The birth story of Fox Alexander

My first pregnancy, birth and baby!

My sweet baby boy Fox is now officially one month old, so, it felt resonant to share his birth story now that I’ve had perspective and reflection in the last month.

I want to share that I don’t believe that there is any one way to birth - if there was then that would be the only option available to us. For me - as in on a personal level - I believe in the physiological process of birth via trusting my body’s innate intelligence/ intuition, and as such I only desire to birth naturally, without drugs, in the comfort and safety of my home. My story does not take away or add anything to your story. I honour all birth stories with the love and sacredness they deserve. Blessings xo.

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Thursday, March 7th, 2024

I really can’t say I woke up that morning, as it was the third night in a row that I would merely scrape by with just closing my eyes… sleep nowhere to be found. So, instead… I rose from bed, once again feeling the immense exhaustion that comes with late third trimester and being wildly uncomfortable all the time and deeply in the trenches of anticipation of what - or I should say who - is to come.

I had a lot I wanted to get done that day and whenever that happened throughout my pregnancy I frequently repeated the words “I can do this, I can do this...” so I could encourage myself to gently push through the exhaustion that would not leave me.

I started out my day by making the last postpartum meal I had planned - lasagna. I was so excited to make the lasagna as it had been weeks since I could eat tomatoes. The acid reflux was intense from them. The excitement of potentially eating the lasagna in a couple of weeks when I thought I would be postpartum was enough to keep me going.

A short break when the lasagna was in the oven brought me to our living room, resting with my feet up on the couch and looking outside through the massive and gorgeous front window that had just been replaced the week before… suddenly a slow and steady movement catches my eye. My husband walks into the room and walks over and I ask “Do you see that?”, he responds “Yes, I do” and almost as if it was waiting for us to see it, a tiny white feather is slowly floating in front of the window. The timer goes off and I ask him to take the lasagna out. He does, but then as he’s walking away, he looks down and finds another tiny white feather. We both felt it was a sign that baby was potentially coming sooner than expected. 

With the lasagna cooling on the stove, we run off to our midwife appointment at 11. I declined pretty much all of the third trimester tests, so it was a short and sweet appointment with blood pressure check, going over some simple questions about my desired birth and checking the baby’s heart rate with the fetoscope. We booked our next one two weeks out, the looming feeling within me that we wouldn’t make it that far was very present in my mind.

I returned home, spent some time talking to Jodi and catching up - it was so nice! Then went on the podcast with Sydney, told her I had nothing left to do now but wait for baby! These talks were exciting and filled with well wishes. I love my friends. 

Then we went grocery shopping, got all our “birth foods” - fresh fruits, snacks, coconut water and a few other things, dropped off the baby shower thank you cards at the post office and before we knew it, it was evening and we were settling in. Both of us had been prepping for the baby for a while now “just in case” baby decided to come early - we kept thinking 16th or 17th, but now we found ourselves ready much earlier than expected. We both realized we finished all our tasks and that baby could arrive right now if they wanted and we would be ready for them. We felt at that point that baby might arrive that weekend. 

I took a moment to let the baby know that we were ready, rubbing my belly clockwise as I always did, I said “We’re ready for you!” I felt my body relax and breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I was in fact truly READY. I had cancelled so many things just weeks before, intuitively feeling the need for spaciousness and now here I was with that space! Finally.

We snuggled in together, rested into our living room, turned on the last Star Wars movie in the Skywalker series (we’d watched them all in order so far) and just really chilled out. 

30 mins left in the movie, the gentle contractions I’ve been getting for weeks are suddenly not feeling so gentle. They are more intense, they’re making me shaky, but the pattern is all over the place. I text my doula and she lets me know it could be the start of prodromal labour and to just see what happens over the next few hours.

My husband begins to feel top tier excitement at the potential of it happening, so I’m trying to downplay everything, and just gently inform my doula of what’s happening.

Around 10pm, a small amount of blood shows up, contractions are now 7-10 mins apart, 1 minute each, baby still moving a lot. My doula says things are slowly progressing and to just try to rest as much as possible.

