💎Opal’s Birth Story🌸
The morning of I woke up and had some bloody show, but nothing else out of the ordinary. When I went to go leave for work, I kissed my husband, Jeremiah, goodbye and said, “get ready to meet our daughter soon.”
Half past noon I started having what I thought were just cramps. After going to the bathroom, I realized I lost my mucous plug. By 1pm the cramps started to have a pattern to where I began timing them. In between conversations with coworkers I realized it was time to get serious and make my way home before things got stronger. Trying to take my mind off of the discomfort, I left work early, cleared the rest of my afternoon schedule, and went in search of a mailbox to send my thank you cards from the baby shower. The rest of my drive home became intense so I FaceTimed my best friend to keep me focused between what I then realized were true contractions spaced about 15 minutes apart.
When I got home I ate a high protein and carb meal to fuel my body, hydrated with water and electrolytes, and started to bake a cake to sing happy birthday to our daughter, Opal, when she arrived. Halfway through baking the cake I had to stop because my contractions made it hard to focus. I reached out to my husband to come home and help set up the birthing pool. By the time he got home my contractions quickly went from 15 minutes to 5 minutes apart. I started to use a TENs unit on my lower back to help manage the surges. The marvelous man of a husband that he is he managed to time my contractions, set up the birthing pool, call the doula and midwives, and finish baking the cake for me without burning it, all while giving me hip squeezes during contractions.
By 7pm, my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart, so I got into the birthing pool. Shortly after my doula arrived, followed by my midwife. After my very first cervical check of the entire pregnancy, my midwife said I was completely effaced and that she could feel Opal’s hair.
Contractions were at its peak from here on out. I had various pain relief techniques lined up like cold wash clothes soaked in essential oils and a personalized playlist. With the help of my birth team and my husband, I transitioned to various locations throughout the room to help make more room in my pelvis: sitting reversed on the toilet with one leg up on a stool (where my water broke conveniently), kneeling lunge while in the birthing pool, side lying on the bed with internal rotation - trying to connect to my pelvic floor in this position, my midwife helped to apply pressure to the muscles that I needed to isolate to help bring Opal down. Having a better understanding of my coordination, I got back in the birthing pool on all fours around 11pm.
My husband held me up by my arms as my body took over holding Opal in the birth canal to help with slowly stretching the perineum. I didn’t feel the ring of fire as strongly as I had imagined it to be - I felt more pressure towards the top of my pubic bone. My doula and midwife described to me as they watched her forehead start to emerge. Soon enough her head was born which I was then able to reach down and feel her hair.
As the song “I was made for loving you” by Tori Kelly and Ed Sheeran came on, I did controlled breathing through my last contraction as the rest of Opal’s body entered the world and she was passed under the water in front of me. There I held her in my arms in the pool where I birthed the placenta. I transitioned onto the bed where we soaked up the rest of the golden hour. Jeremiah fed me some food as the midwife and doula gave me some coconut water.
An hour and 45 minutes after the birth, Jeremiah cut the cord. Funny enough, even with the significantly delayed cord clamping, there was still a bunch of blood left in the cord that shot across the room. My doula made a beautiful painting from her placenta as a keep sake and created a tincture for us to use indefinitely.
Soon after, the midwife started to do the newborn exam. Opal was 7 pounds 9 ounces, 19.5 inches long. Born on 4.14.23 at 11:14.14pm (23:14 military time). She had a positive blood type and since mine is negative I decided to get a shot of Rhogam. I had minimal perineal tearing which I decided to still get sutured for proper healing. Jeremiah then had some skin to skin time with Opal as I showered and peed for the first time postpartum. The rest of the night was blissful. It felt like it was all a dream (Jeremiah even woke up in the middle of the night asking in a state of delirium if I birthed the placenta yet), but then we woke up the next morning with our daughter in our arms and our hearts so full of a love that we never imagined was possible.
