The Birth of Indigo Skye

When I wrote the story of my second daughter’s birth, I wrote it with the knowledge in my mind that she was probably my last child, but with the hope in my heart that I would have at least one more. Apparently that hope won out! I found myself pregnant in October of 2006 and was thrilled. My partner, Jesse, had a different reaction, one of fear and disbelief and he had a hard time throughout my pregnancy accepting that we were having another baby...our third in 4 years. My daughters, Nova and Faeryn, were 3 ½ years and 18 months old at the time.

My pregnancy progressed without a hitch, although I found myself worrying more about things than I had with my last two pregnancies. I chalked it up to the fact that I desperately wanted this baby and a homebirth and anything that felt like it was compromising that (like the very normal cramps in the early months) made me worry a bit. I felt like a bit of a headcase, being concerned about every little thing, and that felt silly because I’m a doula and I *knew* all this stuff, but I just chalked it up to me being a worrywart and tried to push it out of my mind.
As my belly grew, I found myself obsessively checking the baby’s position, ensuring that he or she was head down. This concern was not unfounded, however, as my second child was footling breech. Even though I had had a successful vaginal delivery with her, and I knew my chances of having another breech baby were slim, I couldn’t help but think about it often.

I continued to take doula clients and reveled in it, until about my 6th month when I attended two births that went sideways and I became disheartened. I started to question my desire to continue to be a doula and thoughts of beginning midwifery school began to surface, even though I hadn’t planned on beginning that journey until my children were much older. I rationalized with myself and listed off all the reasons why starting midwifery school was a crazy idea, but in the end I just couldn’t shake the feeling that NOW was the time to start. I applied to the Midwives College of Utah in January 2007 and was accepted in February, classes started in May. I also attended a birth (my last for this pregnancy) in May with my very own midwives and a wonderful woman that only solidified my resolve that now was the right time to begin my own midwifery journey.

Throughout my pregnancy I was asked the ever-popular question, “Do you know what you’re having?”. My answer to that question has always been “A baby”, with a cheeky grin on my face. I didn’t find out with my daughters and I didn’t want to find out with this pregnancy either, much to the dismay of those around us. With my daughters, I had a very clear feeling that they were girls. With this pregnancy, I really wanted to have another girl and so I told others that I thought the baby was a girl, but deep down I knew that I was having a boy. I had several very vivid dreams that the baby was a boy but for some reason I had a hard time accepting that. I look back on it now and wish that I hadn’t downplayed my feelings as much as I did but at the time I just couldn’t say it aloud. I felt that if I did, it would make it more real and I wasn’t ready for that reality yet. I had said once that I always felt that there was another baby girl out there, waiting for me, and I really did feel that way...so if I admitted that I thought this baby was a boy it would, in my mind, discount anything I had felt or said before.
Maybe this is why we had such a hard time picking a name for a boy. Maybe not. Either way, the weeks passed, my belly blossomed, we found a girl’s name we *loved* but could not come up with anything for a boy that we loved as much. I knew I wanted something nature based; tree names especially resonated with me, but Jesse and I couldn’t settle on any one name that really felt right. One name that I kept going back to was Indigo, but I kept crossing it off my mental list because I knew a woman with a son named Indigo and I had decided that I couldn’t use a name that I knew was already used by a friend. For reasons unknown to me, I never actually mentioned Indigo to Jesse. I’m not sure if it was a conscious oversight or an honest lapse in memory but I just never told him. As my 7th and 8th months passed, we decided to just let it be. We knew that a name would materialize at the perfect time if we needed it.

