Friends, it's finally here: my fourth (and final) birth story. I'm sharing how Kelvin and I went from "we'll have three" to parenting our way into a fourth baby, and what it was like to get pregnant and receive maternity care as an expat in the Netherlands. As someone who loves this work, I got to see that midwifery model up close, and I'll be honest about the hard parts too, like language barriers and a fragmented system that left me biking home twice after a midwife couldn't find a heartbeat. Then we moved back to the U.S. halfway through the pregnancy and I felt amazing, but I was wrestling with a due date that landed right around my mom's heaven day, and with the question of when we grieve and when we celebrate.

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Then we get to the birth itself: a sneaky Sunday morning, a very precipitous labor, and just 19 minutes in the hospital. I talk about laboring on hands and knees, experiencing the fetal ejection reflex for the first time, the baby girl who came out screaming, and why I was so sure I'd torn when I hadn't at all. I also talk about what it's like to process a birth this fast, when your brain needs time to catch up to what your body just did, and the gift Kelvin was as a birth partner who owned that room. This birth felt redemptive and normal in the best way, and it was bittersweet to close the book on this chapter. Grab a snack, because this one is full of joy and gratitude.

Listen to my other birth stories:

• Labor Nurse's First Unmedicated Hospital Birth with Midwives | Episode 01
• Labor Nurses's Second, Unmedicated, Fast Birth with D-MER and PPA During PostpartumEpisode 13
• Labor Nurse's 3rd Fast, Unmedicated Hospital Birth with Midwives | Episode 40

Helpful Timestamps:

• 00:00 My Fourth Birth Story
• 07:33 Pregnant in the Netherlands
• 15:05 Due Date and Grief Milestones
• 16:25 Early Labor Signs Overnight
• 22:55 Active Labor Car Ride
• 30:49 Water Breaks On Floor
• 34:13 Afterbirth And No Tear
• 36:21 Processing The Fetal Ejection Reflex
• 37:26 Redemptive Final Birth

About your host:

Lo Mansfield, MSN, RNC-OB, CLC is a registered nurse, mama of 4, and a birth, baby, and motherhood enthusiast. She is both the host of the Lo & Behold podcast and the founder of The Labor Mama.

For more education, support and “me too” from Lo, please visit her website and check out her online courses and digital guides for birth, breastfeeding, and postpartum/newborns. You can also follow @thelabormama and @loandbehold_thepodcast on Instagram and join her email list here.

For more pregnancy, birth, postpartum and motherhood conversation each week, be sure to subscribe to The Lo & Behold podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen!

A request: If this episode meant something to you, would you consider a 5 star rating and leaving us a review? Yes, we read them, and yes, they help keep L & B going! ♥️

Connect with Lo more on: INSTAGRAM | TIK TOK | PINTEREST | FACEBOOK

Disclaimer

Opinions shared by guests of this show are their own, and do not always reflect those of The Labor Mama platform. Additionally, the information you hear on this podcast or that you receive via any linked resources should not be considered medical advice. Please see our full disclaimer here.

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Produced and Edited by Vaden Podcast Services

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Drumroll, friends.

We are finally getting after it.

Today is the day of my fourth birth story and I'm sure none of you have been waiting on pins and needles, but I have shared my first three, and I have not yet shared my fourth.

So I'll just say before we go any further, if you wanna listen to the first ones, because yeah, I do feel like all of our births inform the ones that come after them, right?

And mine definitely do because you hear me talk about my mom and I lost her during my first one, and so you'll hear about that.

My second one was deeply impacted by the grief and kind of the tragedy that I had just walked through.

My third one was more redemptive after the first two being so broken.

You know, and then of course there's all these patterns and rhythms inside of my births that just continued to be true in each subsequent birth.

So if you wanna listen to those and you haven't yet, or you're just jumping in here with me, episode one of the podcast is my very first birth story, episode 13 is the second, and episode 40 is my third birth story.

So we will link all those in the show notes, and go spend 45 minutes on each of those, however long they are, do that math, and listen to those before you come back here.

But if you don't want to, really quick summary of those births.

Let's just say I typically deliver around 39 weeks or so.

That's what all, has happened in all my pregnancies.

My labors are fast, and they've gotten faster and faster, and that we've never found out what we were having, so it's always been a surprise up to that point.

So way more nuance, way more to talk about, but you know, those are just some general things that have always been true inside of each of my births, and that brings you here to the story of my fourth birth.

Now, why has it taken me so long to share this one?

Because yeah, it's been years.

I'm actually watching the monitor right now while this little one naps to see if I can bust this out before she wakes up.

Essentially, I think the reality of why have we not shared this story is that life is crazy with four children.

And I wanna start there because I actually think that whole deciding to have a fourth baby thing is a, is a big part of this story.

Now, I'm not going to get into all the nuances of Calvin and I deciding to have a fourth baby, but I do think that's always part of our pregnancy and our birth stories is, how did we get here, right?

What did it look like to get pregnant?

What was that pregnancy like?

All of that before we get to the birth.

in general, I never thought I'd have four kids.

I'll give you this brief kind of overview of this story.

I thought I'd have three, and I don't really know why specifically.

