I’ve been putting off typing this story out for many reasons. One is because while all of my children’s birth stories have somehow gotten progressively shorter, this one goes against the curve. There’s so much to unpack, so much context to go through that I was purely intimidated by how long it was going to take me. This really is two stories in one. Not two babies, but two very big parts of my life that occurred over a similar time period and intertwined so intricately. Next, I’m also embarrassed, and we’ll get to why that is later. And lastly, it’s been a lot harder to process than I anticipated.
So with that in mind, here we go.
This is the story of how God gave us Indy.
I always need to start these stories at the very beginning, which is typically where the last story left off, the birth of my last child.
During Tru’s pregnancy, I had sworn up and down that this was it. He was the LAST baby. For once and for all (even though I had done this during Milo and Jentzen’s births as well). About two days after he was born, however, my milk was coming in and I was experiencing that rush of hormones that makes you sob for two hours for silly reasons. Except, my reason didn’t feel so silly. I was in my bathroom, changing my Depends, using my peri bottle, and sobbing over the fact that I would never get to experience this again. Not the postpartum care, but carrying a child in my womb, playing a huge part in giving somebody the gift of life, and having the honor and privilege of birthing them into this world, nursing them and being their only source of nourishment, having them fall asleep on my chest as they’re comforted by my heartbeat and warmth and smell. I had a two day old in the other room and yet I was losing it over the fact that I’d never have a two day old again. I know hormones played a big part in this, but deep down, there was something there.
Fast forward to the end of the summer. It was August of 2021 and I’d gotten Covid for the first time (and the only time that I’m aware of). It seems like an insignificant detail to include, but it actually played a big part in this story. I wasn’t even very sick, I was really just stressed out. I’d had a very difficult couple of weeks, Tru was only sleeping 45 min at a time and I was only sleeping in 20 minutes intervals. I was going back to work on site after being out of the office for maternity leave/working from home, and it was Tru’s first day in daycare. The AC was out in our office and it was 90 degrees inside. My oldest daughter was starting school the next day and whether or not she’d have to wear a mask was still looming in the air as she’d yet to wear one and I never wanted her to. My oldest son threw up after picking him up from pre-school, and I had a raging headache. What a crap day.
Anyways, the next day while staying home with my sick son, I got to take a nap since Tru was in daycare, and I took a sick-detox bath and felt SO much better. I got up, made dinner, and felt great. Then my husband walked in with the other kids and almost fell over from the smell of garlic in the house. I thought that was odd because I couldn’t smell it at all. Then during dinner he commented on how flavorful dinner was. I got my fork, took a bite, and couldn’t taste a thing. Just texture. Just temperature. No taste whatsoever. I started laughing. I said, well…one day back to work and now I’m out again (back then there was still a 10 day quarantine period protocol).
To me it was no big deal. I even took advantage of the fact that I’d lost my taste and smell and just ate super healthy things like green smoothies and such and pretended they were milkshakes, because I could taste nothing.
All that was great until a few days later when my smell and taste still hadn’t returned. My friends who’d recently had Covid had gotten theirs back within a day or two. Some of them a week, and the longest I’d heard was two weeks. So at two weeks when mine was still nowhere in sight, I figured I just took a little longer than others. Then a month goes by. Then two. Then three. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed not smelling terrible things, could change diapers with a breeze, could do the nasty dishes without batting an eye, and didn’t at all mind being around an open trash can, but I missed the good smells and tastes too.
At almost four months in, I was making pancakes for my kids and habitually licked the batter off of my finger. Suddenly a SUPER SWEET taste was in my mouth, what felt sweeter than I ever remember anything being. I thought wow-this is it, my taste is finally coming back! The next night at dinner, I remember the pizza we had tasting a little bit savory, but not quite normal, and I thought yes…I’m baby stepping my way back! This is great!
But then the bomb dropped. It was the week after Thanksgiving, and my husband and I were having a date night in. Things were tasting weird here and there but I figured it was just all a part of it coming back. That night I tasted the garlic oil I’d dipped my bread in and told him it was rancid and not to use it! Next, I took a bite of my salad with ranch dressing on it and it tasted like it had gone bad. Next, I took a sip of my wine and it tasted like straight up gasoline. By this time, my husband had started tasting everything and said it all tasted fine to him. Perplexed, I thought maybe I had caught Covid again without knowing it, or that this was just the weird way my taste and smell were returning. Coffee tasted (and smelled) like burning mineral oil. Garlic tasted (and smelled) like hot sewage. Fruit tasted (and smelled) like cleaning chemicals. Mint tasted rotten. Peanut Butter tasted like expired dirt. Chocolate tasted like mud gone wrong. It was going downhill and going fast. By the end of the month I was unable to eat almost anything at all. I kept thinking, what is this? What is going on? I was beginning to lose hope that I was healing and thought it might be something else.
