The Transformative Power of Birth — My birth story with all the details
By: Angela Mkl Hansen
Tags: Birth, Water Birth, Childbirth, Baby, Home Birth

A Physiological Birth, at home, without trauma, interventions, or tearing

The birth of my son has been the single most empowering experience of my life. I was blessed to have a completely natural, physiological, healthy, supported, informed, planned, and peaceful pregnancy and home birth. My life’s priorities changed as soon as I found out I was pregnant, but the transformation didn’t happen until the birth 9 months later.

I’m 37, been married for 10 years, a PhD student in biological sciences, have traveled the world, and yet I was plagued by self-doubt and low self-esteem. The older I became the worse it got until one year ago, when I became a new woman, it was a complete and almost instantaneous transformation to, as a owner of a local health store put it, a “dragon mother". Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, I was never a shrinking violet, but I never expected to come out of the entire experience feeling so strong, so confident, and so empowered.

Birthing my son was the single most empowering experience of my entire life. It has brought me greater confidence, courage, and joy. My philosophy from the start has been “What would a woman in a cave do?” and it has served me well throughout my pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. As a scientist I did lots of research, prenatal classes and workshops, read books and articles, listened to podcasts and online conferences, and just generally over-loaded myself with information. Luckily my base philosophy of minimalism and nature was there to keep me grounded.

I discovered I was pregnant while studying for my Biological Sciences Research PhD in Tasmania, Australia. It was a particularly difficult and disappointing time in my PhD journey, and after 10 years of marriage my husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for 5 months, so getting pregnant felt like a miracle. I was very excited when I missed my cycle, and over the moon when I got the blood tests back from the doctor 8 weeks later confirming. It was a harrowing time between, like waiting to exhale. I had been tracking my cycles and ovulation, so I was sure when I had gotten pregnant, but at 5 weeks my blood test had a pregnancy hormone level of only 100, so the doctor had me wait two weeks for another blood test, and my home-pregnancy tests didn’t start going positive until the 6 weeks mark. I watched them get darker and darker with each passing day as I used them all up, my excitement growing, and when that second blood test came back with high hormone levels, indicating a good implantation and healthy pregnancy, I cheered.

I felt amazing for about 8 weeks, stronger, more energized, and healthier that I had every felt before. Like I had a ball of fire inside me, and I could feel it glowing and warming and permeating every part of me. I was so happy. I got set-up with the community midwife, began my monthly checks, and started refusing sonograms and doppler. When the doctor said “So you expect us to just take your word for it when your last period was for calculating your due date?” I said “Yes, of course!”.

Over the next two months I got a little nauseous, I had to eat small portions constantly for a while to keep on top of it. I kept fruit and crackers by the side of my bed so I could eat before getting up. I only threw up about four times, twice in one afternoon back to back because I ate a dried fruit bar. Some days all I could eat was bread and cheese, and avocado. I started craving salty French fries and cheap burgers with pickles (no cheese, no lettuce, no tomato), and I HATE pickles. I salted everything, and could no stand onions, garlic, or black pepper on anything. I was very tired in the evenings, sometimes I was in bed by 7 pm, but I woke up early and couldn’t stay in bed. Except for a two terrible weeks, one when I had a bought of hemorrhoids that got so bad they kept me home on the couch and in bed for a whole week with my legs up, and later a week of pressure headaches I couldn’t take anything for, my first trimester was easy, and I was well. As for my PhD, things were still up in the air, I was fighting to stay, but I was considering quitting.

In my second trimester we traveled back home to Vancouver, Canada for a vacation to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary, a family reunion, to officially announce the pregnancy and show off my bump, and to find a birthing support team. The 15 hour flights were no joke, and compression socks were a huge help. It was a very hot summer for Vancouver (2018), so I enjoyed many happy hours swimming and soaking in the glacier fed river near my family home. The dramas of my PhD were also put to rest with a very positive outcome for me, and I was awarded three research grants, but finding a birthing team was more of a challenge. I was rejected by all four midwife teams on the North Shore because of my refusal of elective ultrasounds. My entire pregnancy I had a midwife use doppler once in the second trimester, and then only at the end when I was birthing. All those midwives decided I was too “risky” for them to do a homebirth with me because I was over 35, having my first baby, at home, without sonagrams. I thought I was being the risk averse one! Through referrals and recommendations I found the Strathcona Midwifery Collective, famous in the midwifery community for supporting woman’s informed choice and supporting unconventional birthing, and they were happy to take me as a client, and recommended a doula they work with most often, and who they thought would be a good fit, Jessica Austin, from Birth Takes a Village. My husband and I decided to hire a doula because he was so nervous about the whole having a baby experience.

