My Home Birth Story

If you don't feel like reading a lot, check out the pics. The long story follows...


Doing my best to quicken labor by playing DDR.

My midwife, Dr. Lori
8 lbs even. Funny 3 of my 4 kids were exactly 8 lbs at birth.

Jasmine's passport picture. It took 62 shots to get one with her eyes open looking at the camera.
Our new little family

The Labor story

Friday morning, May 13^th, I decided it was high time this baby came out. Our whole family had tickets to Taiwan leaving May 31^st, and if I was going I needed this baby out fast. So I walked Anjuli to preschool, a 4 mile ordeal, pushing the kids in the jogger. That night my contractions started. These were different though because instead of the pressure being in the front of my belly it sort of wrapped around my back where I felt a dull ache. Even though the contractions were pretty consistent, I still doubted this could be true labor because I have never gone into labor on my own, and almost thought my body was incapable of doing it. Usually I am induced several days after my due date, which was May 17^th. As the night progressed they started to intensify and I was getting a little worried I wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night. With Anjuli I labored all night long and finally gave birth at 5am—it was really hard, and I was hoping this wouldn’t be the same.

I fell asleep but was woken up several times with more pain. By 5am my contractions were 5 minutes apart. I called my midwife, Dr. Lori, around 6am and told her I was pretty sure we were gonna have a baby today. But then as the morning went on my contractions sort of slowed down and eventually stopped. I thought I was mistaken, another fluke. Dr. Lori said that sometimes labor stops for a few hours and then picks up later. She told me to go for a walk, eat a big meal, and then take a nap. After going for a long, uphill walk in Mililani Mauka for 2 hours in the heat of the day, eating Mexican food and taking a short nap, the contractions came back. I remember being on the phone with my mom at about 4pm saying that the baby probably wasn’t coming that day. But shortly after I hung up with her I started to feel them again, about 10 minutes apart.

Then within a half hour they were back to 5 minutes apart. I was still unconvinced that “this was it” and continued to bake cookies for our neighbors that I never officially met even though we’ve been in our new house almost a year… We walked over to deliver them around 5pm and I remember having to stop inbetween each visit to focus on the contractions. About 6pm things were getting intense and I finally told Zui we needed to get these kids out of here. I called Dr. Lori and she sent the Doula over to check my status. Zui fed the kids and drove them over to his sister’s (Lehua) house.

While he was gone the doula helped me set up the room and talked me through the contractions. Dr. Lori called to check on my status and they were about 4 minutes apart. But several minutes later they just started coming on like crazy, one right after another. I was getting nervous no one was going to be there for the birth! Zui came home at about 7pm and I immediately started crying in his arms. The contractions were very strong now and I wanted to be done. When Dr. Lori came I got into the birthing tub and immediately started pushing. Baby Jasmine was born 15 minutes later, at 8:15pm. I was so glad to see her!