My First Home Birth in Oakland

We had a home birth at our house in Oakland. It was incredible. I am so stoked to be a dad.

Last week about this time, my partner and I were in the full swing of things. We had just finished our last home birthing class when Loretta started having some early signs of labor. We went home and cleaned house for the next few hours. I wasn’t 100% sure what was going on, but I was pretty sure. I kept my head down and scrubbed the floors. When the house was in order, we went to bed. If we learned anything in our birthing class, it was that labor can take a long time, and that you should rest when possible. So we tried to sleep. But we did a pretty bad job of it.

When we deemed that the contractions were close enough together, we gave our midwife a call. She came over with a second midwife, and a student. They spent the next 24 hours with us. Ellis, graced us with his presence on July 3rd at 1:56am, after 24 hours of laboring, and 4 hours of pushing. He was born in our bedroom in our house in Oakland. Our midwives were amazing. I have so much love and gratitude in my heart. Here are some pictures that I took of him the in the first 24 hours of his life.

In the first several pictures, he is fresh to the World of the breathing. Just minutes old.