When I was 7, my mother passed away while giving birth to my sister. I came from a large family, and my mother always had homebirths. I had three older brothers, two older sisters, two younger sisters and one younger brother before my mother gave birth to my last sister. I just want to let you know how it all happened, so you can get how different my homebirth was from my mother's.

When I was 1, my mother got pregnant yet again, this being her seventh including me. Little did she know she was having twins. She wanted to try a twin homebirth, as she had had all homebirths so far. At only 28 weeks, my mother went into labor with my two identical twin sisters. She was in horrible pain, but she wouldn't let anybody in the bedroom to help her, not even my father. She left the door open for everyone to watch, but she wouldn't let us in.

I can kind of remember it all. She was lying on the end of the bed, screaming in pain. And the next thing I knew she was standing up squatting, breathing heavy and grunting. I couldn't figure it out, but I saw feet coming from down there on her. I thought something was wrong with her. My father walked in against her wishes and carried her to the bed with my mother still screaming and grunting in pain. As my father laid her down, she popped and her waters broke, but me being so young, I thought SHE had broken. It was very scary for me.

My father yelled at her to be quiet and concentrate on pushing. She tried, but I guess the pain was too much, because my father had to help pull the baby's feet. The head got stuck, and my mother couldn't take the pain. She slapped my father and stood up with the baby's feet dangling and starting smashing things, like the lamp or the vase. As another contraction came on, she rocked back on forth on her hands and knees and the baby's head finally emerged. Seven hours after her first contraction, the first baby was born. We don't know the birth weight of little Karen Rose, but she was having trouble breathing. My father wrapped her up, and she was soon doing fine. My mother was doing horrible coping with the pain and asked my father to hit her in the head with a frying pan to knock her out.

She pushed for four more hours and the baby's head finally emerged. Four and a half hours after the first baby was born, Suzanne Elizabeth was born not breathing. After a few minutes, she let out her first cry. My mother's births went like this up until my youngest sister's birth. With my sister's head halfway out, my mother fainted. My father did everything possible in his power to get her to regain consciousness. A few minutes later, my mother started bleeding uncontrollably. She awoke for a few more minutes but couldn't get the strength to push any longer.

At this point, I was 7 years old, and from the other births my mother had since I was born, I knew what was happening. I knew this wasn't supposed to happen. I went over to my mother, and me and my other siblings took turns saying goodbye and kissing her. With only three-fourths of the baby's head born, my mother passed on. It was very devastating, but my sister was born with help from my father 28 hours after my mother felt her first contraction. Her name is Chelsea Celine.

Now my story:
I was 13 when I met a wonderful guy named Josh. We got very close, but never went further than kissing. At the age of 16, I lost my virginity to Josh. I knew then that he was the love of my life. We had both lost our virginity to each other and felt a special love for each other. At 19, I wanted to get pregnant. Josh wanted to wait, but I felt it was the right time.

We tried for four months and nothing happened. We took a break for three weeks and tried again for five more months. So almost eight months after I announced I wanted Josh to get me pregnant, we were still unable to become pregnant. We went to my doctor who then referred us to a fertility specialist. We had explained we only wanted one child for the time being, because of Josh's and my difference of opinion on whether or not we should even be getting pregnant this early in life.

Two months later, we were pregnant! I was so excited! Josh tried to act excited, but since he was a year younger than me (18), he thought he wasn't ready yet. But as we kept going to doctor's appointments, he got more and more excited. We found out we were having identical twin boys at the 18-week mark.

At 311/2 weeks, I got terribly sick and starting bleeding. I went to the hospital and was told it was nothing. That night I went into labor. We had already decided on a homebirth, even though I was terrified from the past experience with my sister being born. We had chosen to have it unassisted. With 37 hours of labor and seven hours of pushing, my first beautiful boy, Ryan Alexander, was born weighing 3 pounds, 11 ounces. Four hours later, with a little tugging from Daddy, and major pain and pushing from Mommy, I delivered our second beautiful baby, who turned out to be a GIRL! We named her Rylie Paulina. She weighed 2 pounds, 7 ounces. They were BEAUTIFUL! I was up and around in less than 45 minutes.

I forgot to mention the placenta nightmare! We tried for three hours after the babies were born to deliver the placentas, but they wouldn't come. Dear Josh thought that since the books had said sex can bring on labor that sex might get the placentas coming. I didn't think so, but I was tired of pushing. So with our two beautiful children in their little cribs next to us, we had sex. It didn't work. But Josh must have liked it (I don't blame him. I mean an 18-year-old going for almost eight months without sex. He must have been waiting!), because he suggested we try again. So we tried having sex again and for 30 minutes we continued. It finally worked and four and a half hours after my babies were born, the placentas were delivered!