Assalamualaikum (peace be with you)!

Welcome to my first ever blog post. This one is special because I haven’t shared this life-changing birth story of my first born, Zane, on social media publicly. I wrote this shortly after I gave birth (February 2021) and have made a few tweaks since. Grab a cuppa and sit back. I hope you enjoy!

Background

When I found out I was pregnant, I knew that I didn't want to give birth in the hospital. With COVID-19 restrictions, there weren't many options for women to give birth outside the hospital in Victoria. There weren’t and still aren’t any active birth centres, and the only way to access homebirth for us was through Sunshine Hospital's homebirth program or to hire a private midwife (which I didn’t know much about at the time). So, at 7 weeks pregnant, I wrote an email to the homebirth program hoping I would get in. To my surprise, I did.

I fully recognise my privilege of having a low-risk pregnancy and being able to access the Joan Kirner’s publicly-funded homebirth program. Although it’s an amazing offering, I wish that there were more hospitals providing homebirth as an option in their care, making it more accessible for more women.

My pregnancy

I experienced mild pregnancy sickness in the first trimester but felt great throughout. The program has fairly strict selection criteria, and I had to maintain low-risk status throughout the pregnancy to be cleared for a homebirth. Toward the end of my pregnancy, they noticed that I had a hyperactive thyroid, which required extra blood testing. I should’ve been cleared by week 36, but I didn’t get the green light until I was 38 weeks. I wasn’t worried at the time, I believe that Allah is the best planner and if it was my rizq to give birth at home then I would.

The Story

At 38 weeks, the hospital finally cleared me for a homebirth. On the Friday (5th Feb), my husband took a day off so we could spend the day together. We picked up the birth pool in the morning and went to the city for lunch. Around 12:30 pm, as we were having lunch, I started to feel irregular mild cramping, like period pains, strong enough to make me uncomfortable. After lunch, my husband drove me to my massage appointment. Let me tell you, it was the best pregnancy massage I had ever had; I obviously fell asleep. As I was getting dressed after, I felt something coming out of me. I went to the bathroom to check and there it was, my mucus plug. It looked like a long strain of slightly bloody mucus. That’s when I knew labor was near.

That afternoon, we had planned to go grocery shopping and cook some meals to freeze in preparation for after birth (yes I know I left it to the last minute). We debated whether to go home and relax or do some shopping. I knew my body was starting to open up, but we weren’t sure how long it would take. It could be a few hours or a few days until labor started. I was feeling fine, so we decided to go grocery shopping.

We got home around 6 pm, and I started cooking. Since we had just picked up the pool that day, we hadn’t had the chance to test it. We weren’t sure how long it would take to pump and fill it up. We didn’t have anything to blow it up either, so my husband went to Bunnings and got an electric pump. He came back and started inflating the pool. At this point, I was so into my cooking that I didn’t think I was going to give birth that night. We genuinely thought I was only going through the latent phase of labor and that it would take a few days. My husband thought he'd test out the pool to prepare for the big day. So we thought, hahaha.

A few hours passed, and as I finished up, I noticed the irregular cramping had returned. I decided to take a shower and then lay down on my bed to feel my baby's movements. I was relieved when I felt him moving. Around 9:30 pm, as I lay on my bed, I noticed the surges were getting intense, so I started timing them on my phone. I called my midwife to inform her that I’d lost my mucus plug and my surges were 2 to 3 minutes apart and 30 seconds to 1 minute long, but they were irregular. She told me that I was definitely in early labor. It still hadn’t hit me yet that I might be meeting my baby that night. All I could focus on was my breathing techniques and what I’d learned from my hypnobirthing class.

A few hours later, the surges kept coming, still bearable enough for me to make a few phone calls to my parents in Indonesia and my friends in Sydney while bouncing on my ball. At around 11:30 pm, the surges were getting more intense. I couldn’t sit on the ball anymore, so I naturally transitioned to all fours. I remembered it was the only position I could feel somewhat comfortable in. I asked my husband to apply counterpressure on my hips as I breathed through the surges. I put on a TENS machine on my lower back, but it made the pain worse for me, so I stopped using it. I called the midwife again, and she heard me going through a surge and said that I was definitely in active labor, but the surges weren’t long enough for her to come in just yet. Within that half-hour, things really intensified, so I called the midwife again around midnight, told her my surges were a minute long and two minutes apart. She could hear me moaning through the phone and knew she had to start making her way to our house.

I spent the next hour in our living room, leaning over the birthing ball, listening to surah Maryam, screaming out to my husband every time the surges were coming in to apply pressure on my hips. He was setting up my birthing space at the same time. He lit up all the candles we had at home, kept the room dimmed, turned on the diffuser, and made our living room feel like a spa, just how I liked it.

The first midwife arrived at 1 am. She came in, set up the resus kit, and greeted me. At this point, I was feeling tired. I told my husband that I was falling asleep, in hindsight I was probably was in transition. The midwife took my blood pressure and checked the baby’s heart rate and asked if I wanted to be internally examined. I hesitated because it had only been a few hours since I had been in labor, and I didn’t want to be discouraged if I hadn’t made much progress yet. But she said it’s better for her to check now before I jump in the pool, so I didn’t have to go in and out of it. So, she checked me and said, “um, you’re about 8 or 9 cm dilated, but I’m going to be mean and say it’s 8 cm.” I couldn’t believe it. I had done it all by myself and was so in control over my body.

I jumped in the pool and instantly felt relaxed. The next surge that came, I felt the need to push. The surges were so powerful that they pushed some poop out, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. And my husband saw it all, must have been a very attractive sight. LOL. I was making noises I never thought I had in me, and I was so loud that I was afraid I’d wake the neighbors. At 2 am, the second midwife arrived. She came and greeted me quietly, stroked my hair, and reassured me that I was doing amazing. There was something about those soft touches that made me feel safe and motivated to keep going.

There I was, in the birthing pool, still on all fours with my husband behind me putting pressure on my hips. There was a special moment during these last few pushes; I felt an out-of-body experience. I was present, yet not in control of my body anymore. It was doing it all by itself, like I was on autopilot. The only thing I could control was my breathing. I had no choice but to surrender. I recited the Shahadah (an Islamic oath) a few times between pushes to remind me that this process is bigger than me, that there is nothing I could do to stop it but to let go.

At the second-to-last push, the baby’s head popped out. My husband told me it looked like an alien because the head was still inside the sack. I reached down to feel his head; it felt like jelly. That’s when I knew that my water hadn’t broken yet. At the next push, at 2:28 am, our beautiful son was born, en caul (membrane still intact). I lifted him up out of the water onto my chest, ripping open the membrane that was still covering him, and said, “Oh my God, you’re real.” We named him Zane Harris, after his grandfathers.

It was incredible. I couldn’t believe that I did it.

**Zane Harris**

Born at 2.28am
50cm long
3.5kg heavy

After

The midwives stayed until 6am, they tucked me in bed and left. My husband had passed out by then but I couldn’t sleep. I was so high on oxytocin and adrenalin that I felt like I could run a marathon. I stayed in bed all day, calling all our relatives and shared the news. At some point during the day, my husband cleared out the pool and clean the house. We buried the placenta the next day in our backyard. I devoured some bubur kacang hijau (mung bean porridge made with coconut milk and ginger) that I had made during labour. It was so warming and comforting. The best thing I could have immediately post-birth.

The Birth of Zane