A Home Birth Story from a Supportive Partner

Mitchell’s spouse, Mick, gave birth to their baby, Margo, a couple of months ago, and Mitchell recently sat down to tell their birth story. 8-week-old Margo also graciously agreed to attend the interview as a mostly attentive (albeit sometimes squirmy) fact checker from Mitchell’s lap. As Mitchell explained, “The birth story is often told together as a couple. As a partner, I'm very rarely asked about it on my own. I’ve tried to let Mick tell the story as much as possible, but often Mick either doesn’t remember things in as much detail as I do or doesn’t want to share them. Mick observed the other day that the further they get from the actual birth, the more dysphoric it feels.” So, although Mitchell emphasized that it is very much Mick’s story as much as it is his (and Margo’s), he’s become the storyteller in their family. 

Most haven’t had much experience with birth before they go through it themselves for the first time, but Mitchell was no stranger to birth: “My mom taught home birth classes, and I was homeschooled, so birth was a part of my education. I’m also the oldest of five and I attended all four of those siblings’ births. I got to watch birth from a very young age to an age where I actually understood what was going on.” These memories stuck with him and Mitchell knew he wanted to be a father from a young age, inspired by his own father and his active role in birth: “My dad would co-teach a lot of the home birthing classes with my mom and that gave me a very strong sense of fatherly involvement in birth, rather than the societal narrative of just sitting back and having the doctors do everything.” 

Yet Mitchell was careful not to let this familiarity lead him to feel overconfident or overlook his spouse’s preferences and needs. In fact, Mitchell used it as a reason to learn more, “I tried to approach everything with a mindset of: I think I know a lot about this, but let me double-check everything. Let me read as much as I can. Let me be a part of every class. Let me be engaged.” He said, “I felt like it was really important to take a step back, and rather than rely on the knowledge I thought I had, bring the attitudes and the engagedness that I had been taught to have, and apply those instead. I may have had my on-paper preferences about what I thought birth should be, but I wasn’t the one giving birth.”

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This is Mitchell’s birth story: 

I’ll start the story with us finding out we were pregnant. But even before that, honestly, we were already looking for the structures of support we’d lean on: a great doula like Mel, others we interviewed, and the Birth Center of Chicago. We found the birth center well before we conceived and felt really positive about the idea of a midwife-led birth. For Mick, they wanted midwifery-led care because of their sensory issues and their experience as someone who’s autistic and nonbinary. We liked the idea of having a team and a designated space with all the resources ready. You wouldn’t have to buy your own tub or change your apartment at all.

It was around week 18 that we got the news we might risk out of the birth center. In the beginning, knowing it was a possibility was really stressful.  Thankfully, we had great support from Mel navigating that shift. We interviewed at NorthShore Hospital, which has a midwifery-led team, and we also met with Corinne, the midwife we eventually contracted with for a home birth.

Once we ended up having to choose between a hospital birth and a home birth, it started to become really clear that a home birth probably made the most sense for us all along. But I don’t think either of us could have known that earlier. When we wrote down all the reasons we liked the birth center and compared whether those applied more to a home birth or a hospital birth, nearly all of them aligned better with home birth. 

The only exception was transferability: if there was an emergency, it’s harder to transfer from home. There was some concern that Margo might be born needing help to breathe, since Mick had taken medications that increased the risk of infant withdrawal.  But there’s a fire department a quarter mile from our house, and we felt prepared. We knew from our research and classes that the baby continues to get oxygen from the placenta for about 15 minutes after birth, enough that if something happened and the baby wasn’t breathing, we’d have time to call 911and get help. We felt that with the right midwifery team, everything we appreciated about the birth center, we could also get at home. 

Fast forwarding to right before Margo arrived, one of the first things I remember is Mick started to have these very minor, almost unnoticeable contractions. I didn’t doubt they were real, but I also didn’t feel like I needed to drop everything and prepare to leave work. That turned out to be a good instinct because Mick had prodromal labor, so we had around a week between that first contraction and the actual birth. It was this long, weird experience, but honestly, my favorite thing about it is how quickly both of us stopped worrying. For Mick, it was bothersome at times, but we both just kept going to work and doing things until it escalated. By day four or five, we were getting check-in calls from Mel and Corinne. And we were like, “Should we be more worried than we are?” But they said, “Nope, just checking in.” 

Mick had mostly been able to sleep through the night, either sleeping through contractions or not having them. But one evening, around 11:30 p.m., they woke me up and said, “I can’t sleep through these. They’re getting more intense.” 