I grew up as one of three girls.

Seemed like enough.

Two didn't seem like quite enough.

Cal and I both wanted a lot of kids that just general, yeah, we want a few kids type idea.

We'd never really talked about having four.

So we were very sure that we would have the third one.

And the fourth one, I say we more parented our way into it.

If you've been around here for a while, you know that after we had our third baby, about a year later, Cal and I started talking about moving to Europe, specifically to the Netherlands, and we got to actually do that.

So he was our COVID baby, and then about a year-ish later, we started this process to move over to the Netherlands.

And then we got to spend, it was like a two-year full cycle, about 18 months in country with a house, with school, with job, all of that, with our three kids at the time.

So we had the two girls from our first two birth stories, of course, and then we had our boy.

And during that time, because after our son's birth, we did not feel that immediate, like we're good.

And also for us, we got a little boy, we have our girls, we get to raise both.

This is it.

This is our last baby.

We just didn't have that.

But we also weren't absolute that we were having more children.

I just never really went there in my head.

I just was focused on this third one at that point, was delighted to have a boy, and then didn't have any surety or clarity.

And so we said, "Let's table this." Started planning this move to Europe a few months later, and that kind of took over in a way that we wanted to, right?

We're gonna live over there.

We're gonna have this adventure.

We don't have to decide about having a fourth baby right now.

I don't wanna go over there pregnant.

I don't wanna have a baby right there.

I don't want that time to be consumed by having a baby or something.

Let's go have this adventure and we'll talk about it later.

So eventually, when we knew we were moving back to the US, 'cause we knew we were going over there with about that two-year timeline, we started then to talk about, do we want that fourth baby?

Do we wanna try and then see if we could get pregnant while we're over here, finish out this last year that we have here, go back and have the baby in the States?

Something like that.

And Cal and I were really on the same page, and I'd love to do a podcast episode on this, so stay tuned for that, this kind of should you have another baby conversation, what that has looked like for us, what it might look like for you, things to consider, things that we talked about, but we were just on the same page in a lot of things.

And what I remember the most about those combos was just this idea of we had a really similar vision for The future 15 years from now, let's say 15 years, right?

And just this idea of having these four young adults, these lives to help steward and help shape and support them in careers, the relationships that they might have.

Now, we're probably idealizing how lovely that can be, but maybe some of you have already had your babies and you're saying, "Yeah, no, the vision is good. It's fun to have that full table." And maybe you're saying that… But either way, we just had this vision.

We still have this vision, and we thought, yeah, we love the idea of one more kid, one more sibling, one more child, one more life to kind of steward, particularly in these older years, too.

We just thought, what a cool gift to get to have these young adults as well, and get to do life with them as their parents when they're older, too.

Y'all know I had no problem having another baby or being pregnant or breastfeeding or any of that.

I was on board for that stuff.

But we really just had this shared vision of the future, too.

And I think part of the reason we had that future vision and needed to talk through it and know that we shared it was because the reality is, is having four kids was gonna be really hard.

Having four littles was gonna be really hard.

At the time, our kids were about six, four, and two.

And so I knew, yo, we're going back to the trenches.

Yes, our gaps had gotten bigger between each child, which always makes me laugh.

So our first two were 21 months apart, and then it was about two years apart, and then it was two and a half years apart.

And now this gap, if we were able to get pregnant, let's say quickly, would be about three years apart.

So we definitely needed more time to get back to the place where we thought we had enough margin to consider another baby, and we had done that again, right?

And we'd had this adventure, too, which probably messed with our, let's call it our timeline a little bit.

But we were in this place where we were gonna have a larger gap, and still we're saying, "This is gonna be hard. This is gonna take all that we have. Any margins that we feel like we have with our three kids right now are gonna disappear, and are we okay with that?"

And again, we're gonna talk about that in a different podcast episode and let you just hear kind of Calvin flesh all that out, too.

But in these conversations, we both were on the same page, which was a sweet thing to, to just sit in and know we both want this.

We don't have to convince each other.

We're not necessarily praying, like, "Change my heart, change his, bring our hearts together."

Like, we were there.

And so that was really, I just think, a really sweet privilege for, for both of us to be in that same place.

We were able to get pregnant quickly once we'd made that decision, and I say that With just so much gratitude.

I, I think that's such a tender space.

Like, even the idea of deciding to have a fourth baby, someone could hear that and say, "Lucky you that you even get to decide," and kind of have that ownership over it.

and we did, and I'm so grateful because we had gone into it saying, " We would like to try this.

If it doesn't work or for some reason you can't get pregnant or maybe you're older or whatever, we're gonna stick with the three that we have.

We're not gonna pursue extensive means to get pregnant." So we were going for just the regular old-fashioned way, and that was the only kind of thing we were gonna put towards it.

And so we knew that.

Obviously saying that out loud is different than having to deal with the reality that you don't want, but was just so grateful to be able to get pregnant, to be able to pursue having that fourth baby that we had at that point really envisioned then for ourselves, for our kids, for our lives.

The sweetest, hardest, most interesting part of that pregnancy really as we stepped into it was living in the Netherlands.

This was the coolest experience too.

I guess I left that adjective out.

