'Grateful for doula services', New parents Savanna and John welcome baby Henry Charles

Congratulations to mom and dad, Savanna and John on the birth of their baby boy, Henry Charles. Thank you to Savanna for writing and sharing her beautiful birth story with us! And special thanks to Christa for providing doula support to the family.

"Wee one is here- Henry Charles was born Sunday, 9/11/22 (the one day I said I didn’t want his birthday to be so I should have known he’d come then) at 39+2 weeks via FAST unmedicated vaginal birth! While I was kind of in shock for a couple days, the experience overall was amazing.

I’d been having very mild contractions anywhere from 8-15 min apart since Friday and I’d been keeping an eye on my blood pressure because it was inching higher over the last couple weeks of my pregnancy. It got a little high for my liking, so I went into triage on Friday night. They weren’t concerned as I wasn’t showing any other signs of preeclampsia and I was still only about a centimeter dilated, so they sent me home.

I woke up Sunday at 2am with more serious contractions that I had to concentrate through and texted my doula, Tara. She ended up being at another birth so the “backup”, Christa, WHO I LOVE called me to listen to me go through a contraction and said it was the real deal. I labored at home with my husband’s support until about 7:45am and my contractions were going from 4-6 minutes apart so we headed out on the 40 minute drive to the hospital.

All was going really well until I got into triage again. I’d been able to breathe and moan through the contractions and would just sit silently with my eyes closed in between to keep myself in the zone and was really proud of myself. Of course they wanted to do a cervical check which are always painful for me because my cervix is so high up; well the nurse was rough and “accidentally” broke my water and said I was only 5-6cm dilated. I was crying because of the pain plus the shock of my water breaking during the exam and then when she went to put my IV in, she blew out 2 of my veins so I was getting more worked up and crying harder. She yanked my mask down, basically yelled at me and was like “STOP CRYING you’re having a baby today so you need to cheer up”. Like, MA’AM I AM IN LABOR AND SO MUCH JUST HAPPENED, I WILL CRY IF I WANT TO. It was really difficult at this point to keep in the zone but I was still doing my best to focus on breathing.

So since she couldn’t get my IV in, she said we’d walk to my room and do it there. Well as I was walking I could literally feel his head pressing down and I started having contraction on top of contraction with what seemed like no break. Got to the room, got up on my knees leaning over the top of the bed and very quickly said I felt like I needed to poop which I knew was his head, so the midwife on call checked me and said “oh he’s right there”. I heard someone ask a nurse “what do you need for the room” and she was like EVERYTHING.

Everything after that is a blur, but my husband said it looked like I was having 20 min contractions for a bit. Christa was an amazing support, arriving quickly with a smoothie in hand for me. She immediately hopped on the bed to give counter pressure and made me feel comfortable despite us never having met before, as things were happening too fast for my husband to get our bags and all the comfort measures I had brought. I didn’t want push on my back or hold my breath to push him out but his heart rate kept dropping with each contraction in other positions so they wanted him out ASAP. I stayed on my side as much as possible and pushed for a little under an hour and there he was at 11:50am, all perfect with a full head (and back and ears and legs) of hair!

I am so grateful that we invested in doula services; I feel like it prepared me for so many different scenarios and made it so I wasn’t scared of labor which definitely made a huge difference in how I approached it. Postpartum care was immensely helpful and the reassurance that we were doing okay after we got home from the hospital put my mind at ease. So glad that we ended up with Christa, as I think we connected immediately and that helped me through a lot of my anxieties surrounding postpartum and raising a newborn with zero baby experience. Henry is one lucky boy to have such a great team surrounding him!"

Welcome to the world, Henry Charles!

Congratulations again to Savanna and John!

Our doula best,

Christa + the Mindful Birth Doulas