to do a lotus birth, I highly recommend you read the book by Ibu Robin Lim, Placenta: The Forgotten Chakra.

More resources:

www.placentanetwork.com

Mama Natural's Youtube on Eating Placenta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPd6k7F1ihQ

A Healing Birth

A VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section) home waterbirth and lotus birth 

The night of March 12, just a day after my husband, Montri’s birthday, I started having cramping sensations very similar to PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome). They were surely contractions but were still far apart with no real pattern. In the previous days, I also saw a series of ‘bloody show’ (blood tinged mucus from the softening of the cervix) in the toilet. I felt that the arrival of our new baby was near… I just needed to wait it out. We used a contraction timer app which I downloaded in both my ipad and iphone. When I found it too much of a hassle to be right next to my gadgets after each contraction, I just manually took note of the intervals with pen and paper. The last book on birthing I read was Hypnobirthing. 

I used the breathing techniques during surges/contractions to keep me present and calm. Then I started self-administering remedies from the birthing homeopathy kit and scanned some prayers from the Zohar specifically for labor and birth.

Homeopathic Remedies I used during labor

I sent a text message to both my midwife, Deborah and my doula, Irina at 3:21 am that contractions were already 6-8 minutes apart and that I could no longer sleep. I knew that Deborah was going to come when I could no longer talk in between contractions (which wasn’t my case because I could still concentrate and speak in between them) but since she would be coming all the way from Antipolo, my husband and I wondered whether we should set up the birthing pool so at least it would be ready when they came.

This is the birthing pool I borrowed from Deborah midwife of Shiphrah Birthing Home. I had it cleaned a few days before I birthed. No, I did not give birth out in the garden hehehe

At about 5 am, Montri quietly set up the pool without any help since he didn’t want to wake up our staff. I kept active, moving from birthing ball where I would either swivel my hips around or bounce imagining baby going down into position, to the bed to be on all fours position and do pelvic tilts or to the bathroom to pee and just sit at the toilet because contractions would slow me down.

This is me very pregnant on my birthing ball. Santi took this photo weeks prior to labor.

At 7:22am I saw a bird chirping and pecking for food on the roof of our bathroom. (Now, this is unusual. We moved into our San Juan home a few weeks ago and this is the first time I see a bird ‘hang out’ at that very spot as if this creature knew what was to come. It hasn’t happened since then as well and I write this 2 weeks after the incident) I remember smiling despite the coming contractions because I felt good about the bird being there for a reason with me. I sent a message to my Kabbalah mentor in London and asked if it was a good omen- she confirmed, YES :)

Montri took a photo of that bird and I'm glad he did :)

At 8:09 I noticed my contractions slowed down going from 5 minute intervals a few hours ago to 10 minutes apart. I’m not sure if it was because I was less relaxed as day broke or I was also very tired from having no sleep since the previous night. By this time though, my birthing team were on their way already to us. Deborah, her assistant Lornie and my doula, Irina soon arrived.

Honesty, it felt quite awkward having them there just watch/stare at me while I felt pressured for my contractions to come and be consistent which was not happening. So, the midwives went to rest and sleep in the other room and just let me labor on my own. Irina, my doula, practiced all the skills she knew to naturally induce labor. We did spinning babies and Rebozo techniques, she applied her acupressure knowledge, pressed on certain pressure points with clary sage pure essential oil and massaged my aching back when I needed it. I’m so thankful that she’s bigger in size than I am because I can really feel that she can support me. If I had worked with a small sized doula, I could have easily toppled her over with all the pregnancy weight I gained!

Lunch came and passed, merienda came and passed. They encouraged me to eat so I managed to, even a little and nibbled on dates for snack knowing that I will be needing the energy for the hours or days to come.

In the late afternoon, I particularly remember being so distracted by the noise of the children playing outside and with all of the people being there. Also with the light coming into the room- all my senses seemed to be on hyperdrive. Because I was not progressing with all these factors, we all decided for my birthing team to go back home. They explained that I stalled labouring and this is quite normal. Deborah pointed out that I was still able to converse and joke in between contractions. Sometimes it could take days of on-and-off labor before ‘active labor’ kicks in, which is what we were really looking for.  So, as the sun was setting we said bye to my birthing team with the risk of not having them around if in case I birthed fast --- Deborah told Montri to catch the baby and bring baby to me to breastfeed. Sounded simple enough.

Something triggered when they left. My body reacted to the privacy, peace and quiet we suddenly had. Like a switch had turned on, I was back to regular contraction intervals. Oh, great! My parents visited and I didn’t feel like talking to them at all. When my mom entered the room to check on me, I didn’t even acknowledge her. I was busy labouring on all fours position on the bed. By this time, I needed all my energy to focus on the contractions. In the next couple of hours I noticed that they were getting stronger. By this time however, Montri and I didn’t want to bother the midwives and doula because I could go on another day and night labouring so we wanted to labor on our own as much as we can. It was also getting late at night so we wanted to follow Deborah’s advice of getting as much rest and sleep in between contractions. I tried my hardest to sleep on my left side but with each contraction I jumped to all fours as it was getting really uncomfortable staying still. I remember having to vocalize already, which is a form of release, moaning through each contraction.

