It’s hard to decide where Theo’s birth story truly begins. In many ways, it starts on the ordinary day in June when some normal spotting turned into a devastating miscarriage. The day I decided that I wouldn’t even consider trying to get pregnant again for a long, long time. Or maybe his story starts a few months later when I realized that I could distract myself with a million things, but nothing would erase the pain of that loss. Travis and I knew our family still wasn’t complete, so we tried again.

When I took a pregnancy test that November morning, I knew it was days too early, but somehow, there it was: a faint positive. The hope of this sweet baby swelled in my heart. Along with it, came the fear of another early goodbye and the worry that if this pregnancy stuck, I would have to navigate a newborn and a very feisty toddler. How exactly would I manage that?

My pregnancy was rough, to say the least. I was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum at 6.5 weeks after non-stop vomiting and a visit to the hospital for IV fluids. Even with a cocktail of round-the-clock medication, the nausea lasted until the moment I gave birth. I spent months in bed, barely able to take care of myself, let alone my daughter. My mom and husband stepped up in ways I still can’t fully put into words. Sometimes I wondered if I really wanted to be pregnant at all, which made me feel incredibly guilty because this baby was SO wanted (especially after our loss.)

As the pregnancy progressed, we suffered through scare after scare— worries about my gallbladder, concerning images on the anatomy scan, small fundal measurements, too much amniotic fluid and a transverse baby at 36 weeks. All of these red flags turned out to be fine, but added a lot of stress. Finally, we made it to full term. I was exhausted and so relieved to be nearly done. Baby was posterior and as a doula I knew that this would make for a more difficult labor. So, I was working with a chiropractor and acupuncturist, doing Spinning Babies exercises and just generally taking great care of myself at the end of pregnancy. I tried not to worry about baby’s position and told my chiropractor that as long as baby wasn’t transverse, it was coming out of my vagina!

On Sunday night, I was having contractions every 8 or 10 minutes. They’d been coming and going for more than two weeks and I had thought I was in early labor a couple of times already, so I decided that I wasn’t going to tell anyone about the sensations until I was more sure of what was going on. But these Sunday night ones were stronger and I just had the feeling that labor was imminent. I retreated to my bed on the early side and listened to some hypnosis music that helped me relax through the hardest months of hyperemesis. The music lulled me into a peaceful sleep.

I slept pretty well Sunday night and when I woke up Monday I was glad I didn’t alert Travis or anyone else to the surges I had felt. But by 8am I was having them again, every 6-7 mins and more distracting than ever. This was day 16 of start-and-stop contractions and I was getting really exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I texted my doula and she suggested a walk and an orgasm as a gentle way to try and help things along. I had an acupuncture appointment already scheduled for the afternoon and I knew that would probably help, too. I took Hazel to the beach and walked with my mom for an hour or so. I had to slow down with every contraction and I really felt like this was early labor, but I didn’t want to get too attached, so I ignored the surges as much as I could.

My mom took Hazel back to her house after our walk and I told Travis to take his lunch break from work so we could… snuggle. The contractions were getting stronger and started coming closer together after a little bit of intimate time. I was worried about safely driving myself to acupuncture, so he took me for my 1 p.m. appointment and worked out of a coffee shop while he waited. The acupuncturist did a labor stimulating treatment and I really was having to breathe through the surges at this point.

I left her office and got into the car and Travis was looking at me like, “Uhhh, you’re in labor”, but I still didn’t want to get attached. He went to turn on the car so we could head home and we heard a click click. He tried again— no luck. We’ve never had an issue with our car, but apparently this was the moment our battery decided to give out. Travis ran to a Mexican food restaurant next door and explained the situation, so a waiter came out to give us a jump. I thanked him as I was breathing through surges. (I’m sure the waiter had fun telling that story when he went home at the end of the day!) We couldn’t stop laughing at the timing of it all. After just a few minutes, we were on the road and I was feeling relieved and light-hearted.

We made it home and I told Travis to get back to working. I didn’t want to feel like a watched pot and he had things to wrap up so that he could comfortably start paternity leave. I turned on Pandora and danced around our living room to Ingrid Michaelson and Regina Spektor; singing, breathing and swaying through contractions. This was a highlight of my laboring time. It was really joyful and I loved having this time to myself. Around 3:30 or 4 p.m. a rush of emotion came over me and I wanted my mom to bring Hazel back home. Though I still wouldn’t admit that my labor was sticking around, intuitively I felt like I needed to snuggle her and soak her in before our family changed forever.

