Hello all of you birth story junkies, my name is Nicci Walla and these are my birth stories. Of course I never have enough hours in the day to write all of the details that I would like to include but I will give it my best shot.
My husband and I moved to Lincoln from Rapid City, SD in 2000 to work and finish our college education. I am currently 30 years old and teach The Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth. I have enjoyed attending births as a certified doula for almost six years now. I am also an infant childcare provider in providing attachment style care giving, slinging babies all day in my home.
I have 5 children and a wonderful supportive husband named Nathan Walla who works at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Gavin was born in 1998 and Jaaron in 1999 both boys born in Rapid City, SD and then we have twins named Korah and Kelsey born in 2001 at Saint Elizabeth. Gavin and Jaaron came into this world in less than perfect barely tolerable (under the word natural) conditions in a hospital in SD, not the best OB experience but about as natural as possible at the time and I worked hard to have the least amount of intervention as possible. I was proud to have given birth to an overdue 10lb 5oz chunker in less than 10 hours and 15 months later an 8lb 2oz boy only 25 minutes in the door of the hospital. I fought hard to avoid all drugs, keep my baby with me at all times, and leaving early from the hospital. I had great success breastfeeding both boys and enjoyed being a mother. I did not however plan to ever give birth in SD or with an OB again and we started making plans to move before we got pregnant again. I felt I was normal and my body knew what it was doing and I didn’t need to experience my entire pregnancy and birth from the risk and liability standpoints of an obstetrician.
After we moved to Lincoln, we immediately became pregnant with our third and I planned to have my dream birth underwater with a midwife for the first time. I started seeing the Nurse Midwives at Heart and Hands Woman Care and everything looked wonderful and perfect. Finally, at 24 weeks, I reluctantly consented to going in for that one routine ultrasound, I am not a fan of the unproven safety of ultrasound technology but I was getting a bit too big and we were concerned about my due date and to be perfectly honest with everyone, I was dying to know if I was having a girl after already having two boys toddling around at home I was ready to see some pink frilly stuff around the house *wink*
So, reluctantly we went to the hospital for our ultrasound appointment and within minutes I found that my ultrasound tech was calling the highest risk OB in town into our exam room who was telling me I would have a scheduled c-section if I was even able to make it to 38 weeks gestation with my twin girls! I would need monthly and then weekly ultrasounds and fluid checks and I would be monitored and possibly placed on bed rest towards the end and this was the very least amount of “protective” care I could expect… YUCK! I was shocked by the fact that this Dr. just assumed that the moment I found out I was having twins, I would abandon all of my plans to have a natural birth with my midwife and switch to his care instead. This was not what I wanted and I ran from the building with my husband close behind and I never ever went back…
I waited until almost 41 weeks to give birth to identical twins Korah and Kelsey born in March of 2001 both 7lbs! Both babies had remained head down from 30 weeks on. I continued to attend my classes at UNL and on Tuesday March 27th 2001 (my due date) I was so proud to have made it this far, that I took a dare from my family and walked around school with a short shirt hanging my belly out all over campus. I will never forget the jaw dropping stares that I received that day. It was not like me at all but I had a lot of fun that day.
Before I new it, on Friday March 30th I was 6 centimeters dilated without actually feeling any serious contractions, I went into active labor on Saturday morning and headed into the hospital around 10:30 AM. Shortly after 1PM Nancy Peterson CNM caught Korah and 11 minutes later my husband then caught Kelsey, we never let the children out of our site, they both nursed immediately following the birth and we left the hospital with our twin girls in less than 24 hours.