But being in another country and receiving maternity care when that is my life and that is what I love, so cool, so interesting.

And so I loved getting to step into that system as someone who was pregnant and really get to experience it from that lens.

It was also tough.

There were language barriers that were really hard to overcome.

Their healthcare system is really fragmented, and by that I mean here in the US we're used to walking into some big hospital and they have blood work and they have radiology and they have ultrasound, and if you're in birth or you need surgery, we have interventional radiology, we have IR, we have C-section suites, we have PACU.

Like, we have everything right where you need it pretty commonly, and I know there's OB deserts and care deserts that it doesn't look like this.

But in general, the US expectation is you're pretty quickly gonna get what you need, especially the things that are normal or standard in birth or during pregnancy.

And so it was a really interesting experience to go see these midwives, which midwives are pretty universal there.

You only see an OBGYN if you had, like, a prior high-risk birth or there's a really specific indication that you need an OB, you're at more higher risk.

Otherwise, everybody sees midwives, and that's the way their care model is set up for maternity care.

Obviously fine with that, right, because I've done midwives for all my births, so love that.

The Netherlands is also the home birth capital of the world, and I know sometimes we think that means, oh, they must have 90% of births at home.

They don't.

The number hovers around, like, 10, 15% or so, but compared to the US, who's right around 1% or so, maybe 1.5%, that number has kinda tripled in the last few years, but that's tripling from about half a percent.

So they have a lot of home births.

But they still do have hospital births.

But I share that just to say, in general, they do have this midwifery model of care.

Birth is a normal event.

Lots of people are having birth at home.

Lots of people are choosing to do it unmedicated.

Just a little bit of a different kind of perspective or look Or grasp on the birth process.

But like I said, that fragmentation of care really is and was a challenge for me.

I definitely had some language issues and language barriers.

All of my midwives spoke English as a second language, but I still sometimes was saying, "I don't know where to go for my blood work.

I don't understand what these orders say.

Everything's coming in Dutch.

I'm using Google Translate trying to figure out what facility I can go to with my insurance." It was just a really interesting experience to be an expat in need of a really specific type of medical care, and it certainly was available to me, but it was still challenging to get.

I think one specific part of that story, that idea of fragmentation, that was so hard in this pregnancy was I had this happen twice.

So prenatal appointments early on, they don't see you until you're 12 weeks pregnant.

So they saw me around 10 weeks, ordered my ultrasound for 12 weeks, but that early appointment was just establishing kind of who I am and trying to get me and, you know, this kind of American universal insurance figured out, stuff like that.

And then they said, "Okay, at 12 weeks you're gonna have an ultrasound." And so, like I said, typically our ultrasounds are right there in office, and you can do everything all at once.

So there, I go to my first ultrasound, no big deal.

Ride a bike there, the whole deal.

I'm riding a bike to all my appointments throughout, so it really was an interesting, sweet experience in that regard too.

And I had that ultrasound, and then I'm going to my follow-up appointments, you know, my s- 16 week or an 18 week, some of those.

And at two of them, midwife can't find baby's heartbeat on Doppler Obviously y'all know that's not a great experience, especially when you're 14 weeks and 18 weeks and 20, and you're kind of like, "We should be able to find it at this point," right?

That's how most of us feel.

It's definitely how I feel.

And here in the US, they would immediately pull an ultrasound, you know, into the room or send you to ultrasound.

You'd probably get an ultrasound pretty quickly to verify, yeah, your baby's doing okay.

There's a heartbeat.

The Doppler just not working or they're in a weird position.

Not true here, right?

So these midwife offices, a lot of them aren't outfitted with all the things.

They just have a basic Doppler.

And so in those moments of being unsure if I still had a live baby at the time, the plan of care was to go to an ultrasound appointment later in the day, which is in a to- another town.

It requires a train ride or a car or a bike.

I mean, some of them, we couldn't even bike there, so we had to figure that out.

And so I'm riding my bike home after this appointment, unable to find baby's heartbeat and wondering if they're okay and, the setup is to just go to an ultrasound appointment a couple hours and, and figure it out.

And so that happened twice.

Super annoying.

Super frustrating.

It felt like, can you just get some better Dopplers?

Like, what is going on here?

This is not a very kind setup for someone who is worried that their pregnancy is no longer viable.

So definitely not my favorite part about being pregnant, but overall, just loved experiencing the care model there.

I had my 20-week ultrasound there as well, so it was just fun.

I mean, they're not that different, right?

They're looking at the whole baby, and I had that right before we moved back to the United States.

So when we moved back to the US, I was about halfway through my pregnancy.

Again, it was right around 20 weeks.

My providers here wanted to s- obviously see me get care established again.

All my records and stuff, we got transferred over here, of course, but they did wanna redo the 20-week ultrasound and just kind of have their own record, which I was totally fine with.

And so we went ahead and did a 20-week ultrasound again here in the US, and they kind of changed my due dates based on how baby looked.

And the technicians in the Netherlands had told me that I had a marginal cord insertion or one that was, like, right on the edge of the placenta, and then my ones here in the US said, "No, you don't. It looks great." And so there were some little differences and discrepancies in what was seen, but overall, you know, nothing super different.

