Saturday afternoon at 2:49pm. Both hands against the credenza, leaning forward and rocking slowly back and forth, riding the wave, watching my breathing. My steaming mug of tea in front of me–just get through the contraction and you can drink it. The midwives a mere 11 minutes away, active labor only just beginning, my mind perfectly clear between contractions. I got this.

The wave subsided and I reached for my drink, barely lifting it off the wooden top before another contraction rolled over me. Instinctively, I dropped down on my hands and knees and could feel this one was different. More intense, the first one I had to vocalize through.

Wait.

Hands and knees. Not my normal for laboring.

Wait.

The babies are coming.

---

Let me rewind a tad, because this was not the start of labor. Nooooo, prodromal labor began far sooner, although it’s hard to say exactly when because with this being my fourth birth and it being multiples it’s pretty typical to feel like things ramp up sooner.

So let me just start all the way at the beginning. Make yourself a cup of tea because this one is long and wild.

Sometime in late May, I woke up and my middle fingers felt like they had both been jammed.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and chuckled. I didn’t even need to take a test; I was pregnant. After you’ve done it three times before you learn the little nuances in the ways your body handles pregnancy hormones, and mild carpal tunnel in my middle fingers is one of the ways my body handles mine. It only occurs at the very beginning and very end of pregnancy, and I’ve never felt it at any other time in my life.

Yep, we were doing this baby thing again.

First trimester felt like poop. Morning sickness kicked my butt but the worst of it was the overwhelming, crippling exhaustion. A fourteen month old, three year old, and five year old can do that to you but this was something else. On top of that, we were in the middle of planning yet another cross country move, we were closing on a house, and my evenings were spent at trade school with a bunch of teenage boys who I did not want to see me puking in the shop bathroom.

At 10 weeks pregnant, I scheduled a dating ultrasound as my husband was expected to deploy for nine months and I wanted a more precise idea of my due date in case he was somehow allowed home for the birth. I left the OB’s office in shock.

Twins.

What the what?! Twins??? Two of them?

Oh, but we were so thrilled.

I started reading every home birth story, every vaginal twin birth story, every positive unmedicated birth story I could find. Every night I would read for hours, soaking in every detail and longing for it to be my turn. I truly believe this is one reason my own birth story turned out the way that it did–because I filled my head with positive stories of physiological birth, which is birthing undisturbed and without intervention. God designed women to birth babies and of course there are times medicalized birth is life saving but most of the time it’s not.

My favorite stories tended to be the precipitous birth stories, which is when delivery happens within three hours of the start of active labor. But from those stories, I also learned that precipitous births can be traumatic as sometimes they’re so fast and so intense there is no time to process what’s happening, or it feels completely overwhelming, or women can even feel like their bodies are being taken over.

My own labors have been average, between 5 and 8 hours of active labor, but I noticed a trend in the very few twin home birth stories that are out there and that is extremely short active labors. Like less than half an hour. Many were not like this but enough were that something in me told me to get ready.

Mentally, I began preparing as my midwife, Emily, lived 40 minutes away. I tried to prepare my husband but he always seemed very stressed at the thought so I dropped it (mistake!). I asked my midwife about ways to prepare so many times she even joked about me delivering unassisted on purpose.

Lol.

Maybe 35 weeks pregnant baby A dropped. The next week, he was even lower. At 37 weeks, I could feel his head with my hand, inside of me. Super weird, by the way. Like how does a baby sit an inch from being earthside and just…hang out there?

At 38 weeks on the dot, Tuesday, I threw up all over some poor, random person’s lawn. Okay, not normal. That evening regular contractions began. They felt like real contractions, more crampy than the endless Braxton Hicks I’d been experiencing for months, and I was quite sure it was early labor. Emily put all the other midwives attending on high alert and I tried to get some rest before the big event.

I woke up Wednesday morning to nada. Poop.

Thursday morning arrived and I texted the midwife to tell her I was contracting on and off but nothing intense or regular; still, it felt like things were moving! By the evening, the contractions were constant but still completely irregular with no intensity whatsoever, exactly like Braxton Hicks. I felt more pressure than normal and my back ached but these contractions were nothing like labor!

I went to bed and awoke at 2:30am with moderate contractions. Pulling out my phone to text Emily, I instead saw a message telling me to hold the babies in because she was at another birth. Sweet timing. The contractions felt legit and I went back to sleep a couple hours later, expecting full blown labor to wake me up soon.

At 9am on Friday I awoke to nothing. Seriously?! I had to stop going to sleep; it was killing my labor! I texted my sweet birth photographer, Jordan, to complain and her excitement helped me feel slightly less impatient.