I had two memories of the birth of my twins that I really wanted to share one of them negative and one of them positive. The first was very negative for me, I had met with the charge nurse ahead of time to secure my birth plan be carried out as close as possible, I had several meetings to procure my stance on the IV, monitoring, freedom of movement, waiting between twins for up to an hour. The deal I managed to make was that I needed to see the surgery room before hand (they snuck me in wearing scrubs so I could familiarize myself with the basic feel, look, and smell of the room I would give birth naturally in) I would not deliver on the surgery table but would have my birthing bed wheeled in from my room for second stage only, I would have and cannula (locked vein) from second stage on only and I would be monitored once an hour while standing by the bed not lying in it. I would also have freedom to walk all over the hospital during labor and have my own clothes and pillow throughout the labor. Finally, the required backup OB would stand nearby and would not play an active part in the delivery. These were the basics that I had to compromise with and it went just so, I labored by walking all around the hospital for an hour and then I felt things were moving quickly and I was heading into transition so I let the nurse know she could insert my cannula, I stood by the bed for monitoring and let them know the moment I felt pushy so they could wheel me into the surgery room (they require all twins be delivered In the surgery room next to the NICU) I was in a very alert state as I watched them push the surgery table out of the way and move my bed into its place. I was relieved because those thin metal tables are made for moms who are drugged or unconscious. I remember the room filling with people and right as I started pushing hard the worst possible thing happened… I clearly remember a loud booming Male voice yelling “what’s going on in here? Isn’t this twins, where is her drip, why isn’t she on the surgery table, who authorized this?” This was the anesthesiologist who rudely interrupted my pushing stage, yelled at all of us, threatened my midwife’s license, ripped off his mask, through it on the floor, and stormed out of the room muttering furiously under his breath!” I was shocked by his rudeness, his indecency, and his complete disregard for the fact that not all twin moms need his services. I later tried to file a formal complaint only to discover that this man is highly respected and I was informed that he did have the right to override the midwife at any time during my labor and I guess I was lucky he left the room when he did.
The wonderful amazing positive thing that happened to me during the labor and birth of my twin girls was so simple and yet so memorable for me. I remember when I was being wheeled out of the surgery room nursing both twins at the same time and I had asked to just have a sheet completely draped over all of us… as we were being wheeled down the hall, the nurse who was so wonderful and so excited to be a part of our natural twin birth, peeked her head under the sheet and whispered to me… “That was so amazing, if I had any say in it, you could have had those babies underwater any day!” She knew how badly I had wanted a water birth and wanted to acknowledge to me that in her opinion there would have been nothing wrong with that in my case and I will remember her always for her kind and wonderful words.
From the moment my twins were born, I set out on two very different journeys in life, the first was to complete my training to teach The Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth and the second was to become a surrogate mother for another couple who were unable to have children. This was something that I just really wanted to do and with permission from my husband I started working on both things.
I have been teaching childbirth for a couple of years and finally in the year 2006 I also became a gestational surrogate mother for a couple in Australia and the following is the birth story of my surro-baby Isla Aisling Lawson.
My destiny was to become a surrogate mother. I was talking to my surrogate friends recently and we all just felt it was something we needed to do, something in our hearts. I started researching and spent months working through the details of the best route to take; I have lots of information on this subject to share outside of this birth story so if you would like more information please email me niccci@hotmail.com (3 c’s). The fact of the matter is this is a birth story so I will leave out 4 years of information about how I became a surrogate and get right to it.
Haley is 26 years old and has been with Andrew for about 7 years. They have purchased a flat in a suburb of Sydney Australia just down the street from the ocean and have settled down in their careers as therapists working in a local hospital where Haley was actually born. Even though they live near a huge city, they are really close to their neighbors and live in a private secluded small town community. They are now ready to start a family; the problem is they have known from the beginning that Haley could not carry children. She was born with a malformed uterus with ovaries in tact. She sits down one night in the fall of 2004 and starts looking through the online surrogacy ads to see what their options might be. I was the first person at the top of one of the pages and she loved everything that I had written. She emailed me right way in November of 2004.
I was looking for the perfect couple to become their gestational surrogate and had just placed another ad online, I was no longer working with an agency having a law against surrogacy in Nebraska and I had serious problems communicating through the agency about my wishes as a surrogate mother. They saw me as unmatchable when all of their infertile American couples are so aggressive with the number of embryos they want to place inside, wanting to use selective reduction to reduce down triplets or quads, not to mention the unbelievably negative fearful view of pregnancy that has grown slowly in their infertile hearts over the years. I could not work with couples who always wanted me to have the highest risk OB and the most intervention riddled pregnancy and birth as possible for “my safety” (yeah right!) While I understood where they were coming from, they could not understand where I was coming from and I was beginning to think there was no perfect match for me in the surrogacy world.
And then Haley read my ad, she knew she needed an American surrogate as surrogacy is illegal in Australia and she was so excited to find a surrogate who was willing to have a baby naturally like they are used to in her community and even open to the idea of homebirth as a much higher percentage of the babies in their Australian community are born at home than the 1% of American babies. She was happy to hear I was against epidurals and interventions that can lead to an increased risk of problems both for surrogate and the baby. She wanted to contact me by phone within a few days and we hit it off amazingly.
