Birth Story of Philip Gerard
Although our little guy sped into the world in the end, his birth story starts over a month before he was actually born... It truly was one of the most exhausting months of my life, but here we are, just a few days postpartum and it already feels like a flash. And it was all absolutely worth it for our sweet boy!
This pregnancy started out more difficult than all my others with first trimester, all day sickness lasting until the third trimester. And starting in the second trimester I had a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions, after never having much of them at all with Cana or Benedict. So when I hit 37 weeks and officially was “allowed” to have a home birth per the state of Colorado, I felt so ready! And despite going to 42 and 41 weeks with Cana and Benedict I just prayed that Philip would be different and come early. So I got really excited when I started having solid contractions at 37 weeks! Unfortunately, it turned out to just be a cruel and long bout of prodromal labor that would tease us on and off for the next month...
As if on and off contractions weren’t tiring enough, we came down with the only virus that seems to matter in 2021 when I was 38-40 weeks. Frankie was sick for a solid two weeks, I was sick for a week, and the kids were sick for like 0.5 seconds. It wasn’t fun but illness happens and we got through it! Getting sick right as I was due made us all the more grateful for choosing a home birth though and so grateful for our midwife, Mary Kate, who continued to treat us with dignity and amazing care the whole time. Our only worry during our illness was when my water partially broke at 39 weeks but labor didn’t start. We thought we’d have to transfer to the hospital for induction, where Frankie wouldn’t be allowed since he was sick, but thankfully my midwife helped us determine that only the outer layer of my amniotic sac had broken and Philip was still safely tucked away inside!
Once we fully recovered, we were even more ready than before to have this baby. And I was officially due! On my due date (Wednesday), I started having consistent contractions and signs of early labor. After seeing my midwife, she thought it’d be a good idea to try and pick things up throughout the weekend to see if we could get prodromal labor to turn into real labor. Things seemed to pick up over the weekend and Monday night we were up all night long with painful contractions coming every 2-5 minutes. Frankie even set up the birth pool and we called the midwife to give her a heads up. But by late morning, it all fizzled out once again... At my 41 week appointment, two days later, I decided I needed a break and instead of trying to kickstart labor with walking and pumping and everything in between, I would just spend as much time relaxing as possible, instead.
But being 41 weeks pregnant, that meant I also needed to begin accepting the fact that I might need to transfer to the hospital if I didn’t deliver before 42 weeks (Colorado law). We were devastated at the idea of losing out on our dream of having Philip at home, with our amazing midwives, and especially having Cana and Benedict able to be here to meet their brother right away. So we prayed and trusted that God’s plan was bigger and better than ours.
Monday May 10th came, and I was 41 weeks and 5 days pregnant. We had just two short days to have this baby at home and I had not so much as a cramp that morning, let alone any contractions... So I spent the day prepping for the hospital transfer. I made a list of what to pack in a hospital bag and I researched all the local hospitals’ stupid covid restrictions, hoping maybe one would be semi normal... and I cried a lot. I felt defeated and my body felt broken.
Then around 3pm I started getting some mild lower back cramps and Braxton Hicks. I’m talking as mild as they come and definitely super spaced out. I figured it was just another round of prodromal labor ramping up to tease me. I went on with our evening as normal and by about 9pm when Frankie got home from work, I was having some contractions. But everything was still textbook “prodromal labor” and still low in my back, so we went upstairs to bed.
Frankie went to sleep shortly after 9:30 but I couldn’t sleep through my contractions because they were just annoying enough, but not painful or consistent. But I decided to start timing them, just to see. They were starting to come 5-7 minutes apart and lasting for a solid minute each time, but still low in my back and not painful. At best, I thought they might progress through the night and maybe we would have a baby late the next day. But I still wasn’t hopeful and figured they’d fizzle out again. Like they always did. This was still more mild than other rounds I had experienced in the previous weeks.
Then, out of no where, around 11pm a switch flipped and things got painful. I woke up Frankie and told him I think we needed to call our midwife to tell her this might be real labor. He didn’t quite believe me because we had been through this multiple times before in the last month so he felt bad at the idea of calling her in the middle of the night and waking her up. But my next contraction convinced him as I braced myself over our dresser! He made the call at 11:19pm and while on speaker phone, Mary Kate said it sounded like true labor and she would start heading our way. She told Frankie to start setting up the birth pool and suggested I get in the shower for some relief. And so we did.
While I was in the shower my contractions became unbearable and they were on top of each other, only 30-60 seconds apart. I went from saying “I can’t do this” to “is this actually happening” back and forth during each contraction, just in utter disbelief that finally labor had actually started! After a few minutes in the shower, I needed more space and decided to get out. Frankie had just started putting water in the pool so I knew i couldn’t get in it yet for relief, but I didn’t know where else to go. I called Frankie upstairs to help me with contractions as I stood in the bathroom. I told him to call Mary Kate again because this baby was coming soon, I just knew it. In my head I worried that she hadn’t even left her house yet because I thought just mayyybe no one believed that this was real, still. But Frankie got on the phone with her again at 11:42pm and I immediately yelled that the baby was coming and I heard Mary Kate say “21 minutes! I’m 21 minutes away.” And I knew there was no chance she was going to make it.
I felt so much pressure with each contraction and began to feel his head descend really low. But I still had yet to have a single contraction up in my stomach. They were all just low in my pelvis and back. I kept repeating that he was “right there!” So Mary Kate quickly told Frankie that he would need to catch the baby because I was standing up in the bathroom and she explained to him what would happen as the baby was born. He says in that moment he lost it and really freaked out. Thankfully he kept his cool because I had no clue!
As I braced the bathroom wall with one hand, I used my other hand to feel for the baby’s head. It was the most incredible feeling in the world to literally feel his head descend into my hand. My body naturally pushed with each contraction and I didn’t need to actually do it myself, which was something I hadn’t experienced with Cana or Benedict. I had to really think about pushing with them.
All of a sudden I felt a big pop and my water broke. Seconds later I felt his head crown, but then my contraction stopped and my body stopped naturally pushing with it. For about 30 seconds everything stopped and that was the most painful part of the entire process. It felt like eternity but I knew another contraction would come soon and he would be born. Sure enough, another one started, my body naturally started pushing again and out came his head, followed by his wiggly little body just seconds later. I caught him in my hands, Frankie’s hands caught mine, and together we lifted our sweet baby up to my belly. Philip Gerard was finally HERE!
Mary Kate told Frankie to have me lay down exactly where I was and wait there for her to arrive. So down to the bathroom floor we went. I leaned against the tub and held Philip to my belly (his cord was short and wouldn’t reach to bring him to my chest). And then we laughed in complete disbelief that that actually just happened! We had a baby at 11:50pm, in the bathroom, without our midwife, while Cana and Benedict slept soundly in the room next door, just 31 minutes after we thought “maybe this is real labor?”
Mary Kate arrived about 15 minutes later and helped me and Philip into bed. About fifteen minutes after that, Paige, our assistant midwife arrived as well. I nursed Philip, delivered the placenta, and after about an hour or so, Frankie cut the cord so Philip could be weighed and measured. He was 8lbs 8oz and 21.75in long. Everything about him was perfect. Eventually, we got cleaned up and settled into bed. Mary Kate and Paige packed their things and left around 2:30am. We drifted off to sleep in the comfort of our own bed and at 6:30am Cana and Benedict woke up to the surprise of their life!
All of my births have been incredible and utterly life changing for me. But there’s something special about this one that I will hold on to forever. God is good and we are so grateful that he gave Philip Gerard to our family in such a beautiful way.