Nothing… You know, no red flags.

It's not what I'm saying at all.

But we kind of established a, a baseline here in the US.

The due dates were not so different that it was this big medical, clinical issue.

Not at all.

I actually agreed with the US due date more because I was pretty sure I knew when I had conceived.

And so in my head, that due date, which they had pushed out into later in the spring by about five or six days, was more the due date that I had rolling in my head from, from that point on

So I told you I was 20 weeks along, right?

So we have a few more months.

We've just moved back to the US, so we're transitioning back.

That expat transition back to your home country is kind of funky, weird.

That could be a whole other topic.

So we're trying to handle our emotions, trying to handle the kids.

I really- the pregnancy feels more centered around and that stuff.

I felt great.

Physically, I felt amazing.

My third pregnancy, if you listen to that birth story, that's the episode 41, I felt miserable.

I was physically just so uncomfortable, and I was nervous to get pregnant again and thought I cannot feel that badly.

It was so rough last time, and I felt great.

So I accredited it maybe to riding my bike for those two years and being outside and eating maybe the less processed, healthier European food.

I have no idea if any of that's true, but I just physically felt so good.

No SPD, no back pain, none of that.

It was just a really good pregnancy, and toward the end of it, I really was at a place where I was not hopeful baby would come early.

I mean, I would have sat there happily and gone right past my due date.

I would not have minded at all.

So that was kind of a new thing.

In my other stories I share, you know, especially second and third story, I hit 39 weeks, and I'm like, "I'm ready to have this baby," because that's what had happened in the prior stories.

We all know that isn't true.

That's not how it always works.

But it had happened to me like that so far, and so I hit 39 weeks or was creeping close to that and was like, "You can stay in, baby.

I am in no rush.

I do not need to know what's going on in there.

You do not have to come out right now." So that was very much my mentality heading into those last weeks of pregnancy.

I do not ever get checked.

I don't do cervical exams.

I just kind of, like, let it lie, and so that's where we were at leading up to the end of the pregnancy, feeling good, navigating kind of our transition back, trying to get the house back in order.

It had been an Airbnb while we were in the Netherlands, and really just, just feeling great.

The one hang-up I would say about, I mentioned my due date, you know, kind of getting changed here in the US, not that anyone really cared about those days switching around at all.

But my due date, regardless of whether you take the Dutch due date or the American one, hovered right around the day, we call it her heaven day, but the day that my mom had died, and I had a lot of feelings about that.

So the Dutch had said that my due date was on the 28th, and the United States had said that my due date was on May 5th.

So I just had a lot of feelings about having a baby around that day and actually having a baby on that day.

And so I kinda was wrestling with I definitely don't want that to happen.

As y'all know, my first daughter was born on my mother's birthday, and then I was facing the very real possibility that my last baby might come on my mother's heaven day.

And it makes these days really complicated.

It's kind of like a when do you grieve, when do you celebrate?

They feel heavy for me, but they also are great because I had a child on my mom's birthday, which is an incredible gift.

And so it was just kinda messy, and I also thought, "Is that also really beautiful? Should I want the baby to come on April 29th because it's like this beautiful bookend to my mom's life that just covers her life with legacy?" I don't know.

It was a lot of things going on in my head.

Obviously, we have no control over that.

So I went to bed on a Saturday night.

I was 39 and two.

The next day, the 29th, was, the day that my mom had died.

Or I'm sorry, I went to bed and I was 39 and two, and the next day would be April 28th, so the day before my mom had died.

And I went to bed, and I just had no idea, no thought, no conception that labor was coming, which is always true for me.

I don't spend I haven't spent days in prodromal labor or any of that.

And as I was sleeping that night, again, happily pregnant and not in any real hurry, I just had a couple, like, twinges overnight that I didn't even notice until I woke up the next morning, and then was and, in recall thinking, " Did I have a contraction or two overnight?"

Like, 3:00 AM, right?

And then one at 5:00 AM or something like that.

And so it was not something that I was writing home about, waking Calvin up about.

It wasn't waking me up and making me think anything.

But I just remembered it the next morning.

And so I got out of bed around 6:00, just woke up normally, remembered this.

My second daughter got up early.

She always does, and so she was in the bathroom with me.

And I just started getting ready for the day.

I thought, " Well, obviously I'm awake before everyone else, so why not get ready?

And if I have a baby, well, why not get ready?" So I got myself ready, for the day.

I think maybe I had one or two contractions in that hour, so we're talking, like, 30 to 50 minutes apart.

You know, something like that.

There's no pattern.

This is not labor.

00 I woke up Cal and I said, "Hey, just want you to know I've had some contractions, right? So maybe this'll turn into something today. You should probably just get up and get ready." You know, that little bit of history of I have fast labors in my head, so if this were to turn into something real, that might happen really fast.

So he got out of bed.

We were just hanging with the kids.

They were all awake by 7:00 or so.

And then just from 7:00 to 8:00 it was just a Sunday morning.

I was super grateful it was Sunday morning.

I had a lot of fear and anxiety leading into this birth about who's gonna take care of the kids.

Things re- really go really fast.

What if no one can get here in time?

What if it's the middle of the night?