On New Year’s Day we visited our friends, and I just drank water while everybody else ate. I was describing to my friend what I was experiencing and she said that she saw somebody on Instagram who described the same thing, and that she’d had it for a while and that I should look her up and learn more about it. Her name was Hannah Higgins. On the ride home that night I did just that and when I read her highlights, it was like I was reading my own story. What I had now had a name, it was called Parosmia, and it was in fact a direct result of Covid. While I never experienced any real sickness when I had Covid, it left this terrible dreadful awful condition in its path. I still had a little hope reading her stories, hope that she could tell me how to cure myself, how I could get better, but by the time I had reached the end and saw that she had had parosmia for nine months already and it was still going strong, I was devastated.
That night I remember falling into my husband’s arms and sobbing. This horrible wretched thing was not going to go away, maybe never, but at least not anytime soon. I was starving. I could only stomach Naan bread and water. I was also still exclusively nursing Tru as he wouldn’t take a bottle or eat solid food, and yes, we tried everything. So he was getting what little nutrients I could get into my body.
I lost 40 pounds in less than two months. I lost my period. I lost my sex drive. I lost any luster I had for life. I spent two straight weeks under the covers in my bed crying. It wasn’t just the tastes. It was smells too. It was weird, because I couldn't smell really bad smells, like cigarette smoke or things that were burning or anything excreted from the body, but anything that was supposed to smell good, actually smelled horrible, and some things that were neutral like the smell of rain, or of fresh cut grass, or of soil…had no smell at all.
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| Shortly after my Parosmia hit (and no I couldn't smell the pine trees) |
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| Less than two months later, 40 pounds later. |
Everybody’s breath smelled terrible. I couldn’t kiss my husband. I couldn’t even lay in bed next to my husband and had to put multiple pillows between us. I couldn’t be intimate with my husband. I couldn’t be near my kids' faces. I couldn't tell if something was on fire. Deodorants, toothpastes, soaps, shampoos, everything in the personal hygiene department was wretched. Fabric softener and scented laundry detergent (we haven't used them in years but other people do) was (and still is) a top offender. I brushed my teeth with water, and eventually with baking soda because water, unless it was filtered and ice cold, tasted and smelled terrible too. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
It was so hard to explain to people what was going on. They would say things like “oh yeah, coffee and ketchup tasted weird after I had Covid too” or jokingly say “wow that must stink.” But nobody understood. Nobody could relate to the hell I was going through. And I was so malnourished.
Through Hannah’s help, I found a facebook support group for people with parosmia, and this was a big help. People were out there suffering just like me. Even though I didn’t know them in real life, and even though I hated that anybody else was experiencing what I was, it helped knowing that I wasn’t alone. And people who had had it longer were helpful with tips and tricks and advice on how to get through, as well as suggesting foods that they could tolerate.
So I did a LOT of experimenting at that point with different foods and figured out that I could eat the following things, and although they didn’t taste normal or like they should, they were stomachable. Cold oats with milk, cinnamon and maple syrup, sourdough bread and butter, string cheese, mashed potatoes with lots of butter and salt, really cold green grapes, plain pasta with lots of butter and salt, and vanilla ice cream with crushed salted cashews on top. That became the extent of my diet and that’s all I could eat for weeks upon weeks. But it was better than just Naan bread, that’s for sure.
Then came the nose plug. I found a nose plug that I could stand to keep in my nose while I was eating, and I managed to start incorporating a few other things into my diet. I still couldn’t eat any of the major triggers like garlic, onion, mint, chocolate, peanut butter, or fruit, but I began eating cooked broccoli and chickpeas on my pasta, or flaxseed in my oatmeal, or quesadillas, or pizza with no sauce and just cheese, so really just cheese bread. I began putting some weight back on which was helpful for Tru and myself.
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| The nose plug I started with, it really hurt and I choked while I ate a lot, trying to figure out how to breathe, and it was hard to get used to! |
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| The nose plug I found later and used religiously, that helped me be able to eat. I still use it to this day! Everybody thought it was a piercing and eventually I just let them think that! |
All this time I was diligently trying anything suggested on the support group to fix myself or heal myself. I tried SOOOO many supplements, tried red light therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture, steroids, antibiotics, and even spent SO much money on a nerve block therapy that appeared to work for 80-90% of people with parosmia, but not for me. We prayed endlessly, I was begging God constantly to heal me. I’d been prayed over so, so, so many times, but nothing. There were lots of disappointing days in 2022. That’s for sure.
I know that was not a lot about a baby or a pregnancy, but you really needed to understand where I was in my life physically and mentally during this time.
Going backwards a bit, Chris and I had scheduled a vasectomy for him for December of 2021, right around the time I had gotten parosmia actually, although we didn’t know that at the time as it was scheduled a few months out. I wasn’t feeling totally great about it, but I figured if he felt good enough about it to make things permanent, then I needed to go with his gut. That week came and turned out to be a SUPER stressful work week for him. He was working 14 hour days every day and had so much on his plate, along with this looming procedure. I asked him if it would help him out for me to cancel it so that he didn’t have that to worry about on top of everything else. He said yes, and I just told him to tell me when he was ready to reschedule and that I'd check back in every couple of months.