Haley and Andrew did visit Lincoln, NE in July of 2005. We transferred to poor quality embryos and one of them began to stick but then failed a few weeks later. Everyone was devastated. The next trouble we faced was working through the Australian ethics committee and lots of nervousness and communication and hundreds of emails trying to organize a way for me to come to Australia this time. To shorten the rest of the story a bit I finally flew to Australia in March of 2006, received two new perfect looking embryos created by Haley and Andrews genetic materials. All of our hard work became worth it by April of 2006 when we discovered one embryo had decided to stick and grow and I was pregnant with another couples baby finally!
I was due on December 6th 2006 and was so excited to meet Haley and Andrew at the airport on Dec. 2nd we hung out and entertained the children and sat back to await the arrival of their child. We had appointments with the CNM, the CPM, the pediatrician, and the lawyer to make sure everything was ready for the birth of this miracle Australian angel.
I have never had a baby early and so we were not surprised when my due date came and went. Finally on Friday the 8th we invited the midwife to spend the weekend and do anything she could think of to induce labor as Haley and Andrew were on a limited time schedule to get back to Australia or risk Andrew losing his job and or Haley having to travel by herself. I am not a fan of induction but I endured many tinctures, pressure points, massages including cervical massage, and even scraping of the membranes to try and induce labor. We tried castor oil twice and still did not have any results. On Sunday morning the 10th of December it finally seemed as though my membranes had ruptured, I was not having contractions but I was dilated to 4cm and I felt confident still in my bodies ability to make a safe delivery with the membranes artificially ruptured. By 11:30AM my waters were trickling and I was starting to have contractions and it was then that I retreated to my bed to take a nap with my husband and wait for things to get serious… which didn’t take long.
At 4:30 PM I woke up from my nap having extremely hard contractions. Everyone was there, we had a midwife, doula, Haley, Andrew, and my sister who was taking care of my four children and prepared to help them witness the birth. I tried to eat a plate of food but before I knew it was starting to show signs of transition, I changed into my Binsi birthing skirt and a black sports bra and was side lying on my bed moaning through most of my contractions. I held my daughters small blue teddy bear in my hand to remind of me of the color of the Arctic Ocean to sooth the heat the emanated from my abdomen during each contraction. I was very relaxed with everyone watching me and had no problems laboring with a crowd in the room. My husband was stuck with the hard job of applying constant back pressure, even between contractions he couldn’t push hard enough for me. He later asked me if I was faking it just to make him work harder… I couldn’t believe he would even think that LOL. I moaned and twitched around a bit during each contraction and then I finally realized my bladder was full and I got up to go to the bathroom. That is when my water broke all the way and I started to feel very pushy.
At 5:15, when my water broke I moved to the birthing stool and the midwife discovered that I had a small lip of cervix which did not surprise her at all considering all of the cervical massage and scratching of my waters… she held the lip for two contractions which I understood all too well because I had seen it done many times on other women and if I wasn’t going to be able to push I decided I better sing… I tried to sing Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See but I kept forgetting what was supposed to come next in the song, I always thought singing to not push was some sort of joke but when it came right down to it, that is what I wanted to do. Labor is funny that way *wink* after that second contraction with a lip, I all of a sudden I had to push HARD and that is exactly what I said to everyone! Haley and Andrew had scrubbed in and Haley was positioned next to the midwife ready to catch her baby. I threw my head and whole body back against my husband and screamed very loudly when the head came out and determined to have it all done in one contraction I pushed again practically lifting my bottom up off the stool and squishing myself back into my husbands lap and pushed with all my might. A beautiful baby girl flew out and into her mother’s arms; she was pink and making little mewing sounds and looking around the room in amazement. It was over.
We were very quick to hook me up to the double breast pump to induce contractions and stop the bleeding, I was drinking my orange juice and covered by a warm blanket while Andrew cut his babies cord (actually I can’t remember who cut the cord but I think it was Andrew) they then took her to the couch and told me her name would be Isla.
She was very quick to nurse on Haley as she was snuggled up under Haley’s shirt skin to skin she was latching on almost immediately (as most un-drugged babies do) and we gave her a few minutes to nurse before we took her off and cup fed her the Colostrum that I had been pumping. While hanging out on the couch with her mom, she had her first large stool of meconium and then settled in comfortably under mother’s shirt skin to skin to keep her warm. It was a very emotional moment for everyone and we were all just awed by the experience with tears in our eyes.
