Over the past 9 months, I have developed a vision for what I hoped my birth would look like. I wanted to labor and deliver unmedicated at a birthing center, in a birthing bathtub. I took the classes, read the books, joined the Facebook groups, all in an effort to know everything I could about natural, unmedicated labor before going into it. I avoided reading about or watching birth stories that were not like my vision, and even had multiple dreams that my labor was painless and my baby just slipped right out of me. I prayed many times for a quick labor, uncomplicated delivery, no tearing, etc.

I saw a chiropractor my whole pregnancy to hopefully ensure perfect baby positioning. I spent the last trimester on an exercise ball, and doing daily exercises to keep baby from going into a posterior position which can cause a much more difficult labor. I religiously ate my 6 dates a day and drank daily strong cups of red raspberry leaf tea. In my eyes, I was the picture of preparedness and felt confident that my birth experience would be like I envisioned.

I chose this route for multiple reasons, the main one being that I wanted to fully experience each part of bringing a baby into this world, including the intensity of childbirth. Frankly, I’ve always been quite terrified of pregnancy and childbirth, and I wanted to submit that fear to God through the challenge of all natural childbirth. I believe birth is a beautiful image of Christ suffering to bring us new life. The more we acknowledge the gruesome and truly torturous parts of Christ’s death, the more we understand how badly we needed saving and how abundantly sacrificial it was for him to die in that way, for us to gain life. So in addition to fully submitting my fears to God, I also wanted to experience a small bit of that life-giving “suffering” in its rawness through an unmedicated childbirth, to gain a greater understanding of my own brokenness and Christ’s love for me. Looking back now, I realize that I was praying for a deeper understanding of Christ through the suffering of childbirth, while simultaneously asking that it be quick and easy and not leave me with any scars. Hah!

God had better plans in mind.

Around 3am on Thursday, June 3rd, I woke up with my first contractions. I tried to rest but they progressed in strength quickly, so I ended up going to the kitchen and eating a little to fuel up as much as I could for the big day. It got intense quickly, and I ended up throwing up what I had just eaten a few hours later. I took a hot shower and stayed there for a long time working through contractions. Finally it was time to head to the birth center at 9am.

When we got to the birth center, I was 5cm dilated. I immediately got in the shower for maybe an hour and a half, just enjoying the hot water and breathing through contractions.

Then I labored on the bed for a while, and asked to be checked again as things were feeling even more intense. I was at 7cm! We moved things over to the tub. The warm bath was such sweet relief! The contractions were so manageable in there. This ended up being such a sweet time of worship for me. We played King of Kings on the Bluetooth speaker and I sang and cried and praised God in between contractions. At this point, I was experiencing the beautiful part of my suffering, the kind of beautiful suffering that I had watched in so many other women’s birth videos and desired to experience myself.

After this, the timeline gets a little foggy for me. I remember getting back out of the tub and walking around a bit to try and shimmy her more into my pelvis. Throwing up again. Going back to the bed to labor there, then to the toilet, then back to the tub. With each contraction I was losing a lot of my energy, and started to worry that I didn’t have enough to continue. I mentioned going to the hospital, but my wonderful midwife team encouraged me to try a few more things first. I think we all thought I was in transition, the point where laboring mamas tend to be ready to give up which actually indicates they are almost there. So we kept going.

I progressed to 9cm. They could feel my water bag still in tact though, and we talked about breaking it to progress into 10cm and then pushing. I was very tired and losing energy fast. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to handle the intensity and pushing once my water was broken. They hooked me up to some fluids and oxygen, and we tried having me give a tiny push at the top of my contractions to see if that progressed things, and sure enough, that broke my water. This was at 6pm.

Sometime around then I progressed to 10 centimeters, but we discovered I had a lip in my cervix that was hindering my pushing. We went to the bed and worked on exercises that could help us move past the lip. Contractions were feeling extremely painful and long at this point. My cervix apparently became swollen. I started to feel defeated. We went to the tub again and I realized just how exhausted I was. I had no fuel in me, as everything I would eat would just get thrown up. I felt as if I had gone into transition 3 different times but with no resulting urge to push. I again mentioned the hospital, but was offered one more position to try, so I agreed to give it a go. We went to the bed and I laid on my side with a peanut ball.

