Unassisted Childbirth #1

by Jackie Keller
(Camden, AR, USA)

At 3:50 AM on Wednesday, May 17, 2000, my water broke. However, not having had a single contraction, I thought maybe I wet my bed!


My husband, who wouldn’t wake if a train crashed through our bedroom, woke to find me leaning over the bed smelling the spot of wetness in which he questioned, “What are you doing?”

I told him either my water broke or I peed in the bed in which he questioned, “When is the last time you peed in the bed?”.

Obviously my water had broken, so the excitement was to begin. I decided to climb back in bed to sleep since I wasn’t having any contractions.

I got up in the morning like usual with Steve heading to work and me feeding my son breakfast and doing regular household chores. I still had not had a contraction worth mentioning.

Steve came home for lunch and I thought it best for him to stay home. I decided to get out of the house to see if this was “it”, so we headed to the grocery store. While in the store my contractions got to where I couldn’t walk through them, so I knew it was time to get home. That was about 2:20PM.

At home I settled down in our bedroom with an attached bathroom while Steve put our son down for his nap and went to go tidy up the house.

I went to the toilet again, as that was a comfortable position for me. Suddenly I had the urge to push-and I did! I frantically hollered for Steve as loud as I could. He told me not to push (oops, too late) and we headed to the bed.

At that point another strong contraction hit me and I tried to climb out of it. I knew I had better get my focus back or everything I had been believing for was going to go right down the drain. I regained my focus and Steve says, “Okay, you can push.” Funny. I told him I didn’t have to.

Steve was flipping through one of his college textbooks (he thought the midwife would be there) looking for the chapter on emergency deliveries. It was almost comical as the book would close just as he spread it out on the bed.

I was completely relaxed at that point and with another contraction delivered her head. Her head turned and with one more contraction her body was delivered at 3:50 PM.

It was a beautiful, natural birth, uninterrupted and undisturbed. We cleaned her up and I delivered the placenta, got in bed and started nursing.

The midwife didn’t show up for another 2 hours, but we know it was all part of the plan because from the beginning I really felt like we would do it alone. This was the first of many unassisted births.