Spencer's Birth Story

by his mother, Katie

Jeff and I met and married in the fall of 2004. I am Jeff’s first marriage, he is my one and only, and Spencer is our first child together. We also are the loving parents of two older children who were born during my first marriage.

In all honesty, I believe the drug-and-episiotomy free experiences of my two oldest children’s births are among the most empowering experiences of my life. Seeds of self-confidence and courage were sown and began to grow within me when I realized what strengths I possessed - independent of my abusive ex-husband - as a woman and mother of children.

I was granted a new beginning in Jeff, and we are blissfully happy. My life and the lives of my children, so blighted before, are now blooming and thriving like a watered garden. When Jeff and I discovered we were pregnant, I insisted on finding a midwife, and was dismayed to discover that there were none in our immediate area. The promise is true that if you seek you shall find: I eventually stumbled onto an Internet reference to the Greenhouse Birth Center. I knew, immediately, when I saw the pictures on their website - especially the one of Kip - that this was the place.

Jeff wasn’t quite convinced, but consented to attend one of the open houses held at Greenhouse for my sake. He eventually decided to go along with my desire to have our baby there, even if our insurance wouldn’t cover it, because he felt that a happy mommy meant a happy baby. He was right. Jeff has since thanked me, many times, for introducing him to the midwifery model of care. Before his experience with Greenhouse, he never knew that the normal process of birth could be so gentle or peaceful... free of forceps, vacuum extraction, or other unnecessary and painful interventions to mothers and their babies.

After experiencing two days of sporadic 1-2 hour bouts of contractions, my water broke on Tuesday, July 5, at around 1:10 in the afternoon. We drove to the birth center to see Kip, who was the midwife on call. Kip checked me with the fetoscope and felt my belly with her hands in order to determine the position of the baby. Within a few minutes, Dawn, the apprentice midwife, had arrived too.

We noticed that Kip was not her usual happy self. From the expression on her face, and the knowing, silent looks that she and Dawn were exchanging, Jeff and I sensed right away that something was wrong. Kip called in our other midwife, Clarice. After listening again with the fetoscope, Clarice concurred with Kip’s opinion that the baby was breech. The Birth Center will not handle breech or twin births because of legal and medical protocols.

Jeff and I had to face the reality that we would probably be having the baby at a hospital, most likely by C-section, and at the hands of total strangers. Aside from stillbirth, these were the three very worst things, in my book, which could have happened for me, and our baby’s, labor experience. However, Jeff and I both felt that the baby's welfare was preeminent, no matter what dream I had to give up or less-than-hoped-for experience I had to endure. I felt like I was submitting to the will of God, even though I didn’t understand why it didn’t agree with mine.

As we headed for the hospital, I did not feel afraid or apprehensive - only disappointed and a bit shocked, as the reality of it all sank in. During the ride there, I silently prayed to have the courage to face whatever lay ahead, and asked God to give those attending me the wisdom to do what was truly in the best interests of me and the baby. I called a few of my close friends to tell them what was going on and ask them to pray for me. We are Latter-day Saints, so I also called the Detroit Temple and placed our baby’s name on the prayer roll there.

Dawn made it to the obstetric ward at the hospital before we did. Nobody was at the reception window, which baffled me, as we sat there and sat there with others in the waiting room as the TV droned on. I felt torn: frustrated to have to be there at all, but also frustrated that nobody on staff seemed concerned enough to be waiting for us, even though Greenhouse had phoned ahead to notify them of our coming. Somebody finally showed up at the window, though, and after I’d filled out all the admitting paperwork, they led us back to an exam room.

My husband and I are in our thirties, so we don’t consider ourselves even middle-aged...yet we were both surprised by our mutual reaction to the age of the staff on hand. To us, they all looked like babies fresh out of high school. I silently prayed that I wasn’t going to be somebody’s very first C-section! The hospital performed a preliminary ultrasound to confirm the breech. To our profound relief, the ultrasound showed that the baby was head-down, not breech.

Personally, we believe it is highly unlikely that Kip and Clarice could have misdiagnosed the position of the baby. Therefore, our conclusion is that God blessed us with yet another miracle, by turning the baby back downward within that one-hour space of time. I say "yet another miracle" because Spencer was the first baby I ever conceived naturally - that is, without extensive infertility procedures. We also consider the circumstances of our meeting and marriage in late Autumn 2004 to be a miracle, too. We could tell from the faces of everyone in the room, except the hospital staff member, that we all felt the same great relief and joy at the prospect of being able to return back to Greenhouse to have the baby.