Well, with everything happening with my paromsia, I didn’t have a cycle, nor were we having sex, so the chance of me getting pregnant was pretty slim anyways, so I figured we were safe for now.
Going back a little bit more, that fall of 2021 we had read a book called, Take Back Your Family, by Jefferson Bethke, and listened to the podcasts that accompanied it. That book really impacted us and had us rethinking how we were doing life. It led to many discussions, as well as other podcasts with similar subjects, which led to other books, which led to more discussions and a whole lot of praying. By Spring of 2022, in the middle of all of my parosmia stuff, God had very clearly spoken to Chris and I. We were to begin homeschooling our children in the fall of 2022, I needed to step back from working full time, and be more present at home. And…we also felt called to expand our family. At the time, we weren’t sure if it was through adoption or biologically, but we soon landed on biologically, and even though that meant another round of HG (hyperemesis gravidarum) for me, we felt it was what we were supposed to do. The problem was though, my body wasn’t healthy enough to get pregnant, let alone sustain a pregnancy. I simply wasn’t eating a balanced enough or large enough diet.
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| Family photo, Spring 2022 |
Now it’s fall of 2022. I’m working part time and mostly remotely, homeschooling the two biggest kids with baby Tru at home and Jentzen in play school a few days a week. My parosmia is still ever present, but my body is doing a little better as I'm trying to use my nose plug as much as possible to eat a little more food.
My husband and I ended up going on a trip to Texas in November of 2022. We had plane ticket credits back from 2020 that were about to expire, and needed to use them or lose them, so we scrambled to put a trip together and now that Tru had started eating solid food, felt like we could leave him. The trip was amazing and so needed. I had originally told Chris that I didn’t want to travel again until my parosmia was healed, but seeing as how it had been nearly a year and I’d made no progress, that meant I simply wouldn't get to travel. That trip was not only good for us as a couple though, it was good for my parosmia!
We went to a worship service at Gateway Church in Dallas. Pastor Robert Morris is my favorite pastor to listen to and I was excited to go! Right before service, a woman approached me and asked me what was wrong and what I needed prayer for just by looking at me. I told her about my parosmia and she immediately laid her hands on me and began interceding for me. Throughout the entire service she would randomly put her hand on my thigh and keep praying for me. After service was over, she gave me a hug and told me, “God will bring you healing this afternoon.” I thought that was a pretty bold statement to make considering the number of times I’d been prayed over, and how nothing had happened yet, but I smiled graciously and hoped that she was right. I also stuck around after service as they have a prayer team ready to pray with anybody, and another woman approached me. She asked about my husband and I, and what we were praying for, and oh how I wish I had recorded her prayer. You could tell she’d been a daughter of the house for many decades, and I felt so blessed to have been prayed over by her.
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| Us before walking into Gateway Church |
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| The turkey club and the nose plug on the table! (Not pictured...my tears!) |
Another thing that happened on that trip was the start of a business! I had learned that I would be stepping away from my part time position completely and would be 100% at home with the kids, and this gave me the opportunity and time to jump back into birth work, one of my biggest passions in life! So on that trip we brainstormed business names, branding colors and so forth! We dreamed up plans for a website and it took off from there. Soon, Surrendered Birth Services was born!
We came back from that trip ready to start trying for our next baby, and ready to start building this business (along with a couple of other small businesses at the time, it was a pretty big undertaking). While we didn’t get pregnant in December, we did in January, and found out on January 28th, 2023 that we would be adding another baby to the family! We immediately went into prep mode for my first trimester, ordering supplements and trying to prepare the kids and ourselves for me being bed ridden again for weeks, as we knew the hyperemesis was approaching (severe nausea and vomiting that prevents you from being able to live your life).
We couldn’t have prepared for this though. There is a first trimester/first half of the pregnancy in my normal life, and then there’s that with parosmia. I was NOT prepared for just how much my parosmia would team up with the pregnancy to make life as miserable as possible. Whenever I get pregnant, my already keen sense of smell and taste skyrocket, but blend that with parosmia and it was a recipe for disaster. I had to wear my nose plug 24/7. The air around me, whether inside or outside, smelled like I was sitting in a dumpster. I couldn't have ANYTHING I was craving, because it didn’t taste like it should. No lemonade, french fries, hard candy to suck on….nothing-it all tasted like putrid chemicals, even with the nose plug. It was absolutely awful.