We don't have this really clear-cut plan, you know, like, we're calling grandma, she'll be here in 10.

We don't have that available to us, and so this is always a really big stressor for me because I want people to be available.

I don't want it to be in the middle of the night.

I don't know how to handle if one of my kids is at preschool and one is home napping, and, you know, Auntie Allison's at work, and the neighbor down the street is at work.

It just, we don't really have this really beautiful plan.

And so I was so grateful that it was a Sunday morning, 'cause it was this idea of, if this turns into something, it's Sunday, and everybody's home, and they can just, you know, they can just show up for us, if we need them to.

So we had a few… I say we.

I, I had a few contractions, maybe, like, three in that hour.

Enough to just still kind of be paying attention, I guess.

I was not tracking anything.

I wasn't… You know, Calvin wasn't noticing.

The kids certainly weren't asking.

It was just this little bit of like, " Okay, body, are you gonna go into labor, or what's going on here?"

And we ended up around 8:00, and this is probably totally driven by Calvin, but we ended up texting Allison, the cousin, and we let Monet, our photographer, know that I was having contractions.

'Cause I had had nothing up until this point, right?

And so it was like, well, this is a signal.

We gotta pay attention to it.

And so we just let them know, "Hey- you know, "Loz had some contractions overnight.

She's not in labor, but, like, maybe it'll turn into labor.

Just giving you the heads-up." But again, like nothing was going on.

We weren't tracking.

We were just hanging, hanging with the kids and having a Sunday morning.

And then between, like, 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM I think it was a combo of having enough contractions that I thought, "Okay, I have to pay attention to these."

Not in a this hurts so bad way, but just a you can't pretend like this isn't happening because there's people who are counting on you type of thing.

Like, do you need to think about the kids?

Do you need to be thoughtful about that?

What if this turns into labor?

Are you prepared?

And so in that time, Cal and I just decided to ask our cousin to come over and just take the kids to her house.

It was like, they can play with their cousins, and if this turns into labor, they're gonna be in a safe place.

And, like, why, why would we try to make it chaotic?

So still was not in labor.

Felt really foolish kind of acting as if I were, but also knew that it could become real very quickly.

Which, again, is just my MO, if you've listened to my other stories.

So we call Allison.

She's already like, "Yeah, you're gonna have a baby, but whatever," 'cause she knows that I do this.

I did it with my third baby, too, and she was a part of that.

So she comes over, and she gets the kids, and at this point it's around 9:00 or so, and I may be creeping up on what I would say is, like, a true early labor pattern.

You know, five, one, one or six, one, one or, you know, every… They're consistent every five to six minutes, okay?

And so I- that we all know logically.

We tell you pay attention to that five, one, one.

If you've had that for an hour or two, you might wanna think about going to the hospital type thing.

And so I'm like, "Okay, something is happening.

Maybe if the kids are gone, maybe if it's quiet, maybe my body will kick in, and this'll turn into the real thing." So the kids are gone just before 9:00 or so, 9:00 AM, and Cal and I go down to our basement, where it's just quieter and darker.

and just that we had done that with our son as well on our third birth, and so we just thought, "Let's do that again," 'cause last time it was nice to go downstairs.

so we went down there and, you know, kind of chatting, and I'm sure Cal was like, "Can we please just go?" And I'm having contractions.

They're just not that painful, and so, you know, maybe pridefully I'm like, "I'm not going in for them to send me home 'cause I'm one centimeter." You know, this is… I'm just not convinced that I'm, you know, dilated enough to be, to be kept, and that I'm actually gonna have this baby soon enough to wanna go in.

And so I'm having some contractions.

I think Cal was tracking them, 'cause we have some in the tracker.

And then we got to a point, and these are in the tracker, where there was maybe three, two to three in a row, and they were, like, three to four minutes apart.

Kind of boom, boom, boom.

And I looked up at Cal and said, " We should go."

And he's like, "You sure?

Also, let's do it." And, I was… I'm like, "Yes, we gotta go.

Because if my water breaks, I just… I feel stupid right now.

I'm not sure, you know.

But we gotta go, because if something happens in the car, you're gonna be mad.

I'm gonna be mad.

What if?" You know, just a lot of what if, what if, what if.

And that, again, that history of labors to help make that decision of let's just do it.

It's gonna be fine you know, get over yourself a little bit probably to myself.

So we get in the car.

Kell had it ready.

He was like, "Cool, let's go." He was very ready for me to finally just make the call to, to please go into the hospital.

So we got in the car, and it was about 9:30.

And again, was maybe in that early pattern, but had had a couple in a row where I thought, I, I need to make a decision.

And then as soon as we got in the car, it's like active labor.

Here we go.

It's interesting.

I just feel like my body just gets to these points where it thinks it's safe or it's time, and it just goes.

And so maybe 9:30, 9:40, whatever, in the middle of the drive, it's like, oh, okay, I'm definitely in labor now.

At least they're not gonna deny that I'm in labor.

And so breathing, doing a lot of work, just, you know, pain management work, really largely just breathwork.

That's typically all it is.

I didn't have time for a TENS unit or anything like that.