The day remained uneventful and that night Emily was called away to another birth. About 4am, contractions picked up once more, right as she was finishing the postpartum care of the mom who had delivered overnight, and since my sleep is apparently the destroyer of labor I went back to bed in hopes active labor would hold off long enough for Emily and her assistant to get some rest.

It did. Sleep, the destroyer of labor, struck once more.

I awoke on Saturday morning, at 38+4 weeks, legitimately grumpy. It had been four stupid days of prodromal labor and I. was. over. it.

Clearly, my body was ready for labor. Clearly, these babies were coming soon. Now please, let me be extremely clear: I didn’t do this lightly. Babies come when they come and there is absolutely no need to “naturally” induce labor; in fact, if you have to induce it at all, it’s probably not what your body would have naturally done. But there were some other factors at play here, and I was well informed on the decision I was making.

After a discussion with Emily she gave me the green light to try castor oil, which stimulates the digestive system and in turn causes uterine contractions. It’s a really horrible way to induce labor the way many moms try it, which is basically drink a ton with something like a root beer float to try to hide the nasty flavor, and then they vomit their brains out and can’t stay off the toilet and their uterus is so angry with them it starts contracting which is hardly a “natural” way to go into labor. Nope, no way no way no wayyyy was I doing that, but I could do it Emily’s way: mix 1-2 tbsp in at least twice as much peanut butter and eat it with an apple within 20 minutes. You can’t taste it, and it works like a slow release pill without nasty side effects. Sure, I was ready to try.

My husband made breakfast and I shoved down my ridiculous amount of peanut butter with an apple. Emily checked in, any contractions?

Negatory.

The kids scampered outside to play in the snow and I pottered around doing silly things like rearranging the mudroom for the thousandth time, mostly trying to keep myself busy while I willed contractions to begin.

Lunch came and went uneventfully. I put the kids down for rest time.

This was dumb.

Labor was dumb.

These babies were not dumb but oh my goodness COME ON!

Five days. I had been so mentally prepared to go post dates because I knew my babies would be born when they were ready but now here we were, what felt like five days into a labor that was obviously going absolutely nowhere. These babies were clearly never ever going to come, I’d be pregnant for all of eternity, and all my patience and mental preparation had disappeared faster than my toddler with contraband snacks.

So I had a good cry, and my husband went to the gun store (lol, priorities) while I sat down to turn on a distracting TV show.

Hmm, contractions had picked back up and they felt funny, but they weren’t intense and they were only in my front. One of the hallmarks of “real” contractions is that they come like a wave and wrap around you, and they feel like period cramps, achy in your lower back.

These were not like that in the least.

I started timing them and they were 10 minutes apart and then suddenly 2-4 minutes apart but irregular and not crampy, just tight in the front. I’d been having periods of regular Braxton Hicks contractions like this for weeks.

Yeah, this wasn’t labor. Contractions that are 2-4 minutes apart are more intense than this. Now I’ve been reading about pain free births (basically a product of preparation and relaxation) for months and it doesn’t mean you don’t feel anything–it’s still crazy intense–you’re just in control and the sensation is intensity rather than tearing-you-in-half-pain, so I knew even without pain these could still be the real deal. However, these weren’t intense or even crampy. They were nothing.

I pulled out my phone to text Emily, who had asked about coming over just in case, to tell her to hold off.

“I only really started contracting about 2 hours ago so I’ll watch it a bit longer and keep you updated–”

Pop!

Pause. A moment of confusion because that came from…inside of me? I had read enough birth stories and every mom described it exactly like this so I knew immediately what had happened–my water broke! Not once has my water broken before delivery so I certainly hadn’t been expecting this. It meant labor was finally here! It’s baby timmmeeeee!

So I finished my text to Emily.

“I’ll watch it a bit longer and keep you updated–my water just broke” before I could even finish sending the text.

That was 2:21pm.

2:23pm: Two minutes passed and I felt the wave. Yowza that’s a contraction for sure, albeit a small one. I called my husband and told him to head home from the gun store, only four minutes away. I called my mother-in-law who would be hanging out with the kids, I texted my parents in Colorado.

Another wave. Odd, I hadn’t expected that to happen so soon. I turned on the kettle to make a cup of tea, and yet another one rolled over me, significantly stronger than the first which had been only 5 minutes prior. Oh, geez.

I texted Emily and told her it was happening fast and that I’d see her soon, which she already knew because my water was barely leaking, meaning baby was so low his head was plugging it all in. I went upstairs to do my makeup (yo my birth photographer was coming and priorities!) and change into my cute nursing bra and check on the kids during their rest time. Every two minutes or so a contraction would hit and I’d lean into the wall or whatever was close by, close my eyes, breathe deep, and sway back and forth. These felt like the early labor contractions I’d had with my last home birth so I figured there would still be a ways to go.