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| Always in bed, always with a nose plug. |
And then, we discovered something that managed to get me through the first trimester. Although we had tried to eat as clean and as unprocessed as possible over the last couple of years, pregnancy and parosmia were a different beast to tackle. I went searching on my parosmia support group page, and joined a group called “Pregnant with Parosmia.” When I’m so nauseous, I can’t do water. I just can’t stomach it. Something about the lack of flavor and lack of bubbles. But with parosmia it’s all I’d been able to drink. Then several people on my support group told me to drink Dr. Pepper. I thought they were crazy. First off, I hadn’t even wanted soda since I had been first trimester pregnant with Tru, but secondly, with how badly all other drinks tasted, I couldn’t imagine Dr. Pepper tasting good. BUT! By some strange twist of fate, it DID! At least it did enough with a nose plug on that it made me feel like I wasn't drinking straight chemicals-even though that's exactly what most soda is. It was the STRANGEST thing! Sprite? Awful. Coke? Even worse! But Dr. Pepper? Right on. SO WEIRD! I actually ended up drinking mostly Diet Dr. Pepper because the regular kind was giving me a stomachache from all of the sugar. So for weeks upon weeks, the only thing I was able to drink was really cold Diet Dr. Pepper. It amazes me my baby is even alive sometimes.
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| My sustenance. |
Just talking about that part of my pregnancy is making me nauseous, so let’s fast forward to when I started feeling better, around 23/24 weeks gestation or so. At that point I was able to take my nose plug out between meals, started showering regularly again, and going back to church regularly too. I was still taking some anti-nausea medicine and wearing my nose plug whenever I ate, but I was able to drink water again and eat things that weren't plain Pringles. Blech.
Since Tru’s home birth had been such an amazing experience for me, I was very much looking forward to this birth as well. Something different we decided to do this time for the first time was to not find out the gender of this baby! We didn’t even get any ultrasounds! So the entire pregnancy we didn’t know who was inside of me. In all honesty, we were praying for a girl, if anything for our oldest child and only daughter’s sake. She had been praying for a girl multiple times a day every day, and I wanted her faith in the power of prayer to be solidified by the gift of a sister after three brothers.
There were many prayers I was praying over this labor and delivery actually, many specific things that I envisioned that I was praying would come to fruition. First, I wanted it to be just Chris and I while I was laboring. I wanted the labor to be a time for the two of us to really connect without others around. I also DEMANDED I’d be having a water birth. Something I still hadn’t managed after three natural births. I told everybody that if I wasn’t in the tub when I started pushing, to pick me up and put me in it the moment they heard the noises. I also wanted and asked for Chris or I to catch this baby. Neither of us had ever caught any of the others, but I felt totally confident that he or I could do that this time, depending on the position I was in. I also prayed for a girl, and my husband was too–even before conception. And probably my biggest prayer was that I wanted to be cured of my parosmia so that I could smell my baby’s head accurately. That was something that had been taken from me when Tru was 4 months old, and I never gained it back, the ability to smell my baby. There is so much bonding that happens through smelling your baby’s head, and I desperately wanted to be able to smell them when he or she was born. A reminder that parosmia affects so much more than what I can eat.
All this time, I was still following Hannah’s journey with her parosmia. It turns out, after all of the treatments had failed her too, she did several sessions of EMDR therapy, and then went back and got the nerve block again, and that time, it worked! There is a lot of theory in parosmia being a dysfunction of the entire nervous system, rather than just our brains. Then a few other people in our group tried the same thing (EMDR and another nerve block) and it worked for them. That was one thing I hadn’t yet tried–therapy. Up until this point in my life I never personally saw a need for me to go to therapy, as I thought I’d handled everything life had to throw at me the best I could with Jesus as my anchor. But parosmia itself had really messed with me, and if anything, I probably needed therapy to deal with the repercussions of the parosmia, and it was like a vicious cycle that I couldn't heal from.
So even though our budget truly didn’t allow it, and it was making our already horrible financial situation worse, if it could help heal my parosmia, we had to try it. So I went to therapy all summer, week after week every week. I did the work, I did the EMDR. I was still seeing the chiropractor for the pregnancy and parosmia as well, and trying to heal my nervous system the best I knew how.
We were given an incredible opportunity for me to try the nerve block one more time before the baby was due. It would be free of charge, we just had to travel there. And through another supernatural blessing, we were gifted a free week’s stay at a beach house an hour and a half from the clinic where the nerve block would be done. Working out all of the details was complicated, but God continued to provide, and we went. We took our family to the beach for a week, just us. It’s the first time we’ve ever done something like that. And while we were there, I had the procedure done one more time. And…it didn’t work. It was exactly the same result once more and I didn’t know how to feel. I knew if I hadn’t tried, I would have regretted not trying, but having tried and then failing again, that was a tough pill to swallow as well. Thankfully, being at the beach, and with the best husband ever, I had a lot of time to pray and journal and walk and worship and process it all.
When we got home, we were on the countdown to baby. I was 37 weeks and doing all of my normal end of pregnancy things. Evening primrose oil to soften the cervix, red raspberry leaf tea capsules to tone the uterus (I truly think these make a difference for me), sitting on my exercise ball every day, doing rounds of the miles circuit, daily walks, with hills, and on and on and on.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no desperation like a woman at the end of her pregnancy. There is a shift I experience, typically around 36 weeks. I reach the point where I am simply “done.” Done with the aches and pains, done with the tiny bladder, done with the heartburn, the varicose veins, and the round ligament pain. Done with the waddling. Done with the insomnia. Done with the more awkward and less comfortable sex positions. Just done. I’m exhausted, and I'm so emotional and I don’t even want to be around myself.
