The story of Ryan James Walker’s birth through the eyes of his Daddy

It started around 11:30pm and 12:00am on December 11/12. Sarah woke me saying, “I think my water broke”. Still in a sleepy state of mind, I asked Sarah if she was sure it was her water breaking and not just peeing. After seeing the amount of water, I realized that her water had broke and asked her if she was having any contractions. She said not any as of yet, so thinking we had a long time to go I laid back down and asked her to tell me when she started having contractions. This way we could get some more rest for the excitement later.

Around 3am, I awoke to use the bathroom and I heard Mommy having a contraction while she was sitting in the bathroom. I asked her how far apart the contractions were, and she replied 6-7 minutes apart. I then realized things were moving a little faster than we expected. Once this set in I asked Sarah if she called the midwives yet and she said no and was hesitant to do so since labor was early, and she didn’t want the midwives to tell us we had to go to hospital. I said we needed to call just for that reason since we didn’t have a bag packed for a hospital and needed to know what we needed to do. So as she called the midwife, Jenny Derugen, I started to assemble the birthing tub in our bedroom. We had planned to do it on Saturday December 15th but didn’t make it to that day. While I was busy with tub, Sarah talked with Jenny and they decided it was fine to go through with home birth. This helped Sarah calm down and relax easier.

I had the tub together and had started to add hot water with Sarah holding one end in tub so it didn’t spray all over bedroom. Jenny showed up around 4:15am. Once I started the water, the hose end in garage was leaking, losing some of the hot water on garage floor. I let it run with plans to try and fix once the heater ran out of hot water. So while that was filling the tub, I helped Sarah try to get comfortable and relaxed. That was an easy task for she was doing a great job shifting positions, talking through her thoughts and using deep abdominal breathing.

I shut off the water and checked the hose, no gasket! So I used the gasket from hose outside hoping it would solve the problem. While I waited for the water heater to heat more water,  I applied pressure to Sarah’s lower back and timed the contractions. They were getting about 3-4 minutes apart so Jenny called Terri, the other midwife, and Vanessa, the midwife apprentice, so they could come and help with the birth. Jenny and I talked about how good Sarah was doing and we had good feelings about the birth.

As I went to start the hose again to fill with more water, the gasket didn’t work so I decided to get hose from outside to use since I knew its end didn’t leak. I ran some water through hose and then disconnected it to bring into house. Once inside, I took hose to bathroom to rinse off all the leaves and pine straw off so it would not be all over the house. Then I hooked up the hose and ran it to bedroom and cut on the hot water. It was getting to be around 5:45am now and Sarah was making noises to vocalize through her contraction. As the water heater ran out of hot water, I continued to fill with cooler water to bring down the tub temperature. Tub was at about 125 degrees and needed to be around 100. As the tub filled, the temperature slowly dropped. Once it was to 100 degrees it was the perfect height for use.

It was around 6:30 am when Terri and Vanessa showed up. Sarah had just got in the tub and her contractions were 2 minutes apart and 1 min or so long. It was getting close! Sarah was making it through the contraction like she had done it a hundred times. She was getting annoyed with me starting and stopping the stop watch with the beep it made and told me to stop it. Jenny and I got a good laugh at that. I called a neighbor, Frieda Wright, around 7am and told her Sarah was in labor and asked her if I gave her a list and some money if she could go to the grocery store and pick up some items for us. She said she could but not till 8am. We had planned on going shopping that day so we had little food for everyone to snack on.

I continued to apply pressure to Sarah’s lower back and try to make her as comfortable as possible, and we gave her water and orange-pineapple juice to drink. Sarah was vocalizing a little high pitched and Terri asked her to lower it so she didn’t strain her vocal cords. In Sarah’s state, now she would do anything suggested and immediately lowered her moans. She started to give in and said she didn’t think she could do this anymore and she wanted a break. Terri told her she would get a break when the baby was born. I wanted to say the same thing but I was glad Terri said it! With her wanting to give in, we knew it wasn’t going to be much longer. Sarah started to feel the urge to push and was ready for Ryan to be born and so it had started. Frieda called and said she was coming to get the list and money so I asked Vanessa to get it to her. A few minutes later, after a short time of pushing, we started to see Ryan’s hair as he started to crown. With each push it was closer and closer, I was waiting for the point when his head was out and then I would get in position at that point since there is usually a pause or break from pushing. However this was not the case for us, once the head was out and Terri said the cord was not around Ryan’s neck, Sarah pushed immediately and Ryan was born at 8:21am, December 12th, 2007.