There started the ugly part of my suffering. I began drowning in my contractions. Each one lasting so long and giving me little relief in between. In one of my birth courses I remember the midwife saying “Natural birth is extremely hard and most women get to a point where they feel they can’t go on, but they can. But there is a difference between it being hard, and it being torture, if it feels like torture, there may be something else going on and you should consider the hospital.” At this point I knew the pain I was feeling wasn’t the right kind. As much as I wanted to believe that I was almost there if I just pushed through a little longer, I knew my body wasn’t there yet, and I was worried about what might happen to me and my baby if I kept using up more energy and prolonging an epidural. I thought “If they check me after this and nothing has changed, I am going to the hospital.” Sure enough, nothing had progressed from that position, and I said “We are going to the hospital.”

We quickly loaded things up and drove to the hospital right next to the birth center. I was truly a spectacle, being wheel-chaired down the halls and making loud moans and horse lips with each contraction. I once vowed not to make a fool of myself with crazy animalistic noises during labor, and here I was doing whatever it took to give myself some relief.

We got to the hospital room and as I sat on the bed I started feeling faint and looked down and saw that my hands looked blue. I told the nurse and she gave me some oxygen, only after a couple minutes of typing some things into the computer system. 😰 The anesthesiologist finally walked in, about an hour after we got to the hospital, and I got hooked up to an epidural. The epidural and the fact that there was an anesthesiologist there so late at night felt like a little miracle. Though I originally wanted to go unmedicated, I am not against modern medicine and the blessing it can be when things go awry.

Then the nurse checked my dilation, and to all of our surprise she said “You’re only at 5cm”.

Once the nurse left I looked over at my husband, my midwife who came to the hospital with me, and my mother in law and said “Well hey guys.” It was as if I had just had a demon cast out of me and was able to be myself again. We then discussed and scratched our heads at how she was feeling 5cm when multiple midwives had checked me and all agreed I had progressed passed that and even all the way to 10cm. The doctor soon came in and said I was at a 7. We then wondered about the possibility of my cervix actually shrinking in centimeters. This is known to happen in wild animals. They are able to reverse labor when they feel they are in danger. Dr. Sara Wickham writes about the phenomenon of cervical recoiling, mentioning that it often happens when women are moved from one environment to another in labor. All I can think is that is what happened to me.

It was 1am at this point and time for us all to get some rest. I got maybe 1 hour of sleep. It’s hard when people keep coming in and taking my blood and machines start beeping to be refilled, etc. Ahh, the hospital experience I had hoped to avoid. But it was all worth it at this point, I needed to get this baby out and the modern medicine of the hospital was allowing me to do that.

Fast forward 9 hours since the 7cm cervix check and an added drip of Pitocin, and I was still dilated to a 7. My nurse spent the day upping my Pitocin and getting less and less encouraged by my contractions. They were not gaining any speed. I knew my body was just exhausted. I needed food and sleep. I wasn’t allowed food though because of the chance of a c-section.

Time was running out, as it had been many hours since my water broke and a long time of baby girl being squeezed by contractions. A cesarean was looming over our heads and was being mentioned each time the nurse came into the room. My nurse, who started the morning off saying “I hate c-sections and we are going to do whatever we can to avoid that.” then spoke the words that broke me “At this point there’s only a 10% chance this is going to be a vaginal birth, and I’d take that bet to Vegas.”

I just sobbed. How did I go from a perfectly healthy baby/pregnancy and zero intervention birth plan, to most likely a c-section? That didn’t seem right to me. I was content with our story ending in the hospital, I was not okay with it ending in surgical removal of my perfectly healthy baby. What kept me going was her incredibly strong heart rate, always audible on the monitor. Taya was so strong in there, not wavering a bit even after the long hours and medical interventions.

I then remembered my midwife at the birth center felt like I needed to be on hands and knees to wiggle the baby into straighter position, but I was in too much pain at the birth center to handle contracting in that position for long. I asked the nurse if I could get on my hands and knees and shake my hips a bit. She said “No one really does that on an epidural, you will need your husband to prop you up and the epidural will stop working since the fluid will flow out of your spine.”

We tried it anyways. They helped me roll over, Trev got behind me holding my hips as we shook side to side. He joked “This would be a lot more fun if we were both naked.” 😂

After just a few minutes the nurse came in after seeing the contractions on the monitor and said “Wow! Baby really likes that, and your contractions are picking up! I’m gonna turn your Pitocin down!”