I’m not sure exactly why, I’m not sure exactly how, but at the end of this pregnancy I had a secret expectation of going early. I was due October 8th but was dreaming of a September pregnancy. I had had four babies at four different gestations, 39, 40, 41, and 42 weeks (not in that order). I was ready for my 38 weeker! But alas, 38 weeks came and went with nothing to report. I had an “irritable uterus” as my midwife told me a couple of times, but nothing that went anywhere.
I’ve never in my life craved so much ALONE time. I’m an extrovert and really enjoy being with my friends and family, just being around people and making conversation. And I REALLY enjoy being with my husband. But at the end of this pregnancy, I couldn’t get enough alone time. I wanted to be totally by myself which is so unlike me in my normal state. Don’t get me wrong, with four kids I enjoy a break every now and then to just have some me time, but after a few hours I’m good, and can carry on with the rest of the week or two. But not this time. I wanted to be alone every night. I didn’t even want to hang out with my husband. And I wasn’t even trying to accomplish anything like chores or work, I just wanted to be by myself. I was taking nightly epsom salt baths, I was going on morning walks by myself, I was journaling and reading in bed as often as I could, just staring out my window. I just didn’t want to be around anybody. It was strange for me, but it’s what I needed.
This is where things get pretty vulnerable. This is the part in the story that I have a hard time telling, because it’s very hard for me to admit and to come to terms with.
I was in a low place. I was sad. I was disappointed. I was at the end of my pregnancy and feeling ALL of the emotions. I even had a complete and total breakdown one night when my husband wasn’t home and my sister and almost brother-in-law had to come and be with the kids for me. I was not well. I wanted to birth my baby and meet my baby so badly that I made some decisions that in my normal state of mind, I would not have made. And I didn’t tell a soul, except for my husband, until now. I could lie to you or omit the truth here, but I know in my spirit if I’m going to share this story, this is a big part of it.
I had spent the entire year building a business around surrendering your birth to God. A lesson He has had to teach me over and over and over and over again. And after four babies, I still hadn’t learned my lesson. I started a podcast called Surrendered Birth Stories that year as well, with the tag line, “Learn all that you can, make the best plans, and then leave it in God’s hands.” Guess what I wasn’t doing, again? Yep. (Can’t make sense of the wording for this next sentence) I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I just couldn’t surrender control of my birth to God. I couldn’t practice what I preached. And I felt like SUCH a hypocrite. My husband knew the internal turmoil I was having, but nobody else did because I was too embarrassed to be honest after telling everybody how important it was to let God be in charge of their births, and that He knew what was best and that He would choose your baby’s birthday. Instead of simply waiting, like I should have done, since there was absolutely nothing wrong with my baby or I, I took it into my own hands and induced myself.
I tried a few times. Once at 38 weeks (and failed because I chickened out and didn’t follow through). Once at 39 weeks (and repeat, failed because I chickened out and didn’t follow through). And then came my due date. The date that literally means NOTHING. But for some reason, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t going to chicken out this time, and THIS would be the day I would go into labor.
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| Last pic of the pregnant belly, soaking up the late afternoon October sun the day before it all went down. |
No throwing up, no bowel movements, nothing. So much so that I thought it wouldn’t work and committed to taking a third dose later that afternoon if I needed to. But I knew it could take a few hours or more to kick in so I waited.
When Chris got home and the toddler was napping, we put a show on for the big kids, went into the bedroom, locked the door and came together for the last time before our baby would be born. We got the oxytocin going and got the cervix primed if you catch my drift!
Then, I laid down for a nap in the second position of the miles circuit, the exaggerated sims. I'm not sure I actually fell asleep, but I did doze a little, and it was during this time that some very mild contractions began.
I got up when I figured my toddler would be awake and all six of us went on a family walk together around the neighborhood. I was wearing my support belt I’d been wearing the last few months to help with my SPD, and it was lifting my belly up. The contractions continued, but I could easily walk and talk through them and they felt less crampy and more tight.
When we got back from the walk I sat on my ball on the back porch while the kids played in the backyard. I was hydrating and I had a small snack. I told my husband things seemed like they were starting, but that I wasn’t sure if they would fizzle out that night or not, so I was going to draw a bath and get in, because that will typically slow things down and stop them if it’s not “real,” or it will relax you and pick things up. I called my mom and asked if she could come and help with bedtime for the kids in case labor picked up and I needed Chris to be with me.
I got in the bath and was reading a novel, very much the same as I was when my labor started with Tru, but this time I had already been having contractions, albeit early labor contractions, but still. The bath didn’t seem to do anything. It didn’t speed things up or slow things down, they pretty much just stayed those mild contractions and came every 5-7 min or so.
