This beautiful birth story was written by one of my clients who kindly offered to let me post it. She hired me to attend her for the birth of her third child. With her first two pregnancies, she’d had epidurals in the hospital. I have added a few links for explanatory purposes, for readers who may not be familiar with certain aspects of Brenda’s story.

The day my daughter was born, two weeks before her guess date, I woke up feeling different. As far as I could tell, there weren’t any labor symptoms that morning, but everything felt heightened. I sent my husband off to work, and drove my oldest boy to school. I took the youngest one shopping with me and I felt as though I was sensitive to everything. All the nerve endings in my skin, the smell of the fruit in the produce aisle, my son’s dirty diaper (not all of this heightened awareness was pleasant!). By the time my oldest boy came home from school, I was having contractions. I called my husband at work to see if he could drop the boys off at his parents’ house, and then I called my doula. My first two pregnancies went very quick, and I was terrified of the pain. None of my sisters had natural deliveries, though one sister-in-law had delivered at home. When I heard from a friend about her wonderful doula and the amazing natural delivery she had in the hospital, I knew I wanted a story like that. With my sons, everything happened so fast and I felt like it was happening to me, not like I was participating in the process. I put my legs up in stirrups and pushed when they told me and out came a baby, and breastfeeding was fine and I loved my sons and I could’t belive I had given birth—I had really done it!—but I just wanted to try something different.

What started out as hiring a doula to help me have an unmedicated birth at the hospital evolved into hiring a midwife and planning a homebirth. My sisters thought (still think) I was crazy, my husband wasn’t really sure, but he was willing to let me have the baby however I wanted to, and the more time we spent with our doula and midwife, the more he got on board.

So I called the doula and the midwife at around 3:30. The midwife said to call her back after the doula arrived, so that the doula could tell her how things were going. My contractions were coming every 7 to 8 minutes and lasting 30-45 seconds, but they were irregular, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was starting to freak out, because this was starting to hurt. The doula had me get in the shower because I was freaking out and so I put on my birth bikini (a suit so immodest I wouldn’t dare wear it outside my own home, but perfect for labor!) and let the warm water rush over my belly. This definitely worked wonders, and I must’ve stayed in there for an hour, but the doula wanted me to keep moving since she said labor can stall out if you stay in the water too long in early labor. I was walking around the house, pausing every so often to moan through a contraction.

Honestly, it is easy now that it’s over to talk about everything, but in the moment, I was freaking out. I did not believe I could do this. I did not know how my pioneer ancestors had done this crossing the country with their hand carts in the middle of the wilderness. I was having a hard enough time at home! The problem was, I was still in early labor, able to talk through contractions and move about and all of that, and I was already losing emotional strength. And all I wanted was a greasy cheeseburger.

My husband and I had just decided to try being vegetarians—we are really all or nothing kinds of folks, and even “eating meat sparingly” was too much of a temptation for us. Let me tell you right now: pregnancy is both the best and worst time to make a major change to your diet. Best because it cuts out those unhealthy temptations, like cheeseburgers from In-n-Out Burger, but worst because never are cravings stronger than pregnancy. The doula agreed I should eat and drink as much as I wanted right now to keep my strength up later. I was lying on the couch crying, still in my birth bikini, with the doula crouched in front of me listening to my fears and rubbing my feet. Thankfully my husband arrived home then. He conferred with the doula and offered me a priesthood blessing. I cannot recommend this highly enough. I won’t pretend it took my pain away, but it was an emotional epidural for me, and it was a wonderful way for my husband to become involved in my labor. I was so calm and focused after the beautiful blessing, and while he was blessing me, the doula was whipping up one of her famous green smoothies (kale, spinach, banana, protein powder, lots of fruit, water, coconut water, chia seeds and milk). I must have drank forty ounces of the stuff, and now, spiritually and physically fortified, I was ready for the hard labor ahead!

I tried, successfully, to sleep for a few hours, as did my husband and the doula, but I whoke up around eight pm with stronger contractions. I rocked on the birth ball singing hymns with my husband (and the doula joined in when she knew them). She remembers me singing “Abide with Me,” “Families Can Be Together Forever,” and “How Great Thou Art.” At this point, things really started picking up, and the doula called the midwife to come check on me. I was not very dilated yet, only about 5 cm, so the midwife, after sticking around for about half an hour, went to check on another birth. The doula suggested we go for a walk around the neighborhood. I put my husbands old BYU sweats over my birth bikini and we headed out. I tried talking long strides and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was 2 in the morning. We would walk around and then stop and I would lean on my doula or my husband and and make this deep animal sound and I knew some of my neighbors were peeking out thinking What the heck is she up to now? We walked in circles around the block for a long time. When I started wanting to be on my hands and knees during contractions, the doula said it was probably time to go home.

I called my Mom and my oldest sister who has six kids and had long conversations with each of them punctuated by my labor moans. We ate dinner. Or the doula and my husband ate dinner, and I picked at some bread and honey and peanut butter. The midwife’s assistant came over to check on me, and I was an 8. The midwife was finishing up at another birth and headed back over to my house. Things were really moving along now! I was crawling around the living room in just my bikini top, the bottoms and sweats having gotten much too uncomfortable for me. I was on my knees, leaning against the birth ball, and I just kept crawling forward. My doula would guide me, sort of shifting the ball and keeping it from running into the walls, like I do with my sons’ remote control cars. I swear what I remember from the birth is the white and green polka dotted birth ball cover on the doula’s birth ball, since my face was pressed into it for what seemed like hours.

At one point I had rolled myself into a corner and I was just squatting down on my knees and the doula says now that I just started grunting. I was vaguely aware of a flurry of activity as the midwife and her assistant and my husband started shifting me slightly, putting a shower curtain and towels underneath and around me. I didn’t even realize it, but I had started pushing! I felt like my body had been taken over by this primal part of me that instinctually knew what to do and she was doing it! I remember praying out loud and I remember my husband saying, “We can see the head!” (We didn’t know if it was a boy or girl yet). I asked if I needed to move and was assured I could stay where I was. My husband was crouched to one side of me and I could feel the doula’s hand on my back and the midwife putting pressure on my perineum, to help me avoid tearing. I pushed like that, squatting on the floor for about half an hour and then, with a gush of blood and fluid, there she was! The midwife caught her and the doula helped me stay balanced as the midwife passed the baby between my legs so her cord didn’t have to wrap around me.

I wasn’t really aware of anything then but crying and staring into my daughter’s grey eyes. She seemed so calm once she started crying and I held her to my chest and rocked, my husband’s arms wrapped around us both. The placenta was delivered about thirty minutes later and we let the cord stop pulsing before we clamped it. All modesty now gone from me, I untied the bikini top as the midwife was doing some newborn checks on my daughter and she started to nurse. The doula and midwife’s assistant got our bedroom ready and us situated in bed and my husband brought us something to eat. She was 8lbs 4oz and 20 inches long. I remember saying at one point, right after she came out, “I need to text my sisters!” This made everyone laugh.

I am so glad I was able to have my third child at home. My wonderful midwife and, most of all, my incredible doula made it possible. She was with me throughout the whole thing, and seemed to know just want to do to help me calm down and manage my pain. I wanted this birth to be intimate and family-oriented, and most of the time it felt like it was just my husband and I and this angel, rubbing my back and my feet, bringing me food and water and green smoothies. She listented to me and trusted me to trust my body, helping support me in whatever position felt right and helping me find a more comfortable position at a time when very few things seem comfortable. I would never have another child without my doula there! I couldn’t have done it without her!