Dawn left shortly after this good news from the ultrasound, expecting that we would follow very shortly afterward to return to Greenhouse with her. But the hospital made us sit there in that little exam room for what seemed like forever. We couldn’t leave without signing their paperwork. However, the wait did allow us a private interim in which I was able to receive the priesthood blessing I had requested. As Jeff and my brother-in-law, Kent, laid their hands upon my head, I listened to the words of a beautiful, loving, gentle blessing... a blessing which reassured me that all would be well.

Maybe they decided to wait until they were really sure Dawn was gone, but in any case, the hospital resident assigned to me finally returned to the exam room. I was relieved to finally be able to go and had already removed the hospital gowns and redressed. To my surprise, this young resident doctor informed me that they wanted to keep me there for a few more hours. Apparently, they felt it was medically necessary to draw my blood and run extensive lab tests, because they suspected I had pre-eclampsia. They claimed my blood pressure and temperature were abnormally high - high enough to cause them "deep concern".

This was my third baby, not my first, and my prior two labors had also been midwife-assisted. I told the young resident that my vital measurements were probably high because of my dismay at having to be there at the hospital instead of at Greenhouse. She denied that my stress could have jacked my stats up that high. Then she stood there, then, staring silently at me, waiting for me to make my choice. Because of the priesthood blessing I’d just received, I knew everything was going to be all right. I also realized that I knew and trusted Kip, Clarice and Dawn, especially at that moment...

Jeff and I promptly checked out of the hospital, and returned to the birth center. Upon hearing the story of why we were delayed, Kip took my vitals again, and they were absolutely normal. Jeff and I ate our very late Burger King dinner and then obeyed midwives' orders to go straight to bed. Or, at least we tried to. We stayed right there at Greenhouse. I was able to have the room of my choice, the peach-colored room, and it was cozy and comfortable, just as I had hoped. But how could I not be ecstatic as I tried to lie down to sleep? I was not at the hospital and still able to be at Greenhouse! Yeah!

Jeff eventually dozed off, but my mind and heart were in a constant whirr of interaction. The silence of the night was filled to overflowing with the mental noise of my thoughts, while my heart overflowed with feelings of overwhelming gratitude to God, relief at my escape from a c-section and excited anticipation for the labor. The baby’s kicking was incredible, too. The pitter-patter barrage seemed to have increased to "party level", as if the baby knew something was about to happen. So I guess you might say that the baby and I kept each other company while we kept each other awake throughout that long, long night. I couldn’t have gotten much deep sleep. I can remember waking up, again and again, to look at the clock face, only to be disappointed each time. Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl, as if someone was stretching it out like chewing gum.

We woke up the next morning, Wednesday July 6, to a beautiful, cool, sunny day. We went to IHOP for breakfast and called Jeff’s family with updates. Then we took a short walk through a nearby park trail that went along a river, but returned to the birth center. (Neither of us felt comfortable being very far away from "home", even if the walk was nice.) I had no contractions all morning - but got in a very nice nap - which made up, somewhat, for my restless sleep from the night before. In fact, all day I had no contractions, no contractions. It was probably the longest, most boring day of our lives!!

It is very strange to be someplace that has an intended purpose, namely childbirth, and not be doing the thing intended. Jeff is a naturally patient person, but I think even he was starting to go a little stir-crazy at the lack of any action. We were all waiting for my body to take action naturally. Finally, at 3 pm, Clarice decided it was time to help kick in my giddy-up. She made me a lovely cocktail of castor oil, orange juice and baking soda. I've never had castor oil - Jeff told me it was NASTY. But apparently, I got away with a minor experience. The baking soda kept the oil suspended, so it was nothing more than a very fizzy, warm glass of OJ. I waited for sparks to fly, the ignition to start, the band to begin... but four more hours passed with still nothing. I started to get a little worried. Had my body somehow forgotten what to do? Dawn, Kip and Clarice assured me that it hadn’t.

I knew that any hospital would have induced me long before what was then 7:00, and I was afraid of having to go back to the hospital. The midwives never mentioned the hospital, only reassured me that third babies were kind of strange and unpredictable births, and not to worry. Dawn did ask me if there was something bothering me. I was at the happiest point, personally, in my entire life. I couldn’t think of a thing to tell her was wrong, because there wasn’t anything wrong for once. So why no labor?

Relief, of a sort, finally came around 6:30 or 7:00 pm, when Jeff's sister, Sharlene, arrived at the Birth Center. We'd invited her for the birth, which was my first time at having any family present for labor. Sharlene brought us the cheer of her company, as well as the mental distraction of some VHS movies! Yeah! So we sat there and watched Sabrina, and as we did, some contractions came. We noticed that though they were irregular, they were remaining. Sharlene and Jeff began keeping track of them. They were so cute! There they sat on the couch, perched like two little chirpy birdies, waiting with expectant, excited stares, for the next report of a contraction. It was like I was the movie and Sabrina was only the elevator music. Wish I could have taken a picture of those two - they were classic adorable!