Once my mom was finished helping with the littles’ bedtime and my husband was finishing putting our last child down for the night, my mom came into my room to check on me. I was laying in the bed, I had been continuing to read my book, and she was seeing whether or not she should go. I told her that they weren’t really intensifying, and could easily fizzle out, but that she should keep her phone on just in case. I felt bad because she lives 40 minutes from me and I didn’t want to make her drive all the way back home, but I also didn’t want her to have to stay up all night for nothing either. So I sent her on her way.
It felt like the moment she left is when things finally picked up. I switched to sitting on my ball and got my heating pad out to put on my lower belly. I began needing to breathe through contractions. My husband walked in and knew exactly what was happening. After about 30 minutes or so, I knew this was probably it. It was about 10:45 at night and I was in active labor.
Knowing how much I wanted a water birth, I immediately had my husband on birth pool duty. I had recently been at a birth (and had been at many in the past) where the pool didn’t get filled in enough time to birth in it, and I didn’t want that happening to me, so I had him get straight to it. I also let him know the water needed to be between 98-100 degrees and to pop the thermometer in the water to keep track.
By this time I had texted my mom who had just gotten home to turn around and come back, and had also texted the midwives that I was in labor, but that they didn’t need to come quite yet. I also texted my friend and Godmother to my children, Kelly, and her sister Rachel who was going to photograph the labor and birth, and told them to head our way since they lived about an hour and a half away. The scene was being set.
Something I was trying to avoid was pooping in the birth tub. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s a lot harder to hide when it floats to the top of the water, and can make for some pretty awkward birth photos if not taken care of right away. Enter the enema. I had planned on giving myself an enema in early labor to avoid pooping during pushing, and I’ll just tell you, it worked. And I wasn’t miserable either. I think it even moved the labor along, stimulating the bowels and clearing everything out of the way so that the baby could come down.
I still felt in control at this point. The room was set up very similarly to how I’d had it with Tru. The worship music was playing, and I was sitting on my ball with the heating pad and it was just my husband and I. Before things got too intense, and before anybody arrived, I did get to experience my favorite part of the entire labor. During a contraction, my husband leaned in and he kissed me. And he continued to kiss me for the entire length of the contraction, and it completely took my mind off of the contraction, and yet intensified the contraction at the same time (thank you oxytocin). I only wish we could have had several more contractions like that…but there was an oversight in my plan to labor alone with my husband. And that oversight was back labor. I have had back labor in all but my first labors. It gets so intense that I need somebody to be pressing on my back during every contraction. Since my husband was the only one with me, he was the only one who could press on my back, and while he did a fabulous job at that and it really helped me get through the contractions, he was no longer able to be by my face, which is ultimately where I wanted him during labor, emotionally speaking. Sigh.
Things began to get really intense, and I knew I wasn’t in the best headspace. I didn’t feel like eating, but I knew I needed a boost so I had Chris get me some real salt and some honey, and I put some on my tongue and kept sipping on water. I was worried that because I had forced my body into labor, that somehow, it was going to elongate the process without any progress. I was thinking this because I still had had no bloody show and no mucus come out of me whatsoever. I asked my midwife about that, asked if that was normal or if things were moving along without me losing anything, and she said it could be, and offered to check me. I hadn’t been checked the entire pregnancy. I had tried to check myself in the weeks leading up to labor, and knew I was somewhat dilated before I attempted a home induction, but I didn’t know how much exactly. I thought about it for about one second and told her no, I didn’t want to be checked.
A couple of minutes later, I shifted from sitting on the ball to standing and leaning over the bed onto a pillow. Things were at that point that felt like, “I can’t do this much longer,” which should have been my clue that I wouldn’t have to. I still hadn’t gotten in the tub because I was waiting until I felt pushy. Well, suddenly, without warning, that shift in position immediately made me start pushing. It was VERY fast, and very much an uncontrollable sensation. Yes, that fetal ejection reflex had kicked in. I never before had felt a baby physically move down the birth canal inside of me, but I did this time. And since my water hadn’t broken yet, it was really more like the baby was sliding down. In my brain, all I was thinking was, why aren’t they picking me up and putting me in the water? Those were my strict instructions to everybody from the beginning of the pregnancy through early labor. I wanted to birth this baby in the water. But I couldn’t manage to say anything out loud other than shouting, “MOM!” And it wasn’t like a, “Mom I need you because this is so hard,” it was a, “Mom, go get the kids now because you're all going to miss this baby being born if you don’t hurry up.” But I couldn’t say all of that, so I just kept shouting, “Mom!” I would later find out that the midwives determined the water was too cold to birth in, because in my attempt for it to be “ready,” I didn’t have Chris make it hot enough to alot for the fact that it would inevitably cool down after awhile. It’s much easier to cool down a hot pool than heat up a cool one, and I knew that. But somehow in labor I forgot to mention that to him. Another reason I probably should have planned for somebody else to be there, my headspace isn’t the most accurate when I’m in labor land.