Moving into Friday, March 8th…

It’s almost midnight, I’ve gotten sick, pooped three or four times and I’ve lost my mucus plug. My doula agrees I am in early labour. I let her go for the time being and return to my inner world that I have been exploring between contractions.

What I haven’t shared yet at this point is what was happening in between contractions. I was falling asleep - at least what I thought was sleep, and when that would happen I would have visions of Jesus holding my baby. I had countless dreams and visions the very same throughout my entire pregnancy… Always in different ways - the baby when they’re a little older, the baby when they’re fresh and just born, the baby when they’re a grown man… these visions and dreams with Jesus have happened ever since I conceived. They have been deeply affirming and very surprising to me. I was not raised with any religion or a strong connection to Jesus and here he was repetitively showing up to hand me my child. I welcomed him with open arms, as I was already feeling the awakening to him and his teachings for about two years before I conceived.

Between contractions, I would get these visions and I would almost touch my baby / almost receive my baby from Jesus and then I would return to the “real world” and go through another contraction. I got close to receiving him hundreds of times and just kept trusting it would eventually happen.

Kayla, our doula, shows up at 4:30am. From there, things get very muddy to me. Apparently they asked me when I’d like to call the midwife and I told them to call right away (not what I wanted), then they asked me if I wanted food or drink… I don’t remember answering that either… things just get really blurry for me, but the visions of Jesus get clearer and clearer.

For the most part I laboured on my hands and knees, on my bed and in my office on the Thai massage mat. I remember peeing frequently, I remember drinking frequently, feeling quite nauseous the whole time. I don’t remember anyone asking me anything… I just remember being SO in my body, and so present with the contractions and with my visions of Jesus.

They felt both like a combination of constriction around my hips like a tight belt, and an outward pressure from the inside. All of it pulsing downwards towards my vulva. They were not painful to me. Pain feels much different, they were instead very intense, but overall felt very productive as a whole in my body.

I made use of all the natural tools: deep breathing, tens machine, counter pressure on my hips from Timothy/Kayla, movement, walking, tinctures, homeopathics, soft music, swaying, baths, birth combs… everything I could possibly think of that was natural was used to help!

After moving through all of the above for hours, I started to have more time where I was more deeply present with reality. It felt like my contractions had plateau’d in intensity and I was beginning to feel less internal and more external. I could feel like I was getting close, but I remember feeling that something wasn’t quite “there” yet. That’s the best way I could describe it.

Around noon, my midwife, Natasha, offered to check everything - fetal heart rate, blood pressure, cervical check and so on. I felt a strong yes from my body to check my cervix, which I was not initially interested in at all - so this surprised me. I felt I would get the answer I was seeking about what wasn’t quite “there” yet, so I consented to it.

Sure enough, my membranes were bulging and as soon as she checked me, my waters broke. I was almost fully dilated and my baby was right occiput posterior - back of head facing the right front of my uterus.

I felt my body relax a lot when my membranes ruptured, like “that was it!” and everything started to speed up from there. My contractions got more intense and everything ramped up…

Suddenly the contractions are feeling really intense but different - in a bad way. I gently internally freak out - “What is happening? Is something wrong?” I’m asking these questions inside my head as something felt off to me but not urgent. The contractions are no longer feeling like contractions, there’s a familiarity to them I can’t quite put my finger on… What is it?

I get in the tub around 2pm and find myself resting but still experiencing this strange pain. I’m sleeping between contractions… Jesus is still coming to me. Finally, I realize what the pain is. It is no longer labour pain, it is somehow re-igniting an old injury, my disc herniation at L5/S1. I am feeling nothing but the pain of that injury with every contraction. The fetal ejection reflex is there but I cannot for the life of me push into it without experiencing the intense pain of my disc herniation. “How will I push through this?” I keep asking myself. My husband says at this point I turned to him and said “I can’t do this” and him being the best ever, said “Yes, you can.” He often knows me better than I know myself. 

We get out of the tub, go back to the room to try pushing some more and I can feel my body retracting, almost like when you are trying to hold in pee, with every contraction. The pain of my previous injury taking me every time.