Hazel arrived at 4:30 and we played Playmobil and read stories in the living room. My contractions spaced a bit when she arrived, but I knew they would pick up again once Hazel was in bed and I wasn’t actively parenting her anymore. I was hoping to stick to our usual routine and snuggle her to sleep, but I couldn’t comfortably lay down during the contractions by the time bedtime rolled around. Instead, she had some sweet time with Travis and was asleep by 8. Travis started setting up the house for the birth and I was feeling a bit tired. I asked my midwife what I should do and she suggested we watch a funny movie until I couldn’t watch anymore. We turned on Jim Gaffigan’s “Mr. Universe” on Netflix and we watched the opening joke, which is all about home birth. I was cracking up, but nine minutes into the show, I called my birth team to come. It was about 9 pm and active labor was approaching. By 9:30 or so, everyone had arrived: my midwife, doula, parents and birth photographer. I had a little bit of bloody show and I was finally able to accept that this was really happening: it was time to have a baby!

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I felt really strong and on top of contractions for the majority of my labor. I was nauseous and throwing up, which was not fun, but I expected that (especially since I had been sick every single day of this pregnancy). My low moans woke Hazel at 11pm and when she realized what was going on, she wanted to be right beside me. We snuggled a bit, but I could feel my body holding off on contractions just by having her around me. I let her stay for a little while and she was so sweet and loving— holding my hand or rubbing my back during surges. But her excited energy was too much for me and I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about her and focusing on her needs. My parents were there to support me, but also to care for her, so they took her to the bedroom to try and get her to sleep. They tried and tried, but she was too worried she was going to miss the birth. I promised we would wake her up in time to meet her baby, but my stubborn girl wasn’t hearing it. She stayed awake all night, despite countless attempts by my mom and dad to read, snuggle and drive her to sleep. It was a hard balance— she was exhausted and sad to be separated from us. But I couldn’t keep her with me because my body wasn’t progressing. Even into active labor, I would periodically check in with her when I heard her cry or call out for me. This element of parenting while in labor made me much less able to float away to “labor land” like I had in my previous birth, which made contractions feel harder and more intense.

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At 2am, I felt a sudden drop in my belly that caught me by surprise and made me gasp. A few minutes later, my water broke. There was some meconium in the fluid, which made me nervous. (Another difficult element to this birth was the fact that I’m a doula. My knowledge as a birth worker made it hard for me to get out of my head and be fully engrossed in the experience without analyzing it.) My midwife assured me that all was well and baby’s heart rate was great. There were no signs of distress.

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I could feel the baby really pressing down now and felt like he was going to come soon. My parents had taken Hazel for a drive to try and get her to fall asleep (still no luck) and I wanted them to come back right away. I got in the tub, feeling like I was going to need to push soon and my midwife asked if I could feel the baby’s head with my fingers. I thought I could but babe felt high and I wasn’t sure exactly what I was feeling. We hadn’t done any cervical exams the whole pregnancy or labor, but I asked her to check me to confirm what I was feeling. I never asked about dilation, but I found out after the fact that I was only 5-6 cm at this point. My midwife said she could feel baby’s head but that she could also feel my tail bone in the way. This scared the crap out of me. We knew babe was direct OP and a baby’s skull being stuck on my tailbone wasn’t going to go well. We had tried the rebozo and some spinning babies exercises earlier in my labor, but this babe didn’t seem to want to turn. We needed to wait for baby to rotate and my body to finish opening. My midwife said she could manually rotate babe, but I couldn’t stomach the idea and wanted to try and let things happen on their own.

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I layed on my left side with my right leg propped so that my pelvis would be open and give babe the maximum space to turn. Things had shifted now that my waters had released. I felt the contractions rip through me and suddenly I NEEDED to push. Lying down felt like torture— I wanted to move, to be in water, to get my baby out. I was scared. Scared that my tailbone would block babe or break altogether, scared that I wouldn’t be able to push out a posterior baby, scared of the immense pain and wondering how long my body could take it before I lost all control. My doula laid five inches from my face and forced me to keep my eyes on hers with each contraction. She was coaching me to “blow out candles” to resist the urge to push— a trick I’ve used with my own doula clients plenty of times— but I could barely breathe at all. I focused on the brown of her left eyeball and tried my best not to hyperventilate as each surge slammed me like a tidal wave. I had been moaning through contractions up until this point, but suddenly I went completely silent in an effort to reign in my pushing and maintain control. No one in the room spoke, except my sweet doula who gently demanded my full attention.