My due date was July 3rd, 2007. My previous births had both occurred before my due date, so I just assumed that that would be so for this birth as well. Silly me, I should have known better than to be cocky about anything pertaining to birth! June came and went and everything was ready for baby’s arrival. I had borrowed a fabulous birth pool called a La Bassine from a friend who had had a beautiful homebirth in it, and I was excited to have that energy surround me while I was in labour. My girls and I eagerly blew it up two weeks before my due date, sure that I would be using it “any day now”. My excitement and anticipation grew with each passing day. People started asking me if I was getting tired of being pregnant or tired of waiting, but my answer was always no. Unlike most women, I love the third trimester. I feel most like a true goddess when I am ripe and round with baby.
Much to my surprise, July 3rd came and went. I had been so sure that I would go in the week before my due date, because that is how it had played out with my daughters, but this wee soul inside me had other plans. I had an appointment the next day with my midwife, Jane. When I got there she asked me if I wanted to stir up some trouble and I decided to go for it. She placed her fingers inside me to rim my cervix a bit and her eyes grew wider and wider. “Oh my...oh MY!”, Jane exclaimed. I laughed and asked her what that was all about and she said that my cervix had just melted open to 4cm beneath her touch. Tonight would most likely be a birth day for me, but I tried not to get overly ramped up about it because I knew that sometimes third babies play labour games and make mamas wait. I went home with my girls and we spent the afternoon playing at the park across the street from our home.

A few hours later I ventured out with my girls again to a chiropractic appointment, where I told Dr Patti about the exciting news. I wasn’t yet feeling crampy or having any signs of labour, but I had a familiar buzzy feeling inside me that told me that labour was not far away. I brushed it off, however, and walked to Planet Organic with my daughters to pick up a couple things before heading home once more.

Around 6pm I started feeling crampy but I ignored the feelings, not wanting to get excited over something that might go away. I kept telling myself that third babies often played tricks and to just wait and see. I fed my daughters dinner and we waited for Daddy to come home. Jesse arrived around 7:30pm, in a truck that I didn’t recognize. I went outside to ask him about it and tell him that I thought tonight might be the night. He told me that the truck belonged to someone from work and that he was supposed to return it the next day. I urged him to return it that night because I was feeling more and more sure that the baby would be arriving tonight. Besides, his work is only a 25 minute drive from our home, it wouldn’t take him long to go there and back. And I wasn’t really in labour yet anyways. He ate some dinner and helped me get the girls to bed, then headed out again to do the truck switcharoo. I decided to call my midwives and other support people to give them a heads up that I thought things were moving along.

Left alone in the quiet of my house, I sat down at my computer and checked my email. I queued up a song on YouTube that a friend’s brother wrote and listened to it over and over and over again. The cramps had started to turn into contractions and I just rode with them...rolling gently on our big silver ball and listening to the beautiful melody of “She Never Knew (She Never Knew)”. My friend Becky popped up on MSN Messenger and I chatted with her briefly, aware of the growing strength and intensity of the feeling in my belly. She asked me how long my contractions were, and how far apart and I had no idea and no clock near me except for the YouTube timer, so I started timing my contractions against the YouTube clock, just for curiosity sake. In the space of about 15 minutes they went from 5 minutes apart and 60 seconds long to 2 minutes apart and 90 seconds long. I started feeling uncomfortable on the ball so I said goodbye to Becky and headed for my couch in the living room.

Once I settled on the couch on all fours, labour started progressing much faster than I had anticipated it would. Suddenly I was having to close my eyes and breathe heavily, rocking back and forth with each powerful contraction. I started to feel panicky, not because things were moving quickly or that I was feeling unsafe, but simply because I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I wanted Jesse’s strong, comforting arms embracing me and to hear the soft, encouraging whispers of the women I had invited to this sacred event. I called Jesse and began to bawl my eyes out, begging him to hurry home. I called my friend Jen, a new doula; my friend KC, a friend in the study group for my midwifery school; Tracy, a friend and fellow doula who had also been with me for Faeryn’s labour and birth; and, finally, my midwives. I was expecting Jane and Nadine to be there, but it was Sharyne who answered, so I knew that it would be Jane and Sharyne. I felt a little sad and disappointed about that, because I had really connected with Nadine throughout my pregnancy, but left it alone for the time being and went back to concentrating on the contractions one at a time, and trying not to cry because I was lonely.