2:36pm: Emily responded and let me know she was 24 minutes away and to call if I felt pushy. Active labor had begun literally fifteen minutes prior; I was pretty sure she was going to make it.

About the same time my husband walked through the door and seemed a little panicked, probably because when he left nothing was happening and now clearly everything was happening, and because food is the solver of all stress he asked if he should go out and get us lunch. I almost said yes because, well, food, and then realized I didn’t really want to eat (thanks to the half a cup of peanut butter I had consumed that morning?) so he made me a cheese plate instead.

I continued texting the family with updates and at my request my husband started setting up a show for us to watch. One more contraction and no, I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate so I told him maybe not now and he retreated into the kitchen.

I tidied up the bathroom. I cleaned up legos off the floor and paused every few minutes to rock and breathe. At 2:47 I told Emily my husband had the birth kit out and headed into the living room with my tea and cheese plate. I ate one piece of cheese before realizing my husband had cut up a selection of fine cheeses and the very first one I had chosen was a legitimately spicy habanero cheese. Thanks, babe.

2:49pm: I stood at the credenza as another gotta-breathe-through-it-but-not-that-intense contraction subsided, and lifted up the piping hot cup of tea. It had hardly reached my lips before I felt another wave roll over me. Literally only seconds had passed. What? My mug hit the wooden credenza top and something instinctual dropped me to my hands and knees.

Whoa.

Intensity immediately went from a 4 to an 8. It was the kind of contraction you can’t do anything but vocalize through, the low, deep song that many women before me have groaned. A minute passed and I had a second to breathe before another deep wave pulled me in.

In that moment I realized this is not a position I labor in, this is a position I birth in.

The babies are coming.

Solid work, intuition making me fascinated with precipitous births. I was so ready for this.

Richard, get in here! I called. There was a scuffle and a massive thud, and my bear of a husband stumbled around the corner. Only 15 minutes prior he had come through the door, expecting a wife who would be laboring for awhile, and now the midwives weren’t here, the babies were almost here, and it was just the two of us. He was wearing socks and had slipped and hit his head on the counter in his hurry to get to me. Whoops, I must have called for him more intensely than I realized!

The birth kit sat behind the sofa and I was kneeling on our beautiful area rug in the middle of the living room.

Get something to put on the floor! I gasped, hoping there was something easy to grab like a tarp. All he found was a single chux pad. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work.

Don’t ruin the rug, get to the bathroom, flashed through my mind, and it occurred to me that even though I didn’t feel pushy I needed to call Emily and so my husband picked up the phone.

2:51pm: an outgoing call to Emily. At that point I was already in the bathroom, still wearing my nice new shirt with my cute nursing bra underneath. The contraction didn’t hurt, it wasn’t even particularly intense, but intuitively I took off my shorts and crouched with one hand on the vanity to keep myself stable. Right as my husband walked in with the phone, something felt strange.

Now there’s this amazing thing women’s bodies do called FER, or Fetal Ejection Reflex. Basically, if you wait until your body has moved the baby down through the birth canal via contractions, baby is coming with or without you actively pushing. There will be an intense urge to push but you don’t have to do anything; basically, your body pushes for you. Sometimes this happens the moment you hit 10cm and sometimes your body will be fully dilated for awhile but still need to move baby down before it kicks in. Yes, there are times when mom pushing is helpful but in a typical physiological birth, it’s unnecessary.

There was no discernable urge to push, just this feeling of my body opening up and baby is coming, which I think was due to his size (tiny) and how low he was–he had been an inch from crowning for weeks so he hardly had to move at all.

2:52pm: I reached down and felt baby A’s head.

My husband knelt on the floor in front of me, appearing slightly bewildered but so very determined, and I glanced up to see my five year old and three year old at the bathroom door, observing curiously and calmly. They were silent. I was thankful they had come downstairs.

A slithery sensation as baby A’s tiny, slippery body slid out, and I caught him.

Or so I thought. Apparently he shot right through my hands and my husband caught him. Good one, babe.

I looked down at the most perfect scene, my husband with a fresh, vernix coated squish in his arms. He turned over our baby and finally, after nine months of waiting to know who would be joining our family, it was a boy!

On the other end of the phone, Emily told us to get a towel to keep him warm and he started crying immediately, completely drowning out her voice for the remainder of the phone call.

There were a couple minutes of rest in between the two baby’s births. I remember standing in the middle of the bathroom, holding my little boy with one hand and stabilizing myself on the counter with the other. The floor was tile and so slick from all the amniotic fluid and I had to focus on not slipping.

Our two oldest children continued to observe quietly from the doorway. My husband was focused but he had not mentally prepared for an unassisted delivery, so I tried to encourage him and hoped he wasn’t traumatized by the experience. I told him he’d need to catch baby B because my hands were full.

