Vegan Birth Stories

Please read our collection of birth stories. If you'd like to submit your own, please submit your story here. Vegan or vegetarian birth stories are welcome.

Hannah's Birth Story

I will never forget the birth of our third daughter . It sticks in my mind like a Scooby-Doo movie that I have seen for the millionth time. This birth I had in my mind would go as smoothly as my second as far as I was concerned. With my second daughter I had a midwife( by accident really, she was on call)she was such an angel and had made my second birth a momentous one. From that moment my husband and I had vowed that we would have that midwife when we planned our third child.

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So when it was time and I had become pregnant with my third daughter I was ready to call the midwife, only to sadly find out she had died in a car accident the year before. She had been a pioneer in our area being the first to bring midwifery to our city. She had left a lasting impression and treated my labor and birth as both a natural and religious experience that neither my husband and I never forgot. So we decided to go with the other midwives that were in the practice. They were all wonderful.

I was due to have baby Hannah on the first of June and thought I would be going three days before my due date( besides that was what happened with my first two why not the third.) We decided we wanted to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. I never missed any appointments no matter how much morning sickness I had. Just to hear her heartbeat made me feel so much better. The only thing I was hungry for was chips and salsa and maybe had two days out of my whole pregnancy with heart burn. I couldn't ask for anything more .

As we were preparing for Hannah's grand entrance I had gone and bought books about having another sibling to read to my two young ones. Having the talk that even though we were going to have another baby mommy will always love you. As my due date came and went both my husband and my midwives were surprised. I kept holding on to the hope that any moment I was going to go into labor. I had done lots of walking around , lots of love making and nothing. In the mean time I had finally dilated to 4 centimeters and had not gone into labor and was 2 weeks past my due date. I was big and miserable . I could hardly walk anymore, I slept and slept all of the time. My husband finally took it to himself and called my midwife. She scheduled to induce two days later , thinking to herself that I would go into labor that day.

Well two days later my husband and I walked down the corridor to have our baby. While inching myself down the hall I knew that after walking through those doors that I was entering the hall of pain. We saw the nurse and went into the room and I put on the gown that I have done two other times before. I had been induced and my labor went very well. All the meantime too I had a doula and she was great. I had only been in labor for 5 hours ( which seemed like forever) and finally it was time to push. As I pushed I literally felt my daughter fall down out of my pelvis. They brought the mirror and I kept pushing only to find out she was stuck. She was almost there. My midwife was telling me to push her out we needed to get her out now. The cord had wrapped around her neck her heart rate dropped. I couldn't get her out no matter how hard I pushed. Her shoulders were so broad that she was stuck. My midwife looking at the scissors they use to give you an episiotomy was trying to talk herself in and out of using them. Finally my daughter's heartbeat was gone and she clipped me and pulled her out. Even after the shoulders had come out she still had to pull her out. She laid my daughter on my chest and she was not crying or breathing. The NICU was called in and they resuscitated her . We cried, then we heard her cry. It was the best sound in the world.

Next we were not ready to hear how BIG she was. The midwives and I , even the labor nurse predicted before I gave birth that we thought she would be 8 , 8 1/2 lbs. Baby Hannah was 9 lbs. 13 oz ! and 21 inches long.

We began breastfeeding a few hours later and she was just too tired( even though I didn't have an epidural). The next day she was quite a pro and now Hannah is a very healthy breastfed 6 month old vegan baby. We still could not ask for anything more .

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