And the, the drive was about 25 minutes, and so basically did labor in the car, and then as you find out, had this baby very quickly in the, in the hospital, right?

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Okay, let's get you back to the episode

And so we get to the hospital.

It was not the most fun car ride.

I don't remember it that much.

I remember other ones more clearly, so I think maybe I was just focused.

I remember calling the charge nurse, a girlfriend that I had worked with, and letting her know, and she's asking me questions, and, you know, kind of trying to figure out where I am.

And then later she comes in to apologize after, after the baby had been born, and she's like, "I am so sorry. I don't know why I was talking to you and trying to catch up, and you were probably in transition."

And so we had this whole conversation, or we tried to.

And eventually it was like, "Yes, I'm coming," you know, "I'll see you soon." And so we get to the hospital.

I tell Kell, "You don't have to drop me off. Just park in the parking lot." You know, it's a Sunday morning.

Parking lot's empty.

We'll park right out front.

cause this is also such a me thing.

Like, I don't need a wheelchair.

I don't need to be coddled.

I g- I'm good.

I can walk.

I can run.

I can I can do whatever.

And so we get to the parking lot.

I can still picture right now where we, where we parked, and I have a little walk to the ER doors, 'cause we have to do ER because it's the weekend.

So on the way to the ER doors, there's these two… There's more than two, but two posts that I have to stop at and have contractions, right?

It's like I don't know, 300 yards, and I'm still like boom, boom, having contractions, and still having this ridiculous idea of, "I hope I'm having my baby today." So Calvin is running.

At, at some point he caught up to me, but he is running, with our suitcases to kind of catch up to me 'cause I am moving.

I am headed for those hospital doors so I can just get in there and get where I need to be.

Monet is nowhere in sight, but we know she's gotta be close because she left when we left, and we have that same commute time to get to the hospital, so we're just hopeful that she's coming, because it seems like things are happening.

We get to the ER.

Those fools try to ask us if we wanna pay for part of our bill.

I am clearly in labor, obviously with hindsight, I'm like transitioning and about to have a baby, and they're asking us if we wanna pay for a part of our bill.

We were so annoyed.

I don't really know how it went, 'cause I'm sure Cal was like, "Absolutely not.

Get away.

We're leaving.

We're going upstairs." And I just kinda laughed and walked away, 'cause I know where I'm going.

I've done this many times.

I've worked there for years.

And so I take myself upstairs to the unit.

Calvin follows.

And they're totally ready for us.

Again, my charge nurse knew.

She spoke to me on the phone.

She knew that I was coming in like this.

So we're at the front desk.

It's maybe 10:02, 10:03.

We probably got to the hospital around 10:00.

We get upstairs 10:03.

I don't know, 10:05.

Cal's signing us in a little bit, doing some work.

I have one or two contractions at the front desk, and some friends are coming by, and I still remember the sweet nurse.

She's rubbing my back, and she's like, "Oh, you're so strong." You know, like, they'd, they've seen me do this, and you know, got to work together and all this.

And so she's like, "You're so strong. You're gonna have this baby today." And I'm such a fool.

I still looked at her in this moment, and I tell her, " I don't know.

I think so." It's like what am I thinking? I just, I still, I have the hardest time flipping over and saying, "I'm doing this.

I'm doing the hard work, and it's coming for me, and I'm gonna do it." And then my brain just, I think, doesn't wanna say yes, even when I'm literally actively doing the work. And so still in that moment, I still was like, "I think so.

I don't know." Hedging my bets for whatever reason.

So they tell us what room to go to.

I hustle down the hall, because I hustle everywhere at this point in my labor.

And I go straight to the bathroom to use the restroom, and as I'm sitting there going pee, I can hear Calvin.

He's such a champ, and this is such a testament to a good birth partner, and he just did a great job, and I can hear him.

And I more reflected on this later.

But I'm listening to him, and he's, he's controlling the room.

You know, these nurses, we- we're friends, right?

And that, and that's a whole different tone that's amazing too.

But he's like, "Hey, she always likes to labor in hands and knees on the floor.

She usually uses the birth ball as well.

Can we get that mat out of the closet?" You know, he just knows the things.

So they're, closing the blinds because it was, you know, pretty early in the morning, and so it's still pretty bright in there.

Cal's getting that stuff set up.

He's letting the nurses know.

He just knows what to do, and that confidence, if you can get that in your birth partner, you know, this is why- years after this, couple years after this, I had Kel come back in and do all this partner material with me and Your Body Your Birth, 'cause I'm like, the partner can really walk in and really own that space in a really cool way.

You've done it.

Let's talk about it.

Let's flesh this out.

What'd you need to know?

What did you have so you could do that?

So now that's all tucked inside of the birth course, because seeing it in action, both as myself and then as a nurse too, it's a very cool thing to see.

So it was a really cool thing to reflect back on and just think, man, he just owned that space when we walked into that room.

So I come out of the bathroom, I go straight to hands and knees on the floor.

This is where I always like to be.

And then Monet walked in at some point, and her photographs are time stamped, which was really fun, and became really necessary because she basically got there about 10 minutes before the baby was born.

So she gets in there and she starts taking photos, and I mean, how many photos do we have in that span of nine minutes where the camera got popped out?

