Faustina's Birth Story

As I have for the boys, I am determined to write down Faustina's birth story from start to finish. Hers is a bit of a harder story to pin down. Here goes:

As the end of my pregnancy approached, I began to really dread the drive from our hometown to the city we were planning to deliver with a midwife, two and a half hours away. Because I am a huge believer in midwifery care, we are willing to travel in order to have that care, which means the closest care provider being quite a distance away.

This time around, with being due in July when my regular midwives have summer break, I had a different midwife than usual, which came with some challenges, but overall, I was grateful to have been accepted into midwifery care at all this time around.

On July 1st, four weeks before our due date, we called in our childcare and travelled to the city. I was experiencing mild contractions, and we went in a little earlier than we might have, had we not had that distance to travel.

We were so relieved when we made it safely to the city. Tharin and I kept saying to each other, we made it. We don't have to worry about the drive now. Both of us were relieved to have not had to use the precipitous birth kit Tharin had packed just in case.

Similar to Elias' labour, we spent that night peacefully going for walks, sleeping when we could, and just enjoying the quiet hours together when the rest of the world was asleep, anticipating the coming of our little one. 

Around three in the morning, my contractions started increasing in intensity, and I experienced a very real panic attack. Because Faustina was thirty six weeks at that time, according to my dating ultrasound (but not my initial calculations) my midwife felt uncomfortable delivering her at home because of concerns about lung development at that stage in pregnancy. With covid making things at the hospital more strict, and not being able to deliver at the smaller hospital where we had delivered Elias, I had felt very strongly that I wanted to deliver this baby at my parents condo where I felt I would be better able to trust my birth process without unnecessary intervention. 

Not feeling able to make this choice for myself, I felt very unprepared.

After that panic attack, my sister, mom, Tharin and I sat down together and prayed the Divine Mercy chaplet, offered up the situation, and I felt a lot of peace. I heard in my heart "why do you insist on your own way? Do you not trust that I know a still better way?"

I knew that I needed to let go and allow this birth to unfold as it needed to, even if it wasn't how I had expected. I resigned myself to going to the hospital.

At this point my contractions were almost non-existent, aside from the tightening of my cranky uterus that always accompanies the end of pregnancy. We decided to go for a long walk, by the time we got back, I was feeling a lot of pressure, and we decided to head to the hospital and have my midwife check me. 

I was only one centimetre dilated, and my contractions were almost non-existent. 

Tharin and I spent the rest of the weekend waiting for something to change, really resisting the idea that the entire thing had been a false alarm, after all, and that we would be heading home without a baby. I feared the idea of facing that long drive, while in labour, again. 

But eventually we went home, and spent a painfully long week on the edge of our seats, expecting every Braxton Hicks, every day, to turn into full fledged labour again. We passed a full week after our false alarm, and when nothing was happening that Saturday, we decided to pack up the family and head to my parents acreage to distract ourselves from just waiting.

Sure enough, that night at my parents acreage, labour picked up again and we headed to my parents condo in the city, leaving the kids at the acreage with a few of their aunts and uncles.

And sure enough, after a few hours, labour completely stalled again. At this point, there had been a lot of tears on my part. I felt betrayed by my body, and mentally I just could not take the uncertainty any longer. That night began to have my first inkling that something might be wrong with the position of the baby, which was complicating how my body responded to labour. 

After a bit of reading, I thought it might be that the baby was sunny side up, so I started doing exercises to help her move. In the morning we went to see the midwife and she confirmed that the baby was, in fact, in the position I suspected. She gave me a few tips for helping to get the baby in the optimal position. She brought up the possibility of doing a membrane sweep, which I decided against at that time, but on our way back to my parents condo, we decided to get some castor oil which can naturally help labour along. Mentally, I needed to feel I was doing something. 

At my parents condo, we spent the afternoon doing exercises to help Faustina move (one of which I definitely felt large movements out of, and wonder if she did in fact move at that time). However, after hours of waiting I was not feeling any contractions, so we decided to head back to the acreage, just over an hour from the city, where my parents had been watching our other kids all day.

4:00 PM We arrived at the acreage, and it was an absolutely beautiful night. I visited with my boys, happy and filthy after a weekend of playing outside at my parent's acreage, and Tharin and I went for a walk around my parent's acreage. We joked that I had gone into labour with two of of our other kids at that acreage, so maybe the oxytocin release of being in a place I was so happy would work it's magic again. 

Both of us were preparing to head home the following day, with no baby, once again.