It’s just after 3:00pm and Natasha mentions the dreaded H word {hospital}, and I think to myself “NO WAY”… then I think, there has to be another way. I close my eyes, go back to that internal space, see Jesus. He walks up to me, gets real close so I can see right into his amber eyes, my baby {boy} in his arms (I actually saw the baby exactly as Fox looks like) and he touches my face. I return to reality and Kayla says “Let’s try the toilet, they don’t call it the dilation station for nothin!”

I begin to internalize talking to the baby more now, repeating “We got this, we got this baby…”

I go into our tiny bathroom with Timothy (my most hated room/space in my home) and he sits next to me on the edge of the tub, me on the toilet, and… it’s a miracle. I can finally push without my disc pain!

A couple pushes later Timothy exclaims to Natasha and Kayla “I can see a head!”

They tell me to get off the toilet and I now find myself on the bathroom floor, just hanging out over the bath mats freshly bought for me by my mother, finally able to push with each contraction. I feel my body tearing in four directions like a plus sign, the intensity is real but the knowing that I’m about to meet my baby boy keeps me going.

I push for another 30 mins and feel the head come out. Sweet relief hits me, oh my goodness that feels SO GOOD. How could it feel so good at this point? One more push and the rest of the baby is OUT. 4:19pm on March 8th. Caught by Natasha, as the bathroom was an awkward space for baby catching, and instantly this cry echoes out into the room sounding something like this… “chirp wahhhh, chirp wahhhh.” The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in my life. 

He pinks up, Natasha untangles the cord from his neck and his foot and passes him up to me through my legs. Natasha asked me a question (can’t remember what) and said the word “him” in there, and I said “Is it a him?” And she responded “Why don’t you check?” Timothy and I look together and immediately all I can hear is the sweet sound of my husband’s voice through happy tears “We have a son! We have a son!” We take a breath to enjoy this moment together. The three of us now here, God has given us the most precious gift we could have ever received.

With the help of Timothy and Natasha, and me holding the baby on my chest, I walk down the hallway into my bed, amazed that my baby is in my arms! I have a son. He’s right here. He’s beautiful and he’s healthy. Just WOW.

We enjoy our skin to skin, he’s pooped all over me and himself, they help clean him off and ask if he has a name - Fox Alexander Moran. Our sweet Foxy.

Once the cord stops pulsing, Timothy cuts it (about 20-30 mins after birth) and I lay there until I feel the placenta is ready to come. I stop shaking and I can feel it’s almost time. I tried a few times before that and it didn’t feel ready, finally, with Natasha’s help, I can feel it’s ready so I give it a gentle tug and a push and it is free and delivered.

Kayla makes some placenta stamps for me and I preserve it in salt and herbs (lavender, rosemary and calendula) in a bowl in my office until it is ready to be planted into the earth, returned to the source. Kayla leaves shortly after.

I shower to get the blood and poop off me, midwife watching me close by, and return to the room - there’s my husband and my SON! I’m still so overjoyed at this and amazed.

We did it!

The years of self-discovery, self-reliance, inner mastery, researching, exploring and sinking deeper into my earth body, my intuitive nature… all paid off to have this dreamy birth that I wanted and envisioned for us. A rush of gratitude fills me at some point (can’t remember when) and I just start crying and thanking everyone in the room.

The midwives leave us around 9pm… then it’s just us three. The three of us. Our family of three. I love the sound of this and I just can’t believe this is our life now!

I kiss my baby and thank God in the silence of my heart, over and over again, and thank Jesus for guiding the entire process.

Our family of three is alive and healthy and thriving. We did it together. We made it this far and now I feel like we can do anything together! Our resilience and strength could move mountains!

We silently {and overwhelmingly} send out a sweet announcement to our family and friends - he is here! 11 days early - or as I like to say, 11 bonus days with our Foxy! The overwhelming love I feel for him somehow keeps me up till 2 am, and I just can’t stop loving him and drinking him in.

I rest into bed, holding my sweet Fox, Timothy holding me. My entire world right here in my husband’s protective arms. A dream I dreamed years ago come true. Heart exploding with love… Thank you God!!!