The 7-9pm Wednesday birth class had begun there in the Greenhouse classroom. I had worried about this happening during my labor, but it worked out okay. All the midwives were still in the building, and merely shut the door leading to our part of the center so we could have privacy. Maybe my body finally decided to go into labor because I wanted all that undivided midwife attention back? Maybe it happened simply because "a watched pot never boils"? In any case, active labor began around 8:30. At first I worried about the class overhearing me moan, but I eventually got so much into the labor that I didn’t care. Kip, Clarice and Dawn all came in and checked on me, but I must confess I was glad and quite proud of myself when that birth class finally released for the night. Not only did I get my "3 wise women" back, but my body was finally cooperating and in full throttle when they returned.

As much as I’d snubbed it during my own birth class, I found the bathroom toilet to be quite an ideal hangout after all. I was either there, pacing the floor, or on the bed with the labor ball. I wondered when I would be able to get in the tub but didn’t ask, afraid I’d be told it was still too early. At around 9:30, Kip took one look at me and asked if I wanted to go in the tub. "Yes!!" I answered. She drew the water and I gratefully climbed in. The relief from the warm water and its counter-pressure was immediate. I’d missed dinner by then, but was too "into” the labor to want to eat.

Jeff and the midwives made sure that I had plenty of water, though, and I tried to eat a little by nibbling at a Luna bar. (Lemon Zest Luna bars will never quite taste the same for me from here on out!) Jeff ate his dinner tub-side with a TV tray in the rocking chair, dropping his fork to come running to my side whenever another contraction came. The contractions were pretty consistent, and, to me, pretty fast. Unlike the leisurely pace of my prior labor experiences, my body meant business this time. Nowhere could I find the familiar pattern of surfing wave and long rest on the sand. This time was more like being tied to a rock while being pounded by a constant surf, with a serendipitous gulp of air now and then while I grew gills.

There is a sign on the wall by the birthing tub that reads, "I hope you dance". I like the message of a country song by that title, but it was placed there for more than that. It is indicative of Kip and Clarice’s real hopes for their mothers-to-be. Now, since having the baby, I realize that this dance was the one part of Spencer’s birth that I’d been worried about and maybe even secretly afraid of. Maybe this is what Dawn saw when she’d asked me if there was something bothering me.

You’d think with having given birth two times before that I would have been more confident. But I couldn’t help wondering, as I contemplated this third childbirth, if I would REALLY know what to do. I felt like a bird taking it’s first solo flight out of the nest... for this was truly to be the first time I would REALLY be in charge of it all. Would I really be able to feel my way through it, letting instinct, intuition, and that little voice inside guide me?

My two prior births had been in a small hospital setting, and I had been coached through the active labor, mainly by strangers: the hospital nurses who happened to be working that night. Both times it was back labor. Both times I was made to wear an external fetal monitor, and because of it, both times they found some emergency to go into a panic over. During my first labor, they claimed dangerously lowered fetal heart rate and oxygen levels and, for a while, demanded that I labor on my hands and knees without telling me why.

During my second labor, the back pain was diminished to almost nothing by the labor tub. But they made me get out of the labor tub because of "hospital policy" that I couldn’t give birth there. Cold, wet and angry for having to leave the tub, I knew it would get worse. Indeed, the back pain returned, as did the panic of the hospital staff, and even my midwife. I don’t know if it was triggered by me or the fetal monitor, but I found myself back at the point of bewildered, fearful obedience. They yelled at me to turn over flat on my back, RIGHT NOW, and offered no other explanation. This is the position in which I remained and eventually gave birth. My second baby turned out to weigh nearly 11 pounds. I tore externally as well as internally, and it hurt like hell when my midwife tugged the placenta out.

It wasn’t until the Greenhouse childbirth class that I realized I hadn’t really ever had a full natural childbirth. My midwives’ hands were tied by hospital policy - I hadn’t been allowed to labor without intervention or interruption - there was no way that this had been a true natural childbirth. So, in the weeks leading up to this third labor, I had wondered over and over again if I would really be enough for myself. Kip and Clarice had both assured me that I would. Yet, I’d wondered...with no one to tell me what to do or when to push, would I really know? What if another "emergency" situation happened like before? There would be no fetal monitor this time. How could I trust myself that I would have the instinct to know what position to use, when I hadn’t even had the urge to push before? Logically, I knew that it made as little sense to be told when to push as it did to have a coaching team beside me during a bowel movement - how were they to know what I felt? Yet emotionally I couldn’t quite shake that last vestige of medical-model mystique. False tradition as it is, in my experiences I had known nothing else.