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The pain was like nothing I had ever experienced. I’ve had a natural birth before, I thought, I should know what to expect. But this was beyond anything I had ever felt in my labor with Hazel. I could feel the baby’s head rotating in my pelvis, grinding against my cervix and pubic bone, no more gentle cushion of the amniotic sac. I must be breaking apart. My body is going to shut down soon, this is too much for one person to handle. I reached a point where the pain was so intense that I couldn’t hear anymore. I saw my doula talking to me and I fearfully said, “I can’t hear anything you’re saying to me!” I wanted to know how long I’d have to do this and my midwife said that until my body was pushing involuntarily, I needed to try and hold back.

After two hours like this, I was bearing down more with each contraction and was begging to get back in the water. I slowly crawled to the tub, where my midwife gave me the green light to push.

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I ended up reclined in the tub with Travis behind me. I tried pushing but immediately something didn’t feel right— baby wasn’t moving down at all. My midwife felt again and my cervix was still not fully out of the way and had started to swell. She looked at me with such sadness in her face and asked me if I felt the baby moving down with the pushes. I didn’t. “Your cervix is swelling and keeping babe from moving down and there’s more meconium in the fluid.” She explained, “I think we need to go to the hospital.” It wasn’t an emergency, but an epidural would let me rest while the swelling went down and it would be good to have a pediatrician on hand with meconium present. I was honestly shocked— I never thought I’d have to transfer— but I trusted her judgement and instantly accepted this change in plans. My dad went out to the yard to move cars around and get ours ready to go to the hospital. My midwife called ahead to let them know we were coming. I asked someone to call my OB and see if she’d meet us and they assured me that they were doing it all. Hazel had finally fallen asleep, so we decided she’d stay home with my dad until after the baby was born. At that point, my biggest concern was how I was going to get out of the tub, out of the house and into the car. My midwife said she’d help me into the back of our SUV and come with me in case I delivered on the way to the hospital. Okay, let’s do this.

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I rolled over onto my knees and leaned over the side of the tub as I attempted to get out of the water. Out of nowhere, another contraction hit and I could feel that familiar stretch as my body started pushing out the baby. “It’s burning!” I yelled and my midwife checked me. “Well,” she said, “I guess we’re having a baby here after all!” My mom ran out to the yard to alert my dad and photographer that plans had changed once again.

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In my labor with Hazel, I pushed for two hours and the burning sensation toward the end really overwhelmed me. This time, I was so joyful to feel that familiar ring of fire. I knew my baby was coming. I had survived the hardest few hours of my entire life and it was almost over. All it took were a few contractions this time and my body did it all— I never consciously pushed, I just let my body do it’s thing.

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At exactly 5 a.m. I pulled my baby through my legs and up to my chest with the sweetest relief. I couldn’t believe I had survived the past three hours and somehow still gotten the home birth that we wanted so badly.

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After a couple of minutes, I opened baby’s legs and discovered that we had a little boy! Shocked is an understatement— I was blown away and totally elated. I have always dreamed of having both a daughter and a son but throughout my pregnancy, I had convinced myself we were having another girl. In that perfect moment, all of my dreams had come true. My family was complete.

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Theo Elliott was totally healthy and smaller than Hazel at 8 lbs even and 21.5” with a teeny 12” head.

Immediately after the birth, I tried to sit down in the tub and couldn’t bear any weight on my tailbone. My midwife shared with me after the fact that my tailbone was so curled over the top of his head that when she first felt it, she wondered if it was his hand. In order to get him out, it had to break. The recovery hasn’t been the easiest, and transitioning to two kids has been more than a little overwhelming, but I am trying to use this time to soak up his newness. I still can’t believe I have a daughter AND a son… despite the long and difficult path of pregnancy, loss and birth, I feel like the luckiest mama ever.

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(Thanks to Susannah Gill Photographic Storytelling for the amazing photos of our birth!)