The Birth of Tahliya Thérèse
After our normal evening routine, I snuggled into bed to do my labor relaxation which focused on the word “flourish.”
Not long after, around 10:30, I began to feel a few contractions. Nothing too alarming, but I did want to put a few more things in our birth bag should we meet our little girl that night.
I was very grateful that I had listened to the birth meditation on flourish. As each contraction came, I relaxed into it focusing on my body flourishing as it welcomed our daughter. My husband began to track my contractions, which were irregular and intense. So far, they didn’t quite fit into the “call the midwife” range so we continued to labor at home.
Soon, my legs began to shake uncontrollably (which, for my prior two births, was a sign of transition - the stage immediately before a woman gives birth). I was able to relax and overcome the shaking sensation. I made many trips to the bathroom, all with contractions growing in intensity and becoming closer together. Around midnight, I had a strong contraction and my water broke. Back to the bathroom I went. I felt it was time to call the midwife and leave to go to the birth center. My husband thought it was too early, but he called. We would meet her there in about an hour.
Moments later, I looked at my husband and said, “Why are we doing this?” (Afterwards, he told me that question confused him because saying something like that in labor indicates transition. We, however, were expecting another 2-3 hours of labor.)
I leaned over the bathtub and yelled, “I have to push!”. My husband said, “Don’t push, not yet.” I yelled back saying, “I can’t not push!” He called the midwife back and asked her to come to our house. While on the phone with her, I had to push. She was coming. I screamed and her head was out. I was holding her head in my hands. I asked my husband if he was going to catch her (because I was leaning over and I couldn’t see him behind me). He told the midwife, who was on speaker phone, that he could see her head. She calmly told him, “You will have to catch the baby." The next push and she is coming out.” With the second push I screamed and she was out at 12:22 AM.
I’ll never forget turning around and seeing my husband holding our little girl wrapped in towels. Suddenly it was still and silent, a moment felt like eternity. We were in some bit of shock too having done this all by ourselves; it was hard and glorious. She let out some small cries, my husband handed her to me, and it was love at first sight.
He helped me back to bed where we cuddled, began nursing and waited for the midwife. We enjoyed the intimacy of it being just us three for a while. When the midwife arrived, she checked out me and baby, and all was well. She had forgotten a measuring tape for the height, chest and head circumference. I didn’t think we had one, then I looked across the room at my mother’s sewing box and told my husband to look in there. He pulled out the tape that she had used to measure countless articles of clothing of her husband, children, grandchildren, and friends, and was now being used to help measure her newest grandchild’s body. It was a sweet reminder that she was there with me, looking out for the little things that we needed.
The rest of that night I couldn’t sleep. Our daughter lay on me and I held her in disbelief that my beautiful, strong, capable body just birthed our beautiful daughter in the comfort and sanctity of our home with just her father and I. I am very biased; never again will I have any birth besides a home birth unless medically necessary.
The next morning, we introduced our sweet girl to her brothers. They held and kissed her. Our oldest son told us that her name is Tahliya Thérèse. We knew we wanted Thérèse as her middle name but we hadn’t decided on her first name.
We were curious. We never heard this name before and our son does have a prophetic gift. We researched and discovered that in Hebrew it means “dew of God” and “lamb.” In Greek it means “to flourish” which is the word I focused on as I was laboring.
We tried it for a few days and it fit perfectly. It was truly a birth that was better than I could have imagined. God’s gift of our daughter arriving with the morning dew, bidding us to flourish even more as a family, was truly a sacred and unrepeatable experience.