2:57pm: Another wave began rolling and I crouched and gave a light push. The way was already paved, and baby B slipped right out. A massive splash of blood and amniotic fluid hit the floor and splattered all over my husband, the tub, the walls. I bit back simultaneous laughter and pity; he hates bodily fluids! And yet in his goodness, he didn’t even make a face, just smiled and pursed his lips–and suddenly, ploop. Not even a minute later.

I didn’t even feel it, I just heard the splash, and I looked down to see…the placenta?

Yikes, that doesn’t usually happen.

2:58pm: Another boy! Emily and her assistants arrived at the same time as Jordan, our photographer. Voices filled the halls and I stood there, not at all feeling like I had just given birth. In fact, I felt better than I did when I was 38 weeks pregnant with twins due to the extra weight being gone and that oxytocin high. Both babies stared up at me with alert, shining eyes.

36 minutes from my water breaking. 34 minutes from my the first contraction to both babies in my arms.

34 minutes of active labor.

It was hard to wrap my head around it at first not because it was overwhelming but because I didn’t feel many of the hallmarks of baby-is-coming time. I didn’t even notice transition, I never felt like I was in labor land, I didn’t feel the fetal ejection reflex, I barely felt the babies crowning.

Why? I can’t say for sure, but I’d guess the two main reasons are because my body did the prep in early labor and because baby A was so low, very little had to happen for him to be born.

There’s more, too–I spent months reading positive birth stories, learning as much as I could about the complex hormonal matrix that is labor. I know tension leads to pain so I was extremely intentional about getting rid of anything that might interfere with my relaxation, down to even the legos on the floor. God designed my body to do this perfectly and I trusted that.

Oh, and I can’t forget arguably one of the most important factors:

It happened at home.

There’s so much for me to say about this topic that I’ll save it for another post, but I honestly could not be a bigger advocate for home births. All five babies would have been born at home had we been able to pay for a midwife when my husband was active duty. Thankfully, every birth has been precious in it’s own way.

And so, after a grand 34 minutes of active labor, both of my boys lay snuggled in my arms.

I moved to the sofa where I spent the rest of the day figuring out who these new tiny humans are while Emily and her assistant cleaned up the war zone that was the bathroom; praise the Lord I didn’t give birth in the living room because this rug would have never been quite the same!

A couple minutes after relocating to the living room with the babes my mother-in-law walked in, surprised to see everyone so calm–she thought I was still in the throes of active labor! Because she had been driving, she had missed all the updates and had no idea her new grandbabies had made their wild entrance already. Half the fun of the day may just have been the surprise on her face.

Baby A already had a name–Gabriel, God’s messenger angel, meaning God is my strength; his middle name means one who defends. 6lbs 7oz with intense eyes and a head full of dark, thick hair.

Baby B still needed a name. We had spent months agonizing and didn’t love anything, but as we reviewed our list of potential names suddenly one jumped out–Gideon. A great Biblical warrior who thought he was too small for God to use him, and instead God gave him an army of only 300 to defeat the far larger Midianite army so there was no doubt the victory came from the Lord. Our tiny boy, only 5lbs 5oz, is so small, but we have no doubt God will use him in big ways. His middle name means mighty.

Gabriel and Gideon.

---

Today is their due date.

The past eleven days with them have been nothing short of perfect. Nearly all of it has been spent in bed resting, healing, learning their cues and their personalities. My only complaint is that time is passing too quickly. These will be our last biological children, possibly the last time I get to love a baby through the newborn days, and I feel like I cannot grasp the moments tightly enough.

Birth is awesome. Awe-some and also just really stinking cool. God’s design is simply incredible.

After five beautiful children, what a way to finish! There was a small part of me that stood on the cold tile floor, gazing down at two fuzzy heads, and thought, wait, it’s over already? I feel a sadness that this period of my life has come to a close.

But oh, how I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

Gabriel and Gideon, my littlest loves: welcome to the family.

Read the older kids’ birth stories here:

“Is he supposed to look like that?” The story of my eldest son’s hospital birth.

My daughter’s birth story, part 1 and part 2.

My first home birth, the story of my second son’s birth.

Special thanks to my midwife, Emily Schultz from Ohio Midwife and her assistant, Trinity. She is so experienced and so very kind and if anyone in the Dayton/Columbus area is looking for a midwife I could not recommend her more highly!

All photo credits (minus the one of my MIL’s surprise) go to Jordan of Connected Life. You can find her on Facebook @connectedlifeohio or on IG @connectedlife_ohio. She offered to photograph my birth for her portfolio and she didn’t quite make the delivery in time but the photos she captured afterwards are nothing short of perfect. She’s booking births now and I also couldn’t recommend her more!