In between contractions I suddenly realized that I hadn’t checked on Nova and Faeryn for a while, so I headed down the hall and found Nova missing from the bed that she and her sister shared. I looked in my room and found her there in my bed, eyes wide open. I whispered to her that I thought tonight was the night that the baby was going to come, and that if she wasn’t tired she could come out and hang out with me. I reminded her that I was going to make some noise and have to concentrate very hard, just like we had talked about. We watched birth videos and talked a lot about labour and birth throughout my pregnancy, so she knew what was happening. She followed me quietly to the living room and watched with wide-eyed wonder.
Jen arrived first, around 9:30pm, and found me on the floor of my living room, with a fan blowing on my back. I was on all fours and rocking back and forth, moaning. She knelt beside me and whispered hello and I barely got a “hi” out before another contraction came. Jane came next, then Jesse, then Sharyne. Tracy slipped in at some point but I’m not sure when...it couldn’t have been too far behind Jen according to my birth pictures! I told Jane that I was sad that Nadine wasn’t going to be there, so Jane paged Nadine and she came along for the birth as well. Now I had a full coven of females to support me and witness the birth of my third child.

I completely lost track of time at this point, everything melded into what felt like one long moment. I guess I was acting pretty serious labour-wise because all of a sudden Jane was asking me if I was pushing as she turned off the fan and started putting a plastic sheet underneath me. I howled and said I wanted the fan on, I was too hot, this was too fast, ohmygod it hurts! Jane asked me if I still wanted to birth in the water and I said YES! I was going to get my waterbirth come hell or high water. I heard Jesse running around, hooking up the hoses to the bathroom sink faucets, trying to get the tub filled up.
When the tub was half-way filled Jane told me I could get in and I hobbled to my room in the back of our home. I slid into the warm water and thought to myself “Ahhh...this is what I’ve been needing all along”. My back was aching but I pushed the thought of a posterior baby out of my head. I remember thinking that I was taking too long, that I should get out of my head, that I just needed to get down to business. It’s near impossible to doula yourself, but I sure tried. I struggled with staying grounded and focused and in the moment for quite a while before I allowed myself to just let go and surrender to the labour. Sometimes too much knowledge and experience in birth can be hard to overcome when it is you who is labouring.

I was vocal before I got into the tub, but became even more so after entering the warm, watery womb. Nova seemed unfazed by my vocalizations, but I ended up waking up Faeryn (who had slept right through all the rest of the commotion thus far) during a particularly intense contraction. She was fine until I had another doozy of a contraction, then she got a little scared, so Jen took her and Nova to their room to draw pictures for the new baby, with the promise of being called back when the baby’s birth was imminent.

Soon after, I started feeling the pressure to push. I pushed for a while but it didn’t feel right yet, so I stopped. Jane had Jesse move in front of me and just sit with me for a few contractions. After a few very strong contractions I felt the baby’s head move down a bit more and the urge to push overwhelmed me. My fingers probed my vagina and I could feel baby’s head and the bulging amniotic sac; slippery, smooth, firm and warm. I pushed again and kept my fingers there and could feel the baby’s head move more and more...turning, wriggling, navigating the bones of my pelvis. Suddenly I felt the bag burst and the head came right down and I exclaimed “My water broke!”. One push later the head was crowning. Oh the burning...I always forget about the burning part of crowning baby heads. I leaned back as the baby’s head rotated; Tracy got a stellar shot of the baby, face up in the water, head cradled in Jesse’s hands, body still inside mine. One more push and the head was out and only a few seconds after that (at 11:26pm) the baby’s hot, sticky body slid out of mine and into the water and Jesse’s hands. We brought the baby up to my chest and he let out one loud wail, as if to say “I’m here!”. Both my girls were instantly glued to the side of the tub and I held the baby’s legs apart to show Nova so she could announce the sex (something she really wanted to do, in addition to cutting the cord). Nova looked for a few seconds and then got shy, but everyone saw and it was confirmed that my dreams were accurate...it was definitely a boy!! An unnamed boy, at that! He was BIG, 9lbs 14oz to be exact, coated in vernix, with a huge 38cm head full of red hair. My girls both jumped into the tub for a hug and a kiss and a closer look at their new baby brother. Their sheer excitement and the love that flowed out of each person in the room that night was so thick it could have been palpated.

The next morning as I lay in bed nursing our newborn son, Jesse looked at me and said “What about Indigo River?”, to which I replied “What about Indigo Skye?”. We looked at our son, and then at each other and knew instantly that it was the perfect name, at the perfect time for our little boy.

**This is a montage that my friend/doula Tracey put together for me. There are a couple short clips of me labouring, but nothing gory or loud!**