The next few months went by in a flash with so much work to do. We all became proficient at using a fetoscope. I purchased mine on Amazon and used it every day. I wasn’t as active as I planned, or as good at avoiding sugar, and I started snoring and using my husband as a body pillow, and everything else went well, and I was able to do everything I needed to. We traveled back to Vancouver before my 32 week mark, this time with a wonderful layover in Hawaii where I snoozed on the beach and snorkeled, feeling weightless and wonderful.

Waimanalo, Oahu, Hawaii © Angela Hansen.

Back home in Vancouver, at my mom’s house we get serious about preparing for baby to come, and we had a wonderful to months to do it. Christmas and New Years came and went. My due date was the 15th of January, and it came, and went. As the days and weeks passed I had people from all parts of my life, and all levels of acquaintanceship go out of their way to contact me to share horror stories, to warn me, and to petition me to get an induction or C-section. It was awful! I did my hypnobabies positive affirmations daily, read the blog posts on wisewomanwayofbirthing.com, and because very practiced at ignoring what people were saying and remaining calm. I knew what I was doing, and my choices felt right. I didn’t want to hurry anything. Baby was okay, I was okay, and I was taking my birthing preparation herbs every day. My worst fear was that something would go wrong and I would HAVE to go to the hospital, but I had every confidence and hope that everything would go right and I would birth naturally at home without any issues, and without any snow outside.

On Friday, February 8th, I got a massage at home in the evening, and later during dinner I felt something give and I stood up quickly and felt amniotic fluid trickle down my legs. Something was happening, I had to put towels down everywhere I went for the next 24 hours, and every time I laughed, coughed, or, God forbid, sneezed, I lost some fluid. So I drank lots, rested, and waited. My midwives were happy to hear something was happening.

Saturday, February 9th, I relaxed, did normal things, my sister-in-law gave me an acupuncture treatment at home, and a foot massage, and by evening I was having consistent pressure waves every 8–10 minutes. Then came my poor husband’s sleepless night as I continued to have them all night.

Sunday, February 10th, I was 44+0 weeks, and I was up by 8:00 am feeling energized, and I left Paul to sleep for a couple more hours. Turns out he had been up every 10 minutes all night recording my waves, poor thing! Around the same time it started to snow. I made breakfast in bed for him, between pressure waves, which were now 5 minutes apart. I updated the team and my mom, and puttered around until midday when waves became 2–3 minutes apart, and I knew I’d be meeting my baby very soon and I was feeling excited that my birthing time was finally happening!

As the day progressed the snow was coming down heavier. My doula Jessica and her trainee Talia came over early afternoon and started getting things ready and settling in. It was nice to not monitor my waves anymore. I relaxed, wrote in my journal, and I started feeling pushy about an hour later. It all came on quite gradually, and built in intensity steadily. At the time it felt like it took forever, but in reality it all happened quite quickly.

Hanging off of the bathroom sink so I could squat deeply when my pressure waves peaked helped, also hanging off of my husband, the window sill, the change table, or the counter. Counter-pressure on my pelvis helped, and I did lots of moaning, but the thing that felt the best was biting, and I almost left a mark on poor Paul on his chest, and again on his arm near the end. He had to jump back, and I held back. The sensations were very powerful and intense with stretching and deep discomfort in my pelvis, I was surprised how much, but I trusted the process and had faith everything was going just as it should and would be fine, and I would be holding my baby very soon. I wish I had been able to relax in the pool sooner, or had gotten in the shower, but I was a bit nervous about slowing things down, I wanted it to be over as soon as possible.