I was so excited to have a homebirth with my 1st child. I was a home birth baby myself and all 4 of my siblings were as well. In fact all 30 of my cousins on my moms side were all homebirth babies. So I come from a family that understands how natural birth is. When I started to look into midwives I realized my insurance would not cover it. I was very frustrated and could not afford to pay out of pocket for it at the time. So I decided that I would give birth at Tarzana hospital which was right up the street for me at the time. But I wanted a natural unmedicated birth, so when I woke up at 5am on November 4th 2011 to my water breaking I labored at home as long as I possibly could stand it. I took a bath, my husband massaged me, I sat on a yoga ball, breathed silently through each contraction. It was getting more and more intense so we decided to head to the hospital at 6:45am. As my husband drove I remember being in the back seat of the car and feeling the most intense pain I’ve ever felt and almost losing it, but then I said a prayer and asked God for strength to get through this. We got to the hospital and I couldn’t even talk, the nurses kept asking me my name, but I was in another zone 😂, I knew I needed to just get to the hospital bed, when I jumped up on the bed, my husband looked down and saw her head, and said Mary I see her head, I couldn’t believe it, I started laughing out of disbelief, I thought I was going to be at the hospital pushing all day. There was no doctor, the nurses didn’t even have gloves on, they didn’t know my name, I didn’t have an IV or monitoring on me, it was wonderful. She came fast and furious! It was a beautiful glorious birth!