We couldn’t believe it. Just then, “Million Little Miracles” by Elevation started playing on our playlist. Trev and I both noticed the lyrics:

“It's not coincidence and it's not luck

I know it comes from above

I've got miracles on miracles

A million little miracles”

It really felt like a miracle after so many hours of defeating news.

We kept going for about 45 minutes, and then the epidural began wearing off quite a bit so I flipped back over onto my back. The contractions were coming in full force, and I again was doing my crazy horse lips to get through them. The nurse came in and checked me... I had progressed to an 8. 🙌🏼 The nurse said “Good thing I’m not a betting woman, you’re going to have this baby vaginally!”

We pushed the button to release more of the epidural into my spine and the next time she checked me I was at a 10. Finally, full dilation and ready to push.

We began pushing with the nurse, but then she had to stop and go help another laboring woman push who was further along than me. We waited for about an hour to be able to push again, this time with a new nurse. That hour was so long, knowing my baby was just around the corner but having to wait for the shift change.

When the new nurse came in we pushed again. An hour of pushing goes by, then another. The nurse then says “I think now is the time to tell you, usually when a mother pushes for about 2 hours with not much headway, we need to start talking about our options...” and then something interrupted her and she didn’t get to finish that thought. I was relieved because I then had an idea. I asked her if I could push on my hands and knees, since that was what helped me progress before. She agreed, and I flipped over and pushed. It felt very productive. I felt my hips widening and extreme pressure going downward with each push. The epidural again began wearing off so I flipped back over onto my back. At this point, as I waited for the epidural to kick back in, I was so exhausted, and I felt like I was drifting away. I could barely keep my eyes open and felt like I only comprehended about half of the things being said to me. They gave me more oxygen. As I looked at the clock though, it had been over 24 hours since my water broke, 40 hours since my labor began and even longer since I’d had a full meal. I started having doubts. There was a guesstimate that my 11 day over-due baby could be 10lbs. I wondered if my narrow, athletic hips could even manage to pass a big baby through. With everything in me I wanted to have her vaginally, but none of us knew if it was even possible. My husband saw the doubt in my eyes and whispered to me “Positive thoughts”. I suddenly felt compelled to individually ask every person in the room if they thought I could do it. My husband and mother in law affirmed me, though I could sense their doubt too. The nurse just responded “I don’t think it’s about how much effort you put in, but ultimately it’s about if your body is built to birth this baby.”

I could not accept that God had woven in me a baby that I physically could not birth. But if he had, I knew he could do the necessary miracle to widen my hips and get her out. He was already doing miracles on miracles.

I asked if we could push in the first position we did, as that felt most productive. So we did. And very soon, we saw hair. They got the mirror out so I could see the top of her little head peeking out with each push. “She’s real!” I thought. For some reason I had even started to doubt if she was even really there and if we would ever meet her. Haha!

Before we knew it, they called the doctor in and the energy in the room got exciting. Just a couple pushes later, and my beautiful baby entered the world kicking and crying. No instruments, no cesarean, just a lot of prayer and little miracles.

Holding my baby on my chest after so many hours of labor was surreal. By far the best moment of my life.

8lbs 5oz. 20 inches long.

I may never fully understand why God allowed my birth to happen this way. However, I find peace in knowing that it doesn’t matter how much I plan something out, I can’t stop God from inserting his greater plan instead. I think of Eve in the garden, being disciplined by God with pain in childbirth, while also being blessed with the promise of her descendant (Jesus) defeating the serpent once and for all. God did not leave her hopeless even after she had betrayed Him. In the midst of my pain in childbirth, which reminded me of the seriousness of my sin and the suffering it caused Jesus on the cross, God did not betray me, but was blessing me with little miracles along the way. And though I didn’t get the empowering unmedicated birth I had planned for, I perhaps felt even more empowered in my hospital experience. God allowed me to use so much of the knowledge I had accumulated in researching birth to really advocate for my body and my baby, turning down interventions I didn’t want and using that mama intuition to know what positions I needed to get into to get my baby out.

I praise God for writing my story the way he did. I praise Him for my midwife team, for the hospital staff, for my mother-in-law, for my husband, for my praying family, my praying church family, everyone who helped in the birth of little Taya. I hope that my story can inspire you and not scare you. I was so scared of hearing stories that weren’t like my vision, now I realize my “vision” was not reality. We can make plans but we must hold them loosely. God’s plan will always trump my plans and your plans, and instead of shaking our fists at heaven we must seek to find the beauty and the principle and the miracle in His great change of plans.

Taya’s Birth Story