Iskra Lawrence and her boyfriend Philip Payne have given a detailed description of her at-home water birth as they both recalled how their first child needed to be resuscitated by their midwife.
For her latest YouTube video, the 29-year-old model sat down with her partner and newborn to share their different reactions to the moments leading up to their child’s traumatic birth two months ago.
‘I think I have such a newfound respect for you, and just for women in general,’ Philip, 32, told Iskra. ‘The pain that you were going through and then to do it unmedicated, I can’t.’
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Memories: Iskra Lawrence and her boyfriend Philip Payne have opened up about the traumatic birth of their first child two months ago
Looking back: Iskra, 29, had an at-home water birth in April. The couple has yet to reveal the baby’s name or gender
He described the birth as being ‘superhuman’ and ‘very primal.’
Iskra, who has yet to reveal her baby’s name or gender, admitted that she didn’t realize the contractions would be so painful, explaining that she suffered from them for 12 hours straight — from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. the next day.
‘You are just in searing pain for about two minutes and then you might have, like, a couple seconds and it goes again,’ she said. ‘My midwife was was like, “Try and sleep through it.” I was like, “What?”‘
She noted that Philip was ‘being so supportive,’ but she was in so much pain, she could barely speak. Not only could she not eat or sleep, but she also projectile vomited, suffered from diarrhea, and had the chills in the hours leading up to the birth.
Iskra said that, for whatever reason, the toilet became her ‘sanctuary’ and she was rocking back and forth on it when her water finally broke.
Painful: The model said she had painful contractions for 12 hours, recalling how she was throwing up and suffering from diarrhea before going into labor
Ready to go: Iskra sat on an exercise ball while waiting for the birthing pool to be filled
She ran from the bathroom to the kitchen to jump in the blow-up water pool for the birth, but when her midwife arrived a half-hour later, she felt the temperature of the water and told her it wasn’t warm enough. She would have to give birth on the bed.
‘I was like, no, no, no. I planned a water birth. That’s the whole point,’ she recalled.
The couple’s parents were there, so they started boiling pots of water to fill the tub until it got to the right temperature.
Iskra said she got back in the tub around 11 a.m., though she really doesn’t remember. She noted she was lucky she had a room filled with loved ones to capture the moment.
‘No way I was gonna be like, “Quick! Someone take a photo,”‘ she said. ‘It wasn’t happening.’
The Aerie star said that after she got back in the pool, she was feeling ‘good’ because she was basically in the ‘home stretch.’ However, despite her pushing, nothing was happening.
Honest: Philip, 32, called the birth ‘super human’ and ‘very primal,’ noting he has so much respect for Iskra and women in general after seeing how much pain she was in
Problems: Iskra’s midwife Ellie had to pull her cervix down to help get her baby’s head out
When Ellie manually examined her, she determined that she had a lip on her cervix that the baby couldn’t push past. She was given two options: wait it out or let the midwife manually pull her cervix down.
Iskra picked the latter simply because it was the quickest option, explaining she was in so much pain she doesn’t even remember her midwife being in the pool with her.
She did, however, recall the memory of feeling her child’s head pushing out of her body.
‘You literally feel down there, and I felt this head of hair — this head right here,’ she said, pointing at her sleeping baby. ‘That was the weirdest feeling.’
At that point, she was screaming so much that her neighbor’s kids were asking their father what the noise was while they were being homeschooled.
Scary: The couple’s baby wasn’t breathing and was turning blue when their midwife Ellie resuscitated him
Surprise: Iskra said the moment her midwife pulled out her placenta was ‘the best feeling in the world,’ which no one told her
After the head emerged, the birth just stopped. Iskra recalled how everyone told her that once the head was out, the baby would shoot out, but she could feel her child’s neck stuck between her cervix.
She was quickly lifted out of the pool to make sure the baby didn’t drown.
‘I just got down in the deepest squat I’ve ever done,’ she said of the moment after she got out of the water. ‘Then [my midwife] just yanked him out.’
Philip explained that the baby wasn’t breathing ‘for, like, two or three seconds.’
He gave a shout out to their midwife, who kept them calm as she blew into their child’s mouth to get him breathing.
Graphic: Iskra shared photos of her placenta, noting that she didn’t eat it
New life: The model buried her placenta in her yard and has two trees growing out of it
‘When you look back, and you just see a lifeless blue body. That was really scary,’ she said, recalling the relief they felt when their baby started to cry.
‘When your baby does that little cry, after being resuscitated… It all happened so quick, it wasn’t traumatizing in a way,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t even take in what was happening because [our midwife] just dealt with it. We were so relieved.
‘We went straight to the bed, but bear in mind, the placenta hasn’t come out yet. ‘So I’m, like, holding the baby, got a towel between my legs, because obviously there’s blood everywhere, like a murder scene.’
Iskra said the moment her midwife pulled out her placenta was ‘the best feeling in the world,’ which no one told her. However, that feeling was quickly replaced with pain when Ellie and her assistant had to push down on her stomach five times to remove the access blood.
Recovery: ‘There’s something in nature that it protects you from remembering the vividness of the pain because you would never do it again if you kept reliving the pain,’ she said
Lucky: Iskra also shared that she healed quickly because she ‘didn’t tear’
The new mom said they were so enamored with the baby, though, that anything could have happened and they wouldn’t have cared.
While Iskra didn’t eat her placenta, which has become a more common practice, she had it planted in her yard.
‘We’ve got two trees growing from the placenta,’ she explained.
Iskra also detailed her postpartum recovering, saying she started gently working out again a little over two weeks after she gave birth, and she stopped bleeding completely after three weeks.
She said she was lucky she ‘didn’t tear,’ noting that she actually trained and massaged the perineum during pregnancy to prevent vaginal tearing.
‘There’s something in nature that it protects you from remembering the vividness of the pain because you would never do it again if you kept reliving the pain. There was really nothing like it,’ she said. ‘It was quite the adventure.’