June 2025
After amazing freebirth experiences with my 4th and 5th babies, we were planning another freebirth with our 6th baby - our less-than-one-in-a-million baby. Our golden girl. I was excited for the many aspects of home birth we had enjoyed with our previous two babies and confident about our birth supplies and transfer plan. With a history of two precipitous births, I figured things could progress pretty quickly once they got started as long as my baby’s head wasn’t crooked like my 5th baby (asynclytic presentation, leading to a 27-hour labor). I even dared believe that labor could have been as short as 36 minutes at the suggestion of a family friend. Throughout my pregnancy, I prayed that my labor would start in the morning after I was already awake because I dreaded the idea of being jolted awake by contractions, and, for some reason, I envisioned myself holding a baby with a head full of dark hair. (My firstborn had a lot of hair, but the rest were increasingly bald.)
With the possibility of a fast labor, my husband took PTO for the weeks leading up to my due date. My due date came and went for only the second time in my childbearing years. On June 21st, early in the morning of our 7-year-old’s second-ever baseball game, I found bloody show as the first sign of labor. It was already an answered prayer! I knew it could either be a couple days or that we could have a baby by that evening. I decided to have my husband take all the kids to baseball, and we had our dear friend and intended birth assistant come “babysit” me. The timing was perfect because her husband had to drive by my house (40 minutes away) that morning anyway, so she just packed up herself and her kids, and her husband dropped them all off at my house on the way through. Then, her husband picked them up on the way back home just as my husband was returning from baseball. During my friend’s 3 hours at my house, I only had 5 early labor contractions worthy of noting, but I was relieved to have someone there with me, and I’m glad my son went to his game because he scored his first run AND earned the “Player of the Game” medal!
I had light, sporadic contractions throughout the day and started losing my mucus plug at 4:10pm on June 21st. At 7:38pm, I had my first active labor contraction - the ones accompanied by cervical pressure. Another one at 7:58, then 8:51. At 10:10, I had a contraction that “tickled” as some of my Braxton Hicks contractions with this baby had done. I giggled and dared to believe that maybe more of my impending contractions would tickle like this!
~11:30p - Anthony to bed. Ate some tuna bowl. Been having small spurts of contractions w/ cervical pressure the past ~1hr. Might call Tiffany soon.
2a: lots more mucus plus. Baby seems to be in ROT position, which can cause longer, more inconsistent labor pattern. Did some inversions, lunges, hands + knees rocking, etc. to create more room for her to rotate. Contractions, seem longer, stronger, + closer together the past hour or so
I knew that my baby was head-down with her body to my right side (ROT) and had been that way for several weeks. I remembered the OB for my first baby commenting that having the baby’s body on the left was optimal, but I had since read mixed opinions about whether or not the difference in position made much of a difference in labor. For hours, my contractions were sporadic, many coming in short spurts. There was no pattern in when or how long or how intense each contraction would be, which I knew as a doula could indicate a positioning issue. Given my history of precipitous births and my short torso due to scoliosis, it seemed my body really did have a harder time moving a baby whose body was on my right side rather than my left.
2:15a Woke Anthony up for company because I’m tired + uncomfortable + seriously considering an epidural - oddly at peace w/ that for some reason.
Throughout my pregnancy, I had felt an indescribable peace about my labor. I didn’t know if that meant that labor would go smoothly or what else it might have meant, but I trusted the reason would reveal itself when the time came. I had been unbearably nervous in preparation for my 5th birth, and it turned out that I had a reason to be nervous because of how challenging that labor was, but with this labor, I felt only peace and surrender.
I already hadn’t slept on the night of June 20th because my body felt antsy and restless, likely in preparation for labor. Then, I wasn’t getting any sleep on this night of June 21st into the 22nd either, and contractions were too uncomfortable (though sporadic) to be able to sleep. I wasn’t crying in pain or desperate for pain relief at the time, but I could tell by this point that I was on track for a long labor and, possibly - even likely - maternal exhaustion. The hospital was over an hour away, and I had already endured the deepest throes of labor in the car with my 3rd baby, who was almost born in the car, so we decided in a moment of peace that we would transfer for an epidural and a nap and go from there.
I called Tiffany, whose freebirth I had attended 2 years earlier, and all I could muster over the phone was, “I could use your support now.” I decided that if I still wanted to go to the hospital after she arrived, then we would go. Anthony and I calmly packed our bags and gathered my “In Case of Emergency or Transfer” documents. A lot of what we needed to pack was already laid out in the form of birth supplies. As a doula, I happened to have a beautiful, floral hospital gown that I bring to births in case mamas don’t have anything comfortable to labor in. I was about to use it for myself. I made a peaceful and confident decision to leave my camera at home, once again giving up my dream of beautiful birth photos. Maybe some things were meant to be treasured in our hearts.
“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” Luke 2:19.
Tiffany arrived at 3:45am on June 22nd, at which point my contractions were more consistently 5-7 minutes apart. My desire to go to the hospital had not wavered in the time since I had called her, and having heard two recent freebirth transfer stories from people I knew fortified my decision. It felt like I was meant to hear those stories in preparation for my own. Anthony and I left in the middle of a downpour of rain for the long and dreary drive to the hospital, made treacherous by the water-filled potholes and indented tire tracks. I felt just enough fear to space out my contractions for the duration of the drive but was able to remain calm by trusting that my one-in-a-million baby wasn’t meant to die before she was born. We arrived safely at about 5am. I had no idea what I was going to tell the nurses until I walked up to the desk, and the words flowed out:
Hi. I’m Jalina. I’m in labor, and I’m a homebirth transfer.
Nurse: Who is transferring you?
Me: I’m transferring myself.
The nurses responded gently, taking my ICE documents to copy for their records and expertly hiding any judgement they may have felt before escorting me into a room with a gorgeous, 8th-story view of downtown Burlington, Vermont during a break in the storm.
We marveled at the view and got situated into our room in between talking with doctors and nurses all trying to understand why I had transferred after having two freebirths. Once they understood my reasoning and what I needed from them, I agreed to an initial cervical exam, which revealed that I was 6cm and 70% effaced with my baby at -2 station (still pretty high).
Me: It’s been a while since I’ve had a hospital birth, but if I remember correctly, that’s past the point at which you would tell me to go back home and come back later.
Nurse: Nope, we’re not sending you home. You’re having a baby today.