But it's, hands and knees on the floor.

There's no panic in the room.

Everybody knows I'm having this baby.

I think finally I'm admitting that I'm having this baby, right?

But they're just doing their things in the background.

I have a baby nurse.

I have a nurse for myself, and then the midwife had been called.

The delivery table was ready.

They were just ready for me to walk in and have a baby, which it, precipitous births like this can be really scary, and they can be overwhelming.

And there's definitely some processing that you do after, I think all of us.

But this room was so chill.

There was nobody worried about it.

I did not, you know, no one was panicking, "We gotta get an IV in you." Typically, we need a 20-minute fetal heart rate monitor, contraction monitoring, that NST-style monitor of baby when you get admitted, but it was pretty clear, like, we're not doing that right now.

She's just gonna have a baby.

And so they were just kinda doing the things that they could do, assessing me while I just was on the floor having the baby.

And so at some point, you know, Kel and I, I or he shared if, you know, if her water breaks, the baby always comes out right away.

So that's one thing that we're just, you know, reminding everybody and making known.

And then if, when her, I guess, when her water breaks, also, th- she wants to deliver in the bed.

She likes it in the bed.

So she's gonna get up, and we're gonna help her into the bed, and that's where she wants to be to deliver the baby.

And so we just kinda made those things known, and, you know, in the span of, we're talking five minutes, right?

So probably had one contraction, and then we're letting them know this stuff.

And then we had another contraction, we're letting them know this stuff.

And Monet's in the room.

And then, you know, they call for the baby nurse, and she's getting set up And, you know, no one's checked me or anything like that, but clearly I'm having a baby.

At one point I would say in between these one or two contractions on the floor, I reached down and I could feel my bulging bag of water as well, so I knew it was about to pop.

I knew we were, we were very close.

And then, you know, after maybe two contractions, and obviously I could be wrong here 'cause this is minutes that we're we're, that we're talking about, the bag of water broke.

And it was an immediate like, "Oh, okay," and everybody kind of, you know, kind of heard it break, and you could see it all over the floor.

And so there was this kind of communal, "All right, let's get you in bed. Like, let's get you what you want. This is where you wanna be." And so the nurse is helping me.

She's, you know, trying to kind of grab my arm and be like, "Let's go, hon.

We can get up there." And Kel's, you know, like, "Come on, babe.

You got it." And I'm like, " You guys, I can't move. I can't… I'm not going anywhere. This baby is coming out now." And just kind of this, my system, my physical system just overrode maybe mentally what I was hopeful for or thought that I, thought that I wanted.

So, hands and knees it was.

We're not going anywhere.

They're like, "Kel, get back here and get ready to catch. You know, this baby is going to be born right here, right now." And so Kel went behind me, and this is the first time, I would say, with the very next contraction after that water broke, I experienced the fetal ejection reflex.

And I think that's really important to point out, because a lot of people think if you have your baby unmedicated, you will experience that, or that you maybe need to wait to push or to deliver until your body is doing that.

And I, that is not something that I am beholden to.

I don't-- I think the reflex is really cool.

It definitely happens.

It's really fun to see.

It's cool to experience.

But you don't have to wait for it.

If you're at 10 centimeters, and your baby's right there, and you wanna push, too, go for it, right?

So it was cool for me to experience it this time, but I don't feel like, oh no, I did something wrong in my other births.

I should have waited for that.

I probably was just impatient.

But this time was very much, like, next contraction, that head is coming out, and there was nothing I could do kind of to stop it or to change a position or make a different choice.

It was like, head's coming out.

And so Kel and the midwife were behind.

Kel got to deliver the baby.

I did push a little bit with the shoulders, and then baby was out, and I know I already gave it away earlier 'cause I accidentally said she.

But Kel got to tell me it was a little girl, so that was our third little girl.

obviously this was fast, furious, and they can come out really shocked or stunned in these moments, but she came out screaming.

Our first baby to come out screaming.

All the other ones have been quiet.

Some of them have been very blue.

My third, it was a little bit of, we need to clamp this cord, and, you know, he needed some extra assistance also quick as well.

And she just came out quick and fast and furious and angry and all of the things.

One interesting thing about having birth in hands and knees, and I'm not surprised I didn't love it, because this part was annoying, too, is you deliver your baby, and so everyone is behind me, and Kel's catching, and, you know, I-- This was probably Two minutes tops.

I don't even know.

But he catches, and he's got her, and he's letting me know, you know, "It's a girl, and good job," and, and whatever's happening in those moments, right?

And I'm up front, you know what I mean, on my hands and knees, and I'm saying, uh, like, "Can I have her?

Can I have her?" Like, "Someone give her to me." Again, I'm sure this was, like, moments of them having her and me not having her, but it was like, "Could I have the baby?

You're all having a party back there.

I would like the baby that I just pushed out and delivered."

And so I thought that was a little bit funky of the hands and knees of like, "Okay, can you pass her back through so that I can have her on my chest again?" This was probably, like, 20 seconds, but to me it felt like they were partying back there without me, and I just wanted someone to hand me my baby.

She did have a really short cord, and so I couldn't really bring her to chest.

