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Cornelis and Timothy Plomp's Birth

If you still want birth stories, here are mine. They are home birth stories from when I still lived in the Netherlands. I am living in the States now, pregnant with my third kid and planning another home birth, my first American one :-)

Karen.

My birth stories
Karen Plomp
Written May 3, 1995

Cees (Cornelis) Plomp, Nov 5 1991.
Tim (Timothy) Plomp, Aug 14 1993.

Both of my kids were born at home. Home birth is a lot more common in the Netherlands than it is in the States. About 40% of the births are at home. A standard question in your pregnancy is 'Where are you going to give birth?'. Here in the States every one seems to assume that of course you will give birth in the hospital.

The pre- and postnatal care system is very good. When you have a normal pregnancy and birth you will have a midwife. The midwife screens you for signs of complications and if you have complications you have to use an obstetrician. With a low-risk birth, you can choose whether you want to birth at home or in the hospital. You have to give birth in the hospital when you are less than 37 weeks along, or are having twins or have a breech birth or have any other complication. But even if you give birth in a hospital, you will be released within 24 hours. (Unless you have a C-section, then you stay for 7 days or so.)

After birth you get a kind of nurse/mother's helper at home, who basically takes care of mom, baby, other kids and the household. Also the midwife visits you first every day and then every other day for the first 10 days. All of this is paid by your health insurance, you only pay a minimal amount yourself. This is really great to help you through this first week. This nurse starts out with 10 hours a day for the first few days and then the hours gradually increase to a few hours on the last (usually 7th or 8th) day.

Cees was 3 weeks overdue and the midwife recommended castor oil. (I don't recommend it, but I did not know as much then as I do now). I took that Monday morning and waited for things to happen. The whole day nothing happened, but in the evening I started to get some cramps (and diarrhea :-) After some time they seemed to be regular (5 minutes or less) and I thought they were getting painful. Around 11pm I called the midwife and she said: 'Well, you still sound so cheerful, I don't think this is the real thing yet.' But she came to check me around 11.30pm and she found out that I was not dilated yet! :-( Not at all! So she said these cramps were just because of the castor oil and just to go to bed and get some rest before I went to the hospital to be induced the next day.

So around midnight I went to bed and thought, 'gosh, these cramps do hurt a lot more now I am lying down, then when I was sitting up.' And I got a lot of diarrhea and vomiting, so I was in the bath room a lot and between that I still tried to sleep, which was quite impossible :-) We still thought that 'real labor' had not started yet, or maybe just a little bit. (Even while the contractions were so bad, that I couldn't breath through them anymore, but more yelled and screamed and cursed :-) Then at 4am I got the urge to push. I was sure I could not be at full dilation yet, since only a few hours ago I had not been dilated at all. So I went into the bathtub (my waters still had not broken) and tried to puff puff puff the pushing urge away. Well, it was more like 'Puff, PUSH PUSH', since the pushing urge was so strong, I just could not suppress it.

So Sander called the midwife, who was still busy doing another delivery and stitching up the mom, so it took some time and another phone call for her to arrive around 4.55am. She and Sander helped me out of the bath, onto the bed and she broke my waterbag. I pushed 2 or 3 times or so and then Cees arrived at 5.10am. He had the cord around his neck, so she had to take that off and I needed a pretty big episiotomy, since he had a big head.

He had trouble breathing, so she immediately called the pediatrician and told him to go to the hospital, and after the placenta was delivered she and the nurses (who arrived during the birth) brought the baby to the hospital. She arranged an ambulance for me, so I was picked up a little bit later and brought to the hospital. Cees was in the NICU and I got to see him through a window and then I was brought into a delivery room and she started to stitch me up. (I hated that part :-) Cees had to stay in the hospital for 14 days and the first 10 days I could stay in the maternity ward, so that I could nurse him and be close to him (at least in the same building)

After that I had to go home, since the insurance covered only 10 days for the mom in these kind of situations, so we were basically driving to and from the hospital the whole day. The only time I let them feed him was at 4am, for the remainder of the day I nursed him every 3 hours from 7am till 1am. I used to nurse him, go home, sleep for an hour, go there again, nurse him, go home, sleep for another hour and so on. I was so glad when we finally could take him home.

That was when we started the family bed. It was so good to have him near us at last. We just could not imagine to have him sleep somewhere else, after having missed out on a lot of contact in the hospital.

Timmy's birth was less eventful. He was only 2 weeks overdue. Since Cees birth went so quick, I thought Timmy's birth would be even quicker. Not so! I think I went in serious labor around Friday 6pm and Timmy was born at Saturday 10.50am. Things went pretty smoothly. Just very painful, but at least I was prepared for that. The first time I was overwhelmed by the amount of pain I was experiencing. The second time it was the same amount of pain, but it made such a difference that I had gone through it already and knew what to expect and knew the pain would be over soon.

Timmy had his hand next to his head and he was so wound up in his cord, that the midwife had to cut the cord already when just his head was out. I needed a very small episiotomy, that required only one stitch (another big head, even bigger than Cees's :-) This time we could just stay home after the birth and did not have to go to the hospital. This was so nice. Especially the first day, they change so much, their appearance seems to be changing the whole time and I had missed out on all that with Cees. Only when we had Timmy at home and we could stay at home afterwards, I realized what we had missed out on with Cees.

I plan to have my next babies also at home, I really enjoy laboring in my own environment. The mess is not an issue, since the nurse/mother's helper cleans that up anyway. Even the first time, when we went to the hospital, the nurse had changed all the bedding, put part of it in the washer and put the remaining ones to soak. So Sander came home from the hospital and all the mess was cleaned up already.

Karen Plomp