As it turned out, and as life often is, in the experience of Spencer’s birth, I learned a new lesson from an old lesson I thought I’d already thoroughly learned. It was like reading a well-loved scripture verse, one you’ve read a million times, and then, GASP, finding something new in it that you swear wasn’t printed there before. I discovered that birth is like the story of "The Little Engine That Could". My labor dance was as beautiful and empowering as it was mainly because I chose to believe that I really could push out my baby. It helped that I also knew that this time, for the first time, I was safely and completely encircled in a totally secure physical and emotional environment. Throughout it all, I was surrounded and supported by trusted and beloved people who ALLOWED me to dance the dance I need to do for this baby.

I was all over that tub, and that was okay. Anything I did or did not do was okay. I'm not saying labor was painless, because it wasn't, but it was the first time I was able to have complete control of the entire experience by allowing my body to do the job that God designed it to do. This time His design was that I would only feel the urge to push within the last 5 minutes of it all. It was actually a big surprise to go from "AYA! I don't remember it hurting this bad! When is this going to STOP!?" to "WHAT? There's the head already!" It felt like I had been in the middle of a big 30-mile marathon race, expecting that I was only about one-fourth to halfway done, and then suddenly finding myself only a few yards from the yellow ribbon.

I’d been moaning my way through, but when that urge came, the decibel level immediately blasted off the charts as I screamed that I had to push, and while screaming, (re-realizing that I was free to do whatever I wanted to with no one to tell me no), I started to do just that. Everybody raced into the room that wasn’t already in the room, and it’s a good thing they did. It took maybe four pushes at most. In the grand finale of my dance, I was bolt upright on my knees and Spencer shot out like a little fish, in a graceful arc to the bottom of the birthing tub. The midwives said he had a look of surprise on his face, as if to ask, "What's this?"

We’ve come to learn, since then, that this look of worried shock is Spencer’s standard response to anything new. We knew that Spencer was fine in the water, since he hadn’t breathed in air yet, but Jeff and I both just sort of froze there in a daze. It was Clarice who scooped him up out of the water and she put him immediately in my arms. Unlike a hospital, Spencer wasn't immediately removed for anything, and I truly, truly love that we were given the gift of that still, slow, peaceful unfolding of our joy. Emotions were allowed and remained. There was no brisk scattering, shattering of the moment, no denial that this was a shimmering pearl of a memory being made. It was simply beautiful and as close to sacred as all my life’s experiences with holy have been.

Even the aftermath was good. Clarice was so gentle and kind with the process of birthing the placenta that I forgot the pain I’d felt with it in my second labor. I was amazed, astounded actually, to learn that I had not torn at all. And what a difference THAT made! Wow! As with my first birth, my bladder decided it didn’t work anymore, but unlike the pain and catheter from before, the midwives treated this development with wisdom and patience. All it took were a few natural means of coaxing, and I was just fine again. In fact, Jeff and I were back home in our own bed by 4:00 the next morning.

The "babymoon" was wonderful, too. What a treat to be so spoiled by my husband and to have official midwife permission to rest! Dawn made two visits to our home and I have made a few more since to the Greenhouse. Further health issues unrelated to the pregnancy were uncovered by my family doctor during my third trimester. I was touched and amazed by the continued support and care that I received from Kip and Clarice and all the rest of the staff on this issue. I wasn’t just a number to them, or a person off of their "to-do list" once they’d done their jobs to have the baby. I was family. And you can bet that if Jeff and I are blessed to be able to bear more children, we will bring them to Greenhouse to begin the miracle of each of their lives.

Jeff is the only son of an only surviving son of an only son. Understandably, then, Spencer means a great deal to Jeff’s side of the family. We were only too happy to present our sweet and good 79-year-old father, a World War II veteran, with the gift of seeing his posterity with his own eyes, and the knowledge that his family line will indeed be continued, not to end with Jeff. Our other two children are ecstatic. When my water broke, they jumped for joy, leaping all over the house, while hooting and hollering, "Today’s the day! Today’s the day! We’ve been praying and waiting for the baby to be born and today’s the day!" They pour over Spencer as much as we do, watching every move we make to care for him, watching everything he does with delighted glee. We have not detected an iota of sibling rivalry or envy from them... and this is a blessing too.

I have the feeling that Spencer will be a great happiness to us all, growing up as fast as Anna and Will have grown, but with a very interested and loving audience to cheer him on: A Dad, a Mom, a big sister, a big brother.... what a lucky little kid! Thank you, Kip - Clarice - Dawn - Mitzi, for the entire journey, start to finish. Our son could not have had a more beautiful, peaceful, loving birth. It is impossible to repay you for a gift like that or to thank you enough for the sacrifices you make in your own lives to give the parents and babies of Michigan the Greenhouse Birth Center. We love you.

- Katie and Jeff Moore