It was a little awkward there on the floor.

At this point I'm sitting up, you know, on my knees, and I could kind of pull her up to, to, like, my belly or so.

And she, like I said, was doing great.

Screaming, not super pink, but definitely, you know, moving air through her little lungs.

So there was not any significant worry there.

So we got a few minutes of delayed cord clamping.

We did hit a point where the nurse was like, "Is it okay with you now if we go ahead and clamp and try to assess her a little bit better?" they really… The cord was so short that we really couldn't, you know, bring her out and g- and get a good peek at her.

And so I was totally fine with that.

I got to kind of see the cord get kind of whiter and whiter or lighter and lighter because of the way we were positioned.

And so I felt good with, you know, the cord clamping that we'd gotten and was more than ready to Get out of the little bit of mess that I was sitting in on the floor and get up into the bed.

I definitely told my midwife, "Oh my gosh, I know I, I tore so bad. That was so fast." Like, I just laid down in that bed shaking like a leaf like so many are doing in this, you know, transition in birth moments, just shaking and teeth clattering.

And I was like, "I know I tore. It's so bad. I could feel it." And it was kind of funny 'cause she's like, " You did great.

You didn't tear at all.

You were so controlled.

You did a beautiful job.

Like, everything looks great down here." it's just funny to me how we just, we don't always know, you know?

I had done, in that moment, the, I had done the things right and my body had supported me in it, and I did not tear at all, and I was just convinced that I'd torn from front to back and all the ways in between.

But I think you just forget.

You forget what it feels like to have a baby deliver.

And so at that moment I thought, "This is a huge baby," and she tore, and just none of, none of these things were true.

So that was it.

00 AM, which is about when we got to the ER, 10:19 was my time in hospital before this baby was born.

So like I mentioned with Monet, it was really cool to see photographs once she showed up because it was, it gave us the ability to really track, like, oh, there was a contraction.

Oh, I remember we said this.

Oh, there was another contraction, and just gave us a really good timeline.

I think one of the things that is true of precipitous birth, I mentioned the overwhelm and how, you know, it's just a real, it can be a really hard thing to process, and for some can be really, really traumatic.

Mine was not traumatic, but I will definitely say, you know, they basically walked out of the room five minutes later, and it was like, "She's great, and you don't need a repair, and good job. You know, we're super proud of you," and then they leave and they let us have our time.

And there was then that moment of, what the hell just happened?

And not, again, I was not traumatized by it, but it was like my brain had not caught up to what my body had done.

And so that was one thing that really stuck out with me in this birth.

I certainly felt it with my third, which was about 45 minutes in the hospital before he was born.

But this one especially, it felt like my brain never really got to the place that I was having the baby, even while I was actively having the baby.

So Kell and I just kind of sat there for a couple hours and just, you know, tried to rehash that, answer that question of, of what just happened.

Postpartum, meeting the siblings, all of those things, you know, those could be whole other podcast episodes, but it was really, really sweet.

I shared after, you know, in my third birth story that that one felt really redemptive after two pregnancies and postpartums that were just really covered by the grief of losing my mom.

And so this one felt really redemptive as well.

One thing, you know, my son felt that one was redemptive.

I know I keep saying that word.

But it also was a COVID birth, and so it did have some interesting nuances related to being born in And this one felt like my most normal birth experience.

COVID wasn't an issue.

hadn't just lost my mother or just gone through these things, you know, that were, eating me up inside in a different way.

I'd had a nice gap between my third birth and my fourth birth, so there was just this excitement and this joy to do it again.

And the siblings got to come meet her at the hospital, which we had never had that experience just because of COVID and things like that, in our prior births.

And so we just felt like we got just some of the textbook normal things to make it just a really sweet experience for us.

So it was really fun to call our cousin literally maybe an hour and a half or so after she had picked up the kids and brought them to her house, and basically say, "So we had the baby.

You guys can come meet the baby before lunch." And our kids basically said bye to Mom, and Two and a half hours later, they were at the hospital meeting their new baby sister.

So overall, just a really cool, I would say, kind of final birth experience.

Yes, it was fast.

Yes, it was a lot of things.

But it was also just a lot of the things that I think I'd, I'd dreamt of, right?

That I could experience it fully, that Cal and I could be really present there, that our kids would feel safe and cared for throughout, that they would get to come meet her, and that we would walk into postpartum on the best foot possible.

And that's really how it felt is postpartum is never easy.

Breastfeeding is never easy.

All the next things after they're born are never easy.

But we just got the sweet experience of having a really good, I know that's such a cheesy, like, blasé word, but a really good birth experience to lead us into all of the stuff that we knew that was coming for us.

So that is it, you guys.

The fourth birth story, the final birth story.

I feel like I still get a little choked up saying that.

The finality of the last one is big.

It's really, really big.

That could probably be another podcast episode in the future.

But for now, we will put a pin on this one here.

It has been an absolute privilege to experience all four of these birth stories, and I hope if anything, as you listen to number one and number two and number three, and as you've just finished number four, I hope that you do hear that absolute joy and privilege that I have felt every single time for getting to experience these pregnancies and getting to experience these births and getting to go on and raise these sweet babies