Birth Stories

If I had been pregnant with a singleton, I doubt I would have found my way to planning a home birth. Which is too bad; homebirthing a single baby would be a pretty easy decision. Choosing to homebirth twins requires a little more faith in nature, your body and your midwives.

I wrote this several months after the birth so the details and timeline were a bit foggy for me but I wrote it out as accurately as I could remember!

I decided to take castor oil around 2pm to get things going. I had tried everything else and nothing was working to get things going and I really needed to get them out. I think I was fairly anemic at this point and that is why I was feeling the need to have them out. As much as I really believe that babies should be allowed to come when ready I was 40 weeks and 3 days with twins and could not hang in there much longer.

Leila & Sarah’s Birth Story

Background info:
First birth was in the hospital and augmented with Pitocin. I had PIH during the pregnancy and a few complications, but nothing too serious.
Second birth was a planned homebirth but I risked out of the midwife’s care at 42 weeks and ended up with a c-section because the baby showed late decels. He had a tight nuchal cord. He weighed just over 11 lbs at birth.

Jim and I discovered I was pregnant in early November. Though to be honest, due to certain signs we had guessed it even on the day that we conceived that perhaps I was fertile, and we hadn’t used prevention of any kind. So for the next two weeks I was anxious for my period to start, and yet “knew” that it would not. So when I was late, I immediately bought a pregnancy test and took it a couple days later, when it declared that indeed, our family was about to grow.

On Saturday evening, June 21st, I got up from putting my son to bed and felt a rush of fluid (about 8:45 pm). I went to the bathroom and chalked it up to two babies squishing my bladder and went on with my evening. A while later, I took my shower and as I was drying felt another gush of fluid and a bit of mucus with it.

So this is how I created my first-time mother, drug-free vaginal twin birth.

I guess it starts with my pre-natals. I understand and even accept that twin births can simply go the wrong direction in a very short amount of time. Once I found out at 20 weeks I was having twins, I chose to give up my homebirth plans and deal with the medical world.