Solari’s birth story starts on Thursday June 27th, my official due date. We had an appointment with our midwife Jinny, and sat outside on the deck while we went over the last minute home birth preparations. I told Jinny that I was certain I had a good week before the baby would be born, but even so I felt like I wanted the space to be ready and prepared in advance. Jinny said something like “I think you guys have time, but really you could go into labor tonight so it’s good to be prepared”. There was no way I would go into labor tonight. I didn’t feel any signs whatsoever and I felt like I had too much to do to prepare and continued to tell everybody “I’m not ready.”
Well, baby had a different timeline. After Jinny left, Michael and I started doing some birth preparations inside. I finally made the aloe vera + witch hazel pads to freeze for post-birth, and Michael put up a nice gray curtain to cover the mountain of baby stuff we didn’t have time to organize. I went to pee and was very surprised to see a small, but not too small, piece of the mucus plug. We took a picture and sent it to Jinny who wrote back, “Oh, that is looking more like a small part of the mucus plug. It doesn't tell us when labor will begin without other signs, but it means your cervix is making some changes.”
I rushed out to get my other two children, Skyden and Ocean, from camp, and was so hungry that I couldn’t fathom driving the 20 minutes to get home and then unpacking all our stuff and cooking. So, I took Skyden and Ocean out to dinner at a favorite café, and treated myself to dinner and the kids to pancakes for dinner. Something in that outing felt really special, like we were celebrating the due date and the coming arrival of our baby. Something deep inside me knew this would be one of the last times I would be just with Skyden and Ocean and able to give them my full attention, just the 3 of us.
When I came back home with them, we went about the evening as usual. After the kids were sleeping, I came out of the bedroom and at about 10pm got a strong pressure wave. I figured it was a practice sensation, so I was surprised when I had 2 more about seventeen minutes apart from each other.
I called Jinny at 11pm, and she suggested I drink water to make sure I was hydrated and then try to sleep. I went to bed just after that and was half-woken up every 20 minutes or so with pressure waves for the next couple hours.
Thankfully from about 2:15am onwards I was able to sleep a little deeper…
Friday June 28
I woke up at 6:45am to pee, and lost what looked like the entire mucus plug. I sent a picture to Jinny and she confirmed, “Yes!” to my text.
That morning I was completely exhausted from losing so much sleep. But I was doing my best to function and do everything to get the kids off to camp. After drop-off, I surprised myself by turning into the parking lot at Valley Vista to take a walk. I was craving a quiet moment to connect to baby and absorb some Sun medicine, despite being exhausted. It was stunning at Valley Vista, the sounds of birds and insects, the warm sun, the lake/marsh teeming with life, and the green all around me was so deeply nourishing. I then came home to listen to a Hypnobabies meditation that put me in a deeply relaxed state, what the program calls “hypnotic amnesia” where you think you’re sleeping but still hearing all the cues from the audio track.
At this point I still had no idea if this was early labor of if this was my body gearing up for what could still be many days away. To be safe and not get others too excited, I assumed it was my body practicing and not the actual birthing time. Yet internally I thought maybe this could be the start of very early labor. I had a chiropractor appointment scheduled for 2pm and I couldn’t decide whether or not to go. Part of me wanted stay home and take care of myself. Another part of me felt like I couldn’t cancel the appointment late (people pleaser problems). I also considered it might be good to make sure my spine and pelvis were lined up for the baby to come out most efficiently.
The appointment was at 2pm in Berkeley and I finally decided to go at 1:50pm, literally running out the door. The chiropractor had me lay on the table with several cushions/bolsters propping me up on my left side. While she stepped away for a minute I had a very strong pressure wave that was so intense, it seemed to have an extra bite to it at the end. Wowza.
(to be continued...)
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