Heidi & MaryEllen
at home
Welcome Baby Sequoia
We’re delighted to share this birth
story courtesy of Birth Without
Fear. Birth Without Fear is an online
treasure trove of real life birth stories
from mothers of all walks of life.
Founder January Harshe started
BWF as a simple passion to let
women know they have choices in
childbirth. It then evolved to become
an inspiration and support to women
and their families through their
trying to conceive, pregnancy, birth
and post partum journeys.
Photography by Santa Cruz Birth Photography
On Thursday
at 12:30 a.m.
Heidi woke me up saying “Uh baby, my water
broke.” I sat up to see the
soaked sheet on her side of the bed. We did a
few things around the house to get ready for
labor and having everyone in our house, and
then we tried to sleep. She was having regular contractions for a while, about 7 minutes
apart consistently. Everything was too exciting for us to sleep, so we stayed in bed in the
dark and talked for a while. I fell asleep for
a bit before waking up around 6. We let our
bosses know that we wouldn’t be showing up,
and talked to our midwives, doula, birth photographer, and acupuncturist.
The contractions almost stopped around 8:00,
so we made an appointment with our acupuncturist for 9:15. She had worked with us
throughout the conception and pregnancy,
and we had planned to see her during labor
as well. We stayed there for a couple of hours,
and she worked on different acupuncture
points to help encourage contractions and labor. She told us to go home and go on a walk,
and do some pumping to get contractions
started up again.
Heidi had also set up a visit from the woman
who runs her prenatal singing circle Wombsong, so she came around 1:00 p.m. We expected to be laboring at that point, but since
contractions were still pretty stalled, we were
able to have a beautiful singing session with
her and prepare ourselves mentally and emotionally for labor. It was a wonderful thing
to do, and we are so grateful she was able to
come to us.
After she left, we did some more pumping
and walking and were able to get contractions
going again, but they were not very regular.
Our midwife Sunshine Tomlin came around
7:00 p.m. and talked about options for herbs
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