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| The less than two minutes that my body was pushing. |
Within seconds, my mom rushed upstairs to get Brinkley and Milo who wanted to be at the birth. The midwives had moved into the catching position, and Chris was still pushing on my back. It was SO fast. Kelly and Rachel had come in and began snapping pictures and Chris told Kelly to take a video but by this time, the head was already out. It was SO fast. My midwife told me to put my feet down because I was literally standing on my tiptoes, but apparently babies come out just fine whether you’re on your tip toes or fully grounded into the floor. Brinkley ran in just as the baby slipped out, the sac bursting on the way, and I could see my mom and Milo running down the stairs from where I was in my room, knowing they had missed it by seconds. It was 2:44am. About four hours to the minute after active labor had started.
I’m not even sure which midwife caught the baby, but I heard the baby cry. And I know it was a baby, but it sounded so feminine. I couldn’t see the baby yet, but it sounded like a girl and my heart fluttered. I wasn’t one of those moms who was so focused on the birth that she forgot to check the gender. The gender was still my primary concern. I pushed up from the bed as they passed my baby to me under my legs and very quickly saw that it was in fact, another boy. And those were my exact words, “it’s another boy.”
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| The gender reveal. |
There were so many emotions flooding me in that moment, so many feelings, but I didn’t feel the freedom to express any of them. Some I wouldn’t be able to process for weeks to come. All I could do was try to focus on the baby that was now lying on my bed in front of me.
Only a few minutes later, the after pains kicked in and I stood up to deliver the placenta. Then I got set up on my bed, and once we checked to make sure any bleeding was under control and there were no tears (my fifth baby without tearing, YAY), I put my heating pad on my uterus, covered up with a blanket, and continued skin to skin with my baby.
Rachel took pictures, Milo cut the cord just like Brinkley had for Tru, the midwives eventually did their checks and helped clean up, and we all ate lasagna. The baby nursed and latched well, and our toddler Jentzen woke up while everybody was still there (he’d been getting up at 4:30am lately…!). Baby boy turned out to be 9 lb, 2oz, and 22 inches long. Very similar to Jentzen! A medium!
Around 5am, everybody made their way home and my mom stayed to help with the kids while Chris and I laid in bed with the baby for a couple of hours.
He didn’t have a name.
We have had a girl name picked out since I was pregnant with our second baby, over seven years ago. But another boy name? That I couldn’t handle. We tried to think of one while I was pregnant, but nothing stuck, nothing felt right, nothing we agreed on, so we gave up and decided that it was a waste of time and energy if it had turned out to be a girl, so that we would worry about choosing a name if and when it turned out to be a boy.
I wouldn’t ever do that again. In hindsight, I wouldn’t ever not find out the gender again. I thought it would be so fun, the surprise of a lifetime to find out in the moment, like they've done since the beginning of time, but it didn’t hit the way I expected, most likely because it wasn’t the gender we secretly prayed for and expected. We needed the time for me to process the gender before he was born instead of in the weeks after his birth.
Chris and I had such a hard time naming him because we didn’t have any alone time to ourselves in those first days after he was born. And once we were alone, we were asleep. You know the sleeplessness of the early days.
On day five, we’d landed on a name. Indiana Watson Heeter. Chris chose the first name, and I chose the middle name, and his nickname would be Indy. Watson was the only name I had liked for a boy the entire pregnancy, you know Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick? I always loved that character. And Chris said Indiana just popped into his head one day, and that it didn’t have anything to do with the state or the school or a sports team or Indiana Jones. But I think subconsciously it was Indiana Jones, because while I was pregnant that summer we had watched all four of the Indiana Jones movies together! It’s a strong name for a boy, but also has a cute nickname. We like it!
The early postpartum days were strange for me. After Tru’s birth, I had felt so connected with God, so connected with my husband, so connected with Tru, and on such a birth high, I was telling anybody and everybody who wanted to hear the birth story in all of its glory. But this time was different. This time I felt shame. I felt guilt. I felt numb. I felt totally cheated, and yet, like it was all my fault at the same time. And I felt badly for feeling these things considering that comparatively speaking to other people’s experiences out there, my birth was totally smooth and my baby and I were as healthy as could be.
I had prayed for a girl, again. And had a boy, again. I had wanted and prayed for a water birth. Again. And didn’t get one. Again. Neither Chris or I got to catch the baby like we’d desired. I didn’t get to connect with my husband or God the way I had envisioned. And my parosmia was most certainly not healed, and I could NOT smell my baby. He smelled like nothing. And if I did ever get a whiff of anything, it smelled like a sterile hospital. Exact opposite of what you'd expect.
A couple of days after he was born, Chris was kneeling by my side at the bed. Without thinking, and in total innocence, he said with a smile, “don’t you just love that newborn baby smell?” And I lost it. He was already saying sorry before the first tear even fell, but I couldn’t hold it in. Not being able to smell my baby was crushing. I was already struggling to bond because of his gender, and lack of a name, and the birth not going how I envisioned, but now I couldn’t smell his sweet smell.