We had learned in our classes that it’s good to have lots of flexibility. You might have a plan, but you should also know a range of tools. Maybe you think you’ll want to labor on your hands and knees in bed, but we’ve also practiced standing up. Maybe you’ll want a back massage, but we also know the sacral hip press. Maybe you know you don’t want to use a comb to squeeze, but we’ve tried it in case. So I went into it trying to stay flexible. I didn’t ask a million yes-or-no questions, but I offered options and let Mick say yes or no. 

I was pleasantly surprised by how often I was able to guess the kind of physical touch Mick wanted. I would just start scratching their head, massaging their back, touching their thigh, and probably nine times out of ten, Mick would say, “That’s perfect, keep doing that.”  It was surprising in the best way, because honestly, I expected the opposite. Mick is very ticklish and really sensitive to certain kinds of touch, so I assumed I’d get a lot of “Not that!” But somehow, I just kept doing the right thing. I can’t take credit, and I don’t know what to say except that I think that after 9 months of pregnancy, through the process of birth and labor, you learn to work together in a way that transcends words.

I was timing contractions with the clock. We agreed not to use the app until it felt necessary. At one point, they were about six minutes apart and pretty intense, and I thought, if this keeps up for another 20 minutes, I’ll start making calls. Then Mick got in the shower, and the contractions got shorter, down to 35 or 45 seconds, but they were more intense and coming every two to three minutes. The textbook says the contractions will start off light, short and spaced farther apart, and then throughout labor they’ll come closer together, get more intense, and last longer. So I wasn’t sure what to do because these contractions were less than 4 minutes apart, but they were shorter than a minute in length. But eventually it was clear to me that even though we weren’t following the script, things were definitely intensifying. So I called Mel. They came over and stayed for about an hour before calling Corinne, the midwife. Corinne arrived about an hour and a half later. It was also pretty cool because Mick ended up having a fully queer birth team. 

There was a moment where Mick was in the shower saying, “I’m here. I’m safe. I can do this,” which was something they’d used during really hard mental health struggles years ago. I even wrote it down in my notes app because this was the mantra that had kept Mick alive for many years and was now bringing new life into the world, and that was really sentimental to me. 

Mick had been really intentional about staying clothed as long as possible because of their gender dysphoria. But after stripping down to get into the shower, during a break between contractions, Mick said, “I’m feeling like I need to push.” I asked, “Can you describe what you’re feeling?” And they just said, “I feel like I need to push.” And I said, “Fair enough.” And as we got out of the shower, Mick said, “I don’t even want to put my underwear back on.” We all knew that for Mick, choosing not to get dressed again was big. The midwife offered a cervical exam, and Mick agreed. That’s when Corinne said, “You’re going to have a baby this morning.” Mick was almost fully dilated. We started filling the tub, and they got in around 9:30 or 9:45 in the morning and were pushing very diligently for about three hours. 

I felt well prepared for all of it. For saying, “Here’s your water. You can say no to it, but it’s here if you want it.” I really expected Mick to want to eat more throughout the process. Especially when you’re entering hour four of pushing, and you’ve been told that labor is like a marathon, but most marathons last less than four hours. And now you’re in your second marathon. There were moments of wondering, Should I be pushing harder for Mick to eat something? " Eventually, though, the rest of the team was also like, “You really should eat something,” and that’s when we started being a little more pushy, saying, “Could you try a little bit…?” 

I was especially grateful for our midwife, Corinne. They have this very gentle, sweet demeanor, and I had wondered what that would be like in a birth setting. But it turned out they have two modes of operating. They weren’t ever mean or anything, but they were very down to business. “Hey, we want to check the heartbeat,” or “Hey, we’d like to take your pulse, check your oxygen,” and that kind of directness was really helpful. It made everything simpler for both me and Mick. Even though it was taking a while, they helped me know that Mick was okay and the baby was okay. 

Eventually, Corinne explained to Mick that the baby just needed to get under their pelvic bone, but once that happened, the baby would probably come easily. So they suggested trying new positions. But Mick was having a really hard time with back pain and didn’t want to get on hands and knees or move around much. That was maybe the only moment I felt real stress. I could see how exhausted and in pain Mick was, and they had no energy left to try something new. But I also knew that trying something else was what had to happen to get the baby to come. 

So I had to walk a fine line between comfort and encouragement. How much do I push? How much do I soothe? But I felt really supported by the whole team as I tried to navigate that with Mick. They made it easier to offer things and ask questions: “What about this? Want to try that?” The birth team created this kind of bubble around us. They took care of the medical and logistical stuff so that Mick and I could just focus on getting the baby out. There were moments where it felt like it was just the two of us in the room, even while the others were there. Even when they were involved, it never felt like they were in the way. They gave us a kind of peace that was needed not just to give birth, but to have an unmedicated birth at home. 