6:00 PM Feeling extremely exhausted from the night before, I went for a nap after doing some more spinning babies techniques.

7:00 PM I woke up from my nap feeling vaguely crampy, but was not having noticeable contractions. Most of my family was gathered together for a family supper, the tables were set up on the patio outside and it was a beautiful night. Nine of my parents other grandkids were all running around the yard. 

At supper, I was feeling strange, my uterus felt very cranky, so I decided to go up and have a shower and see if I could get it to relax so I could assess what was actually going on. 

In the shower I had my first noticeable contractions, but I was not convinced they were anything other than the prodromal labour I had been experiencing for over a week at that point. I thought I would go lie down again and see if they would die down as had been their pattern. However, Tharin and my mom and sister came up to check on me and it was decided that I seemed different. 

We started making plans to head back to the condo in the city. From the time I left the shower to the time I got to the car, the intensity of my contractions had already increased dramatically. As we drove away, my mom and sister following in their car behind, I started timing contractions. They were already thirty seconds long and a minute and a half apart. 

8:30 PM I called my midwife and she told me to call her when we reached the city and my contractions were longer. I had Tharin call her back three contractions later, my contractions had already increased in intensity to the point that I could not make the call myself, and I knew she would need to meet us there. We had an hour drive into the city, and with my contractions so close together, and increasingly difficult to breathe through, I wasn't sure how I was going to manage. I was absolutely fixated on getting to my birthing pool, which was blown up but empty at my parents condo.

I have a transition sound where I go from managing my labour silently with low breathing to a really low humming, growling sound. It is extremely weird, but five babies in, Tharin is well acquainted with what that sound means, and where I am at in labour when he starts hearing it. When I started making that sound we still had a half hour drive to the city. He started saying to me, Olivia if you need to push we have to pull over. Emilie will call 911, it will be okay. 

I finally admitted it was time to pull over when I felt the first urge to push and my waters broke. I was yelling at Tharin, I do not want to deliver this baby in the car. 

9:11 PM Tharin called my midwife that we had pulled over. He explains this part very dramatically. Apparently he jumped out of the van and ran to the back where we had some emergency birth supplies and he started throwing towels at my mom who had come around to my side of the vehicle. She got me ready and Faustina was completely born in three pushes, at 9:14 PM. 

Afterwards, talking to the midwives about my placenta and umbilical cord, they believe the false labour and then the extremely precipitous labour when it did happen, was the result of a relatively short umbilical cord. Apparently this will happen because the baby will go into the birth canal, realize it will pull on the cord and restrict blood flow in a regular birth, so it will stop labour. So when it does decide it is time to come, birth will be very quick to minimize that restricted blood flow.

Why do you insist on your own way? Do you not trust I have a still better way?

I didn't know about this complication, for some reason I just had my irrational fears about having the baby on the side of the highway this pregnancy. In the end, it was definitely a less than ideal way to birth a baby, but it was what Faustina needed to do in order to be safe in her particular situation. 

This is why all labours are different, and require such a huge element of trust. It seemed only fitting that we had already chosen to name our daughter after my mom, using her name as the middle name, when she ended up being the one with me as I delivered Faustina. God knows what He is doing, no detail is insignificant. 

My own midwife who has been there for three of my other boys, was the first midwife on the scene. She arrived around 9:30 PM right as the paramedics (and the mosquitos) did. 

It was a beautiful, clear, warm night, we were parked on a little side road facing a farmer's field, which is actually a pretty amazing birth view for this prairie girl. My midwife gave me a shot of oxytocin to help deliver the placenta, and the paramedics did some vitals on me. 

Everyone kept asking, how is mom? I thought it was a funny question - I felt exactly like I had after my other labours, sore and in shock, completely in love with my baby, and relieved that it was over. The fact that it had happened as it had ceased to matter as soon as I pushed that baby out. 

Finally done with vitals and paperwork with the paramedics, we continued on to the city where we rested and did the newborn check at my parents condo. On the way, we were treated to a beautiful Divine Mercy sunset, full of pinks and blues and streaks of white, and I feel certain it was a little sign for our Divine Mercy girl. After an extremely exciting entrance into the world, Faustina has been such a peaceful and lovely baby. 

To read my other birth stories go here for Jerome's | here for Benedict's | here for Ignatius' | here for Elias' | and read why I believe midwifery care is so compatible with Montessori here.

Thank you for reading! If you are interested in following along with our family and our daily adventures, follow us on Instagram where I post daily.

God bless,
Olivia Fischer