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I just checked and I have not posted a blog about when I had Mason. Today is his birthday so I’m going to tell a little bit of this story. Of course it’s longer, but we’ll go with the reader’s digest version. Women love to tell these stories, but I doubt anyone enjoys reading them.

I had a wonderful and supportive doctor who was very understanding of my desire to have a home birth. She had had her own babies at home. She helped me find a good midwife and talked to my husband about the benefits and risks associated with home births as well as with hospital births. The midwife was very good at involving my entire family and agreed to allow as many people to come to the birth as I felt comfortable with. We had a large home so we invited a crowd.

Midwife care is very different from doctor care. My midwife, Candice, but we called her Candy, would drive out to my house to check me. She did not get in a hurry and would let the kids get up on the bed to listen to the baby or help measure my tummy. The kids were also involved with helping me put together a birth kit and they would practice making push faces so they wouldn’t be frightened by the birth experience.

We had a turkey farm at this time. It’s very seriously hard work. I had been managing the farm up to the Friday before Mason was born. We were expecting 24,000 baby birds on Thursday so my husband was working to get the farm ready over the weekend. He has a regular full time job and only had the weekend to get things done. He missed church Sunday night because he was still at the farm. The girls and I were leaving the worship service when my labor began. The girls and I drove out to the farm to let him know that he needed to find a stopping point because it was time, the I drove home and put the girls to bed promising to wake them up before it was all over. I called my midwife and the grandmothers to notify them. Over the next four or so hours the house began to fill up with people. It was a very nice evening shared with good friends and family. As things began to pick up I labored in the water which makes an amazing difference.

When it was time to push I got on a birthing stool and went to work. I love pushing babies! My mom sat behind me and helped support me. She did a wonderful job. My husband held hot compresses during the pushing and rubbed my legs in between. The girls were very excited at this point and they would make these great pushes as if their efforts would really help bring him down.

Mason was finally born around 5:30 on a Monday morning with his entire family there to welcome him. He was a beautiful 10 pound 9 ounce baby. My husband was able to be so completely involved with my care and was the one who caught Mason as he was born. The room cheered and broke into tears at the same moment he was born.

There were a couple of complications that made some of the people edgy, but it was nothing the midwife couldn’t handle.