Mel had this great idea to tie a scarf into knots at both ends and use it for a kind of tug-of-war with Mick. Mick was lying on their back and their feet, and Mel stood outside the tub holding one end of the scarf while Mick pulled on the other. The rest of the team said, “Let’s just try this position once, but then you can go back to something else.” Once we did it, everyone was like, “Okay, great. We know that is tiring. You don’t have to do that again.” But I remember saying to Mick, “This is the position that’s going to get the baby out.” I just had a feeling. I don’t know if I was literally seeing progress, but something felt different. Maybe it sounds a little woo-woo, but I had my arms around Mick, so I was very close to them. Even if I was speaking it into existence,  I thought if nothing else, I can give Mick some confidence. Sure enough, four or five pushes later, the baby’s head crowned during a contraction. Then the head came out, and it took one more push to get the shoulders, because this baby, despite being a week and a half early, was already eight pounds, two ounces, with shoulders the same size as the head.

When the baby was finally born, we both felt a huge sense of relief. I had originally planned to catch Margo, so when the moment came, everyone was like, “Mitchell, come over here and catch the baby!” But I felt this strong sense that things were going to go better if I stayed with Mick, so I let someone else catch the baby. 

Margo was placed on Mick’s midsection and thigh, and we just held them. I remember Mick kept saying “Hi, baby. Hi” over and over. And Margo was just calmly blinking and looking around. We were all like, “Are you going to cry? We want to know if you can breathe ok?” No one else seemed worried, but the two of us were like, “We want you to breathe.” And after that first cry, I started crying really hard. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been holding emotions in or that I had ever been afraid to cry. But in that moment, everything I’d felt through the entire process just came out. I could finally let go of that constant, low-level worry, and I could just celebrate and love the baby. (To Margo) “You cried first, then Dadda cried, and then everybody else.”

It was very, very sweet. Really special. Then we moved to the bed. Mick got an hour of holding the baby. I cut the umbilical cord and then held Margo for the next hour or so. We fed them together. And then everyone left, and it was just us and our baby. Mel had even done our dishes for us, which was really exciting for me. 

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When did you feel like a parent for the first time? What are some moments you’ve had with Margo where you’ve felt the most like a father?

• I think I first felt that excitement of parenthood when we got the positive pregnancy test. And every step after that was just deeply exciting. I even have a screenshot from the Zoom call we did with Mel when we were just six weeks pregnant. It felt a little silly that early, and we knew it was silly, but we figured if we could get on their calendar early, let’s do it. 

• But more recently, on Father’s Day, Margo “got” me a game and a card, and just seeing the white envelope that said “Dadda” on it brought this rush of memories of doing the same for my own dad. I’ve wanted to be a dad for most of my life, and I think that says a lot about how good my dad was to me. So, stepping into this role now feels like stepping into who I’ve always wanted to be. 

• Maybe three weeks in, I saw myself in the mirror from a weird angle, and I saw Margo’s face in mine. Everyone always tells you that you’ll look at your kid and see your features or your partner’s features, and that’s supposed to be profound. But it was when I saw Margo’s face in mine that was really special. 

• There are all the smaller moments that make you feel like a parent too. The first time you get peed on. The first time the baby just will not sleep, and you’re like, “Okay, I guess we’re up from 2 to 6 a.m. now.” This morning, Mick and I both woke up sick, and we haven’t been able to kiss the baby, which has been heartbreaking. I keep thinking, “Please don’t notice. We’re not doing this on purpose.” And my first thought after realizing I was sick last night wasn’t even about myself, it was, “I hope I don’t get the baby sick.” That’s just where your mind goes now.

• The first real smiles have started in the last couple of weeks too, ones that aren’t just reflex, but actually in response to seeing our faces, hearing our voices. And that’s been incredible. We all sleep on these floor beds, and sometimes the baby wakes up and just stares at me while I wave at her. Margo might just be zoning out, but I’m like, “Hey! We’re hanging out!”

• We’ve also started accumulating nicknames for Margo. Go-Go was one we’d always kind of thought might be a nickname. But Margo was also born to a song called Holding the Contradictions, so I sometimes call Margo “The Contradiction,” because I’m holding them. And recently I was reading about the Smurfs with a friend who didn’t know much about them, and the Wikipedia page said, “Baby Smurf is usually just referred to as The Baby, and the character’s gender is rarely discussed.” So I was like, “That’s it. You’re Baby Smurf now.”