Accidental Homebirth

📷: Molly Dillon Photography

5 drafts and 10 Google Doc pages. That is how many times it took me to write something that even felt close to capturing how Parker’s birth impacted us that night, and forever. It’s still far from perfect, and likely never will be. I’ll continue to tweak year over year — but on the two year anniversary of accidentally giving birth on the bathroom floor, here goes…

***

There was an overall sense of overt calm in the room. But inside, I was reeling. There was supposed to be noise. There was supposed to be crying. But all I heard was this deafening silence. I had just experienced arguably the most epic moment of my life: giving birth to my second son on our master bathroom floor. Accidentally. Yes, you read that right. It was just us, my sister-in-law, and the 911 operator on speaker phone — and not one of us was making a sound. 

“Is he okay?! Is he breathing?!” I finally exclaimed.

“He’s fine,” Dave said, smiling. “I just saw him take his first breath. He’s looking at me.”

The 911 operator explicitly said not to lift the baby onto my chest — you know, the way they do in the movies and in the hospital. It’s the part where the mothers exude large emotions, grasp on to their new baby, and forget about all the pain they just endured or how shitty they felt the past nine months. We had none of that here. And so I continued to lay flat on my back on the cold tile in our silent bathroom — wondering what the actual fuck just happened.

***

What seemed like only minutes later, a parade of young, masked firefighters came walking through our bathroom door. They were not rushed. They were not at all hurried. They were so used to saving lives on the brink of being lost, and now here they were in the presence of a fresh new life that didn’t seem to need saving; it just needed an umbilical cord cut and a ride to the nearest hospital.

And my husband, Dave, forever my partner, advocate, and now default doula — kept asking the firemen if I could put the baby to breast to have Parker begin to nurse. Met with innocent resistance most likely due to a lack of understanding for the immediate postpartum period, the firemen ignored his requests and instead sent him to find a baby blanket. How different the immediate postpartum was with this pregnancy than my last. Our doula and our nurses in the hospital were all about preserving the golden hour post-birth, and the breast crawl. It was beautiful, truly. And while I wouldn’t trade either of my birth experiences for anything at this point, it was hard for awhile not to grieve the loss of those peaceful post-birth moments every mom longs for.

When I was finally asked to move up off the floor, I felt that in no way I could do this myself. As I continued to bleed, I continued to feel faint — as if the walls were closing in around me. Helped onto a stretcher, I was carried slowly down our stairs in the dark, pausing to glance over at Carson’s room as I left, and then back down at Parker. I had enough awareness in that moment to appreciate that I now had both my boys earthside. But Carson was my first (human) baby — I wanted so badly to hug him, to tell him the crazy thing that just happened in our house, to introduce him to his brother, and to show him that a bunch of firemen (his heroes!) were in our house. But he was still sleeping — and remained asleep the rest of the night.

They wheeled me backwards out of the front door of our house. I looked around at all of the dark, quiet homes of our new neighbors thinking how this spectacle must be so disruptive to their peaceful evenings. I envisioned everyone at their windows watching intently, wondering why I had a baby accidentally on the bathroom floor. My head swirled in a million different directions, and then finally settled in on the tiny little nugget tucked somewhat neatly under the fire blanket we were both wrapped in. He was still so quiet (oh, how this would change as he got older!). He just blinked his sweet little eyes and looked up at me, as if to say “So we’re really doing this, Mom?”. This was our first rodeo together, and boy, was it a doozy. In the midst of all of the chaos and craziness, there was somehow a sweet stillness between us. Just me and him.

***

I don’t know what I was thinking, but I tried to make small talk with the EMT in the ambulance as he put the IV in my hand. However, I couldn’t pretend anything about this experience was normal. I had just pushed a baby out on my bathroom floor. My sister-in-law and half of my local fire department had seen parts of me that should never see the light of day. How does one recover from this? Oh, and there was still the physical pain my body was experiencing. Remember there’s that other organ that the body still needs to expel after the baby is born? Yeah, I’m not sure the firemen got the memo on that either. I writhed in pain with each subsequent contraction, thinking what the fuck do I do if this thing pops out here in the ambulance.

We arrived at the hospital in just a few short minutes. I was still in and out of it, and mostly just staring down at Parker, still thinking “what the actual fuck?” but also falling in love with his little face. Only mere moments old, and he was already so different than Carson. Throughout my pregnancy, I couldn’t picture what our second baby would look like but now I could. He was his own little guy — just trying to leave his mark on the world. 

***

I was rolled into a room in labor and delivery, and the nurses went to town doing my admission. Parker was placed in a bedside bassinet, and they began the checks to make sure everything was okay given his less-than-conventional entrance into the world. Meanwhile, the EMTs and nurses stood above me talking about the experience I just had as if I wasn’t there. It was another round of an out-of-body experience hearing phrases like “out of hospital delivery” and “breathing on arrival”, and realizing that they were about me and my son. With a few swift, forceful moves, the nurse pushed on my belly to expel the placenta — apologizing as it was happening although it did not change her course. I knew the drill. The room went white as the pain raged through my body again. A little push of IV pain medications took the edge off and helped me lay back to relax as labor #2 and the subsequent repair ensued. 

***

I’ll never forget the OB/GYN who delivered the placenta and began to repair my trauma, though I have sadly forgotten her name. I say “began” because the initial procedure is just the beginning of the healing. As many postpartum moms know, the weeks and months to come would bring bodily challenges one only knows if they’ve been through childbirth.

Much like the firemen earlier in the night, she too was not rushed. She too was not at all hurried. She acknowledged me as a human, and what I was feeling. Without even realizing it, I had begun to cry. Just a slow, quiet whimper of tears rolling down my cheeks that I could not stop. I wish I could attribute them to happy tears, but that was not the case. Physical shock, emotional shock — whatever it was, hit me like a ton of bricks. She stroked my hair and told me how strong I was. “Trauma” was the word she used, and it truly hadn’t hit me that that’s what it was until she put it out there so plainly. I laid through each stitch, staring at the tiles in the hospital ceiling — listening to Dave talk to Parker next to me, getting to know our newest little dude.

When she finished, she left the room and returned with crackers and a giant hospital water jug (iykyk) containing a special cocktail of ginger ale and apple juice with the tiny hospital ice chips. My body needed that glucose. She held it to my mouth as I chugged like it was last call at a “10-cent Tuesday” night in college. She wrung out warm washcloths in a basin at my bedside and cleaned all the blood from my legs — making the whole thing look like less of a murder scene. Although I was tired and disoriented, I was acutely aware of how rare this was for a physician to pay so much attention to one patient who was arguably stable. She had “better things to do”, I’m sure — but it felt as though she wanted to acknowledge all parts of my victory and trauma all rolled into one. She cared for me in my most vulnerable moment with such regard for my dignity. I’ll truly never forget it.

***

The next morning, we went home. Second time parents seem to get kicked out a bit sooner, and quite honestly that was okay with us. Almost as if nothing out of the ordinary happened, our little bundle of joy was now ours to figure out what to do with. It was time to begin navigating life as a family of four with two (almost) under two.

In the hours and days that followed March 24, 2021, we spent a lot of time recounting the story to all of our family and friends — many of whom were in disbelief. Dave reveled in the experience of delivering Parker, and still does to this day. As traumatic as that experience was for me, I’m so happy that this is also a proud moment in Dave’s experience as a father. I look forward to the day we can tell him this story together, and let this be a foundational part of his origin story.

***

And for anyone who was brave enough to read all the way through to the end, I’ll leave you with this: better not to trust a free contractions app.