11|Melissa Madsen: Positive First Birth,Cervial Lip,Homebirth,Water Birth,

Melissa is a teacher originally from Toronto, ON and that the time there weren't many teaching jobs so she headed to Alberta for a year to get some experience. While teaching out in Alberta she met her husband who sells farm equipment for a living. They got married September 2018 and they had planned to wait about 6 months so they could try and plan a September baby in hopes of her schools teaching schedule. Right after the wedding Melissa could tell something was off and so she did some blood work and she was in fact pregnant thought all the home urine tests kept coming up negative. One of her early signs was constipation which lead her to wonder if it was possible she was pregnant, other than that Melissa was lucky to have quite an easy pregnancy with very little symptoms. She noticed her body had changed right away, she gained 10 pounds right in the beginning and then plateaued until much later in her pregnancy. Before their wedding Melissa was really on a healthy path, she was wanting to lose weight and look her absolute best for her wedding and since she got pregnant so quickly after the wedding she did find it difficult to shift her mindset to feel comfortable seeing her body and weight change. When she shared her feelings about the mental struggle she faced while seeing these physical body changes she received some back lash within her Instagram community. She did continue to eat well and worked out right through the end of pregnancy that kept her feeling good.

"I actually wanted a midwife from the get-go"

Melissa knew right away she wanted a midwife so as soon as she found out she was pregnant she called to make sure she could get a spot. She read a book that had helped her decide to have a homebirth but her husband wasn't quite on board in the beginning. A few months in they took a prenatal class "Healthy Birth Choices" ran by a local doula and chatting after with some friends about birth Melissa's husband grew quite comfortable with the idea of a homebirth so they then solidified their birth plan of birthing at home. Melissa's care team was 4 midwives who she would rotate through seeing her during prenatal so she had the chance to get to know everyone and build connections with each midwife. Melissa was planning a water birth in her tub and luckily she had a tub big enough so she didn't need to rent a birth pool. Melissa had thought that she was likely going to give birth before her due date because of how she was carrying and around 35+ weeks she noticed her mucus plug had come away.

"I was convinced I was going to have her early. I think that was probably the worst thing I could have done because I was anticipating an early labour and as the days got closer to the due date I got so emotional. Feeling like I was doing something wrong and why isn't this baby coming even though I have zero control over it"

In the last 2 days before baby day Melissa noticed she was a lot more emotional and turns out it was very true for her. Saturday morning she woke up and really felt a strong urge to be alone, since her mom was down for 6 weeks to be there for the birth of the baby she hid upstairs in her room. Melissa woke up 8 am Monday morning from a dream that she was peeing her pants, she ran to the bathroom, jumped in the tub and texted her husband that her water had broken. She didn't want to tell her mom to avoid making a big scene so she had her husband sneak up stairs, the midwives came over to check and confirmed her water had broken, she was around 4 cm and they gave her some things to look out for. She went through the day she did her normal things, they stopped at the grocery store to pick up a list of things the midwife had given them for a midwives brew. After their afternoon walk she went up into her room, closed the curtains and went into birth mode; her midwife came around 5:30 and when she checked her Melissa was fully dilated, by 6 pm she was in the hot shower. She ended up getting sick her to stomach so moved her into the tub. Melissa ended up with a cervical lip so they tried a few different positions to help fix that out, the change of positions didn't do the trick for her midwife did end up pushing against the cervical lip to help get it out of the way. Melissa pushed for an hour and half, once baby started crowing she reached down to feel her head and that gave Melissa a much needed boost to finish pushing baby all the way out. Out came Emelia at 10:39pm.

Melissa's wanted to see her placenta and her umbilical cord was actually attached on the end of the placenta; she then sent out her placenta to have ti encapsulated. She says she found the pills really worked for her and she noticed the difference of days she would take them vs the days she wouldn't. They struggled with breastfeeding and ultimately Melissa did end up bottle feeding Emeila, she was a very strong breastfeeding advocate so she really had envisioned that she would be nursing Emelia. It was hard for Melissa to change her view from breastfeeding to bottle feeding formula.

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Connect:

https://www.instagram.com/momentswithmellissa/