My son Santi woke up at 9pm and said “Mommy is giving birth soon” as if he knew something was up. As much as I wanted to converse with him, I just couldn’t anymore. It’s all a blur now how Montri and I managed to labor with our 6 year old in the bedroom with us.

My husband had prepared a birthing playlist which unfortunately was not playing in our sound system at the time so he had to manually choose appropriate songs for me to get ‘in the mood’. This was working for awhile but when my contractions got intense I would frantically ask my husband to massage my lower back and when a song would end right at that time, his songlist would play alphabetically..of course songs that weren’t ‘birthing friendly’. Imagine me trying to labor to the tune of “Scream and Shoat” by Will I am. NOT FUN.

Monica: “Will you please change THAT song?!?!” (I know I wanted to curse at him but don’t think the words managed to come out)

Montri: “Uhh, sorry, sorry”

(This incident had to happen maybe two more times :/ )

Sometime in the night Montri decided to snack because he was hungry. Remember that all my senses are heightened so when I heard him happily MUNCH on Boy Bawang while reading newsfeeds on Facebook- I got so annoyed at him again. I said something like, “REALLY?! You’re doing that NOW??”

Then at one point he asked me “Is this active labor?” To which I replied angrily, “If THIS isn’t active labor, I don’t know what the F!@# this is!!!” ----that should’ve been his cue to call the midwives. I was so bitchy already!

I attempted to labor in the water because the birthing pool looked so inviting but when I got in, I could not relax- the water was not warm enough and it was too shallow so I ‘ordered’ my husband to heat up the water and add to it. Again, I remember the bitchy me came out. I transferred back to labor on the bed instead.

When my husband noticed that I was no longer calm during my contractions that were so strong and so close together already (at this point, all Hypnobirthing techniques flew out the window! I was exhausted and trembling already and it was getting more challenging just to use slow yogic breaths to keep my body soft) he kept reminding me to use my “Jedi Mind Tricks”. Then when he could no longer massage me with any kind of force to support my back labor, I had asked him to call already the doula, Irina, at least. I knew that he was getting sleepy as well and I didn’t want to labor alone with this intensity.

When she arrived and saw me shaking during contractions and delirious on the bed, I heard her “Oh yeah, SHE IS IN DEEP TRANSITION! Montri, you better call Deborah NOW!”  Montri did manage to call Deborah to come.

Irina massaged my lower back and within minutes I noticed that something in my body was changing. I was wondering why I couldn’t will my body to soften and relax anymore. I looked down to my belly and saw that the coming contractions were making my uterus so very hard, like a cannon ball about to erupt! Then it finally registered, “My body wants to push this baby out!”, I screamed.

Quickly, Irina and Montri helped me get out of the bed and into the birthing pool. Irina mentioned that the pushing stage could take hours. I rolled my eyes and complained thinking that I cannot stand doing this any longer.

Again, I positioned myself on all fours hands over the edges of the pool- this seemed like the only position I could get myself into. Suddenly, I felt a jolt of energy. My sleepiness and exhaustion went away as if someone injected me with mega doses of upper drugs. My eyes dilated and I had difficulty breathing. I was no longer acting human. I truly felt like an animal. Montri panicked saying that I was cross eyed and wasn’t breathing as I was hyperventilating already. He kept urging me, “Breathe!!! Breathe!!” 

I swear if I wasn’t so into the zone I could’ve smacked him because I was trying my hardest to breathe but my body was taking over at this point… then all the holes of my body in spasms, opening in short surges- my eyes popping out, my mouth wanting to vomit, my anal sphincter wanting to poo (*This is the only time I’m grateful for being constipated as one of my fears was that I would poo in the pool during birth!!!), and my vagina  wanting to expel my baby all at the same time. I reached down and felt my baby’s head crowning! My whole body attempted to expel violently 3 to 4 times (during which I was worried because it was happening so very fast without the midwives there! Oh, I felt like I was going to explode. I had tried to breathe my body calm or at least to slow down the process but to no avail) 

Within minutes of getting into the birthing pool, my body’s natural reflexes expelled the baby’s head and then the rest of the body soon followed. I heard my husband shout in an unusually high pitched voice, “Oh my God! She’s out! She’s so big!” flailing his arms upwards with tears in his eyes.

Knowing that the baby was still attached to the placenta within me, I had to turn the other direction with one leg up (huge yogic move right here) and as soon as Irina brought baby upwards to me from the water, I removed the double cord coil we saw on the neck without fuss, like me on auto-pilot. I was still obviously high on hormones. Then I just stared at this awake and alert new little creature looking back at me with huge almond eyes, bubbles coming out of the mouth. I positioned for baby to start suckling on my breast but it quickly found a hand to suck on. Then, baby finally latched after a few tries. It only occurred to me then to double check on the gender. Up to that point, we weren’t sure. So I raised one leg and said out loud, “We have a baby girl!”

I birthed my baby girl on March 14 at around 2:50am just a day earlier than the full moon of the Piscean month. We named our water baby, Sarah Maya.

This is a healing birth because NOW I know why I had to go through a c-section with Santi 7 years ago. It is so I can do a vbac and support other mothers who want to take the road less traveled. Everything always falls into place. You have to trust in your journey, always. 

Continuation to: Sarah Maya’s Lotus Birth read all about it tomorrow when I publish!