I cried the first several days. I was very emotional. But I couldn’t be honest with anybody except for Chris about how I was feeling. I needed to process what I was feeling in a safe way.
After a few weeks, I finally got a chance to journal, and I laid it all out to God.
I lamented over not getting my prayers answered for this birth. A birth I had prayed over for so long, and yet, none of my prayers for it came to be. But again, I felt at fault for a lot of that. Having not been patient, having not waited on the Lord, and taking things into my own hands, I did some of it to myself. I also repented for my actions, for my hypocrisy, and for ever being angry with God for how things turned out. Who was I to decide those things? It’s ok to desire, but without surrender, we are teetering on the line of control, and that’s when supernatural peace leaves and all of the negative feelings from the enemy rush in to take its place.
Not being able to share my birth story was so hard for me. I absolutely love birth stories, listening to them and sharing my own. It’s what my whole podcast is about. And yet, I felt like I couldn’t. When people would ask about it point blank, I either tried to change the subject or gloss over it, I’d be very vague and quickly talk about something else, never going into detail. Which is SO counterintuitive for me if you know me at all.
I was in that place for a while. I was grieving. Whether or not I had the right to, I was. I was processing, regretting, wishing, hoping and praying.
There was a moment I had in my early postpartum days that gave me a glimmer of hope. I knew I had the baby blues and the hormones were going wild in my system, hence all of the tears. But it was actually something my mom said that made me smile on the inside. She was over to visit and help with the kids a few days after Indy was born, and I told her I’d had to make Chris put all of the birth stuff away because looking at it was making me cry. I get very emotional with the space in which my babies have been born, it’s hard to explain in text. Anyways, as I was telling her that I began to cry, and it was like she knew what I was feeling in my heart as I was grieving the whole process being over. She said, “It’s ok, you can have another one.”
This was the first pregnancy since my second that I hadn’t said, “this is the LAST one!” Pregnancy is SO hard for me that each time I’d gotten pregnant, I always claimed and believed that I was DONE. But I didn’t do that this time. I thought maybe if I didn’t say it, it would be true, and I really would be done. So anytime anybody asked this time around, I’d say I don’t know, we’re leaving that door open for now.
I don’t know why what my mom said had brought me such comfort in that moment, but it did. It was the first thing anybody had said that made me feel any better than how I was feeling. And I just cried. She doesn’t even know how much saying that impacted me, but it did. And I had such a hard time telling my husband about it, because let’s be honest, five kids is a lot. Especially when your husband doesn’t make very much money at all. But my heart soared at the thought of another. Not just because I wasn’t happy with how things turned out, but because there’s a sacredness to birth unlike anything else in this world. And it’s not something you can do forever. One day I will in fact be too old to have babies, but for now, if God still allows me to get pregnant, then I still want to keep going. There’s nothing more precious than a newborn baby, nothing more miraculous than the process of God knitting them together in our wombs, and allowing us to be the vessel which brings them into the world.
It’s been four months since Indy’s birth, and I am totally in love with this boy. I was when he was born too, but it was different because I was grieving at the same time I was falling in love with him. It took some time to bond with him, longer than any of my others. Something that really helped with that process was taking baths with him. Instead of simply giving him a bath, I would draw a bath for myself and then bring him into it with me. It was such a special time for just the two of us. He’d fall asleep on my chest, warm on me and warm in the water, and he was at such peace. It was like gaining a little of what we’d lost from not having the water birth. We took weekly baths together for awhile and it was so restorative for my soul, and something I plan on doing with any other future babies the Lord allows us to have.
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| One of our baths together. |
He’s such a sweet baby. And he’s my palest child yet, started out with strawberry blonde hair and it’s now growing back in just blonde. His skin is so sensitive and he gets a rash so easily, but it doesn’t seem to bother him one bit. As long as he’s eaten and slept and has a clean diaper, he’s truly a happy baby. And his siblings adore him as well, especially Jentzen. He smothers him every chance he gets. And as far as Brinkley goes…she continues to pray for a sister. She loves Indy dearly, but her prayers continue. As do ours!
While writing this, I’m four months postpartum, losing my hair, and getting even less sleep than in his early weeks now that he’s regressing, but every time he looks up at me and smiles when he sees me, my heart melts. I still very much have parosmia, although I’ve made some advances in making myself eat and drink some things without a nose plug now that I’m not pregnant, and they’ve become more tolerable. I wish that would work with my husband's cologne though…! Every time I’m tempted to feel bad for myself for what I’ve endured or am continuing to endure, I look to others whose faith in our God is even stronger than mine, whose trials they’ve been through are even deeper, longer, and more painful, and I’m reminded of the sovereignty of our God in all things. How much He loves us, how much He cares about the details of our lives, how He works all things together for our good, and how He sees the bigger picture that we can’t. If He does nothing else for me for the rest of my life, He gave His only son for me, and that will always be more than enough.