I was still upright on the birthing stool when I began to feel faint and warned everyone. I had been holding myself up sitting back on Nate which is a position I have never given birth in before and I think I actually had a bit of adrenalin rush. Isla’s cord had been pulled on pretty hard as she was not being placed directly on my abdomen and the breast pump did not seem to be triggering my Oxytocin to clamp down on my uterus at all. When I fainted they pulled me off the stool onto the floor lying flat and made sure I had some extra oxygen. I remember the entire things as I was only out for a second. My fainting was unfortunate because I have seen it before as a doula and new what was happening but it just takes a few minutes to recover from. Nate was worried and wanted me to open my eyes but I just didn’t want to see everyone looking down at me all concerned when I knew I was fine. In the end, I lost a bit more blood than we like to see from the low lying placenta (probably because of the IVF) and the fact that I was not nursing and using mothering hormones to clamp down on my uterus. I was placed on Chlorophyll immediately to counteract the effects of blood loss. Everything was going be fine and I felt bad for worrying everyone a tiny bit.
I remember looking down at my arms and being needle free and thinking thank god I am not in the hospital because they would have overreacted big time. I wasn’t even bothered by the mess that I had to lay down in when they pulled me on the floor I would definitely say it was the perfect homebirth. The midwife proceeded to massage my uterus for about 30 minute while she had me thinking about nursing my own twins 6 years ago to counteract the mental effects of not nursing my own baby that day and it worked great! Before we new, it I wasn’t bleeding at all and in fact had less long term bleeding than in the past with my other births so we were very satisfied with the entire recovery. My uterus was rock hard and healthy as always.
WOW, Isla Aisling Lawson was 7lbs 2oz born at 5:35 PM on 12-10-06 and amazingly beautiful although she looked nothing like my children of course. After I had a quick bath and was tucked back into my bed, Haley and Andrew brought her to me all swaddled up to meet me. I looked at her and she was amazing and even though she came out of me I still felt like I was looking at Haley’s daughter. I love her for who she is and who she will become and the joy she will bring her parents but I do not love her like a mother’s love. I am so grateful to have shared the pregnancy with her but I had no doubts or sadness whatsoever about giving her to her parents. In fact it sounds weird to me to write that because I didn’t even give her to her parents… she gave herself to her parents. This is what we had planned so carefully for and there was no question who she was meant to be with in this world. Her parents are the most committed, loving, and deserving parents I have ever met and all of my happiness and love from getting to know Isla inside of me was quadrupled when I got to see them hold her for the first time.
We spent four days together hanging out and enjoying her before Haley and Andrew left for Australia. We had a lot of legal stuff to take care of (email me if you would like those details) and then they boarded that plane and we said goodbye. They had a huge tearful welcoming party waiting for them when they got off the plane. Everyone was so excited to see them as a new family of three. I have received regular pictures and updates and Isla will be one next month. I am still very happy about everything!
I suffered no depression from the surrogacy, and I felt that the entire experience was perfect, went exactly as planned, and couldn’t have been any better. We have since started to organize our journey to do it again in 2009 but first we added another Walla family member in January of 2008.
Adrien Allen Walla was born on January 26th 2008 at 1:46 AM on a Saturday early morning. I was very distressed about my midwife being in Northern Minnesota on Saturday so Friday afternoon I asked her to check me and she said I was 4cm and 80% effaced. I realized there was only one thing I needed to do to make sure I was ready for the new baby and so we ran to Office Max to buy paper for the baby announcements. By 7:00 PM I was having contractions, by 10:30 PM we were filling the pool and calling for the midwife… and when we realized I was going to start pushing my husband jumped in the pool with all of his clothes on to catch Adrien. His head was coming out with the bag of waters still intact and of course we didn’t know he was a boy yet. Our midwife arrived about 20 minutes later and helped take care of third and fourth stage of labor. I was very grateful to have her there but also felt fine with the fact that she wasn’t in time for the actual moment of birth. My sister woke up the four older children and handed them all cameras just in time to document the entire birth. It was awesome! The other day my mother/Adrien’s Grandmother said I was the only person she knew he had a perfect birth at home where normal birth was meant to happen. I do have a sense of perfectness about this new addition to our family. He is 18 months old now and incredibly alert and skilled in many ways.
I love being a mother and I also love caring for other mother’s children, even ones inside of me. Of course this story is still to be continued…
Love always, Nicci Walla
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