E4| Kayla Zuidersma: Long First Labor, Hospital Birth, Miscarriage, Follwed By Homebirth, Doula

Brittany Belmontes
Feb 25, 2020
5 min read

Kayla is a certified labour and postpartum doula who works in the Burlington-Niagara-Hamilton region. She live on a farm in Beamsville Ontario with her gorgeous family, her husband Wes who she married when she was 21, her daughter Isabella and son Benjamin. Kayla is a busy body who fell in love with all things birth, after suffering with some Postpartum Depression she got into the birth work field and has been a saving grace for all of her moms by offering them support before, after and during their labours as well as being available to capture their births as a birth photographer. Wes and Kayla always knew they wanted to start their family young so 3 months after getting married they became pregnant with Isabella, funny enough Isabella's due date actually fell on their first wedding anniversary. Kayla had quite an easy pregnancy and not many symptoms, just a bit of nausea and surprisingly around 15 weeks she was able to start to feel those first baby movements. She went the midwifery route and really enjoyed her care team, she explains how they have followed her through her journey into motherhood, doula career and now as she starts the process into midwifery herself. Isabella's due date was July 6th but her due date came and went so Kayla had an induction booked for the coming Friday but around 4 in the morning on the Friday she had noticed labor starting all on its own so she called in to hospital to let her know she didn't need to come in and Wed and her walked around the farm to try and get things going. They laboured all day and night so the following morning they called into the midwife to give her an update and Kayla had started to get a bit concerned so her midwife met her at the hospital for 11 am to check in on baby. When she arrived the hospital was under contraction at the time and Kayla is a sexual assault survivor and she struggled with her birthing space being entered by construction workers that triggered her by making her feel very unsafe.

"I didn't realize it would play into my birth. A lot people don't".

Kayla had a check when she arrived to hospital that put her at 4 cm and around 1 pm she decided to get the epidural to allow her body the chance to relax and she was able to get some much needed rest and hooked her up to Pitcoin. Around 4 pm Kayla was ready to start pushing, being that she had an epidural she was limited on birthing positions and what she found worked for her was a make shift Rebozo her and her midwife same up with by rolling up a bed sheet and having that to pull on while her midwife held the other end and at 6:48 Isabella was born. Kaylas postpartum was a bit of a struggle for her, she suffered from some PPD and had a rough time with breastfeeding.

Sadly Kayla experienced a miscarriage between Isabella and Benjamin; after telling her family that day she started to notice some bleeding that picked up throughout the day so she went into emerge. She remembers how minimizing that trip was, she says since they see it all of the time the language and awful bedside manner really stood out to her.

Once Kayla became pregnant again after her loss she struggled with some PPD in the first trimester as she mourned the loss the baby just a few month prior. Once she came out of her 1st trimester and hit that "Safe Zone" her husband Wes really tried a few tricks to get Kayla out of the sadness and help get her excited for their addition. She explains how difficult pregnancy after loss was, how it lasted throughout her entire pregnancy and made it hard for her to let herself get excited.

"I remember just being in that state of postpartum depression all over again. Mourning the loss of our previous baby but now I was pregnant with this other baby and how am I supposed to be happy, I know I should be grateful, I know I should be excited but there was this part of me that where I just cant. I wouldn't let myself get excited because I was so scared of losing that baby"

Kayla decided and began planning for a homebirth; she hired a student doula and had a friend do her birth photos, invited her mom to be there and wanted to have a huge support team around her for that special day and make the environment how she wanted it to be. For a week before "Labour day" Kayla was getting regular practice contractions, so while she was at her In-Laws she started to notice these contractions coming and decided to head home so she didn't have to deal with the contractions amongst the entire family. They put Isabella to bed for 8, and around 930 Kayla was bouncing on her ball, drinking her raspberry leaf tea when Wes said he was going to call their midwife but since she had been experiencing all of these practice contractions she didn't believe she was actually in labour she didn't feel the need to call her. Of course there was a huge snow storm that night so even though Kayla was still convinced it wasn't labour the midwife still came over to check her especially with all the snow - they had made all of their calls for 9:30 and with all of the snow it took everyone, including the midwife until 11 pm to get to them. When the midwife got there and checked Kayla at 11 she was 8 cm, Kayla says she remembers bursting into tears when she heard that because with Isabella she got stuck at 4 cm, so the midwife called her back up to head on over who didn't end up making it. Kayla used her Yoga ball and Tens machine while in labour and though her plan was a water birth in her birth pool she was in such a birth groove she didn't end up getting into the tub - one Kayla felt the urge to push they moved her onto the birth stool and within 9 minutes Benjamin was born. Her placenta delivery was easy and came right on out, Benjamin stayed attached to his placenta for a little while after it was delivered.