Bode and Morgan Miller share intimate details and videos of their twin boys' home birth
Morgan and Bode Miller welcomed identical twin boys last November and are now ready to share the boys' story with the world.
In a recorded video, Bode Miller explains what transpired on the day the twins arrived, as his wife adds in commentary of her own. She included a request in her story for viewers to "be gentle" with the subject material, as it is so personal to them.
"This is a very intimate and sacred space that I am opening up to you all ... birth is such a personal decision and this is how I chose to birth my babies," she said
The former Olympic skier started out his recap by explaining the due date didn't fall when he was hoping -- on his birthday in October.
"I think, as happened with Nash, you were stubborn enough that you just made it not happen on the day that I predicted," he said to his wife, mentioning their 5-year-old son, to her laughter. Morgan Miller was 36 weeks at that point, and the twins went "back into hibernation mode and grew, which in the end I think was absolutely the right thing," he said.
A month later, on Nov. 8, it was time. He said that he was not sure what "actually precipitated the taking of the baby rocket fuel," but they got to the point where it was "go time." Morgan Miller added that it was her longest pregnancy. "I went 39 weeks and four days with twins, which is unheard of, and all my other babies were early," she recalled.
On the day they decided to induce, Bode Miller said their kids all went to school giving them "a window" for the birth. "I didn’t know what to expect, honestly with twins ... so I wanted to be as ready," he recalled. "My mom was here, who’s a midwife. We were fairly confident that we were somewhat prepared and the contractions started pretty quickly right about then, just really small."
When the contractions "started more legitimately," he said he was more in "baby mode" and started to fill up the tub, unpacked their birthing kit and called the midwives and a birthing photographer over for the twins' arrival.
Morgan Miller then experienced some last-minute hesitations about her choice to have a home birth. Bode Miller said that she told him, "I don’t want to do this today. I’m going to the hospital, I want to get an epidural," and he replied, "that window has passed."
"You went over to the other side of the bed and said come push my hips," he told his wife in the video. "And within like three contractions I could really feel them going apart when I was pushing them together."
"Now, I’m on the other side of the bed and I looked at the tub on the other side of the room, decided it was too far for me to get there so I fell to my knees on the side of the bed," she added.
He said his wife had three "really hard contractions" in that area of the room and although she couldn't make it to the tub, he didn’t feel they were "completely ill prepared," as there was a towel nearby on the carpet.
He recalled that at that point Morgan Miller delivered their first twin. "He was fully in the sack of water until … when his feet were all the way out the water broke," he said. "The water had kind of been broken before but it wasn’t all the way broken ... but there was a full sack of water with his head at the bottom of it and he was more or less in this water balloon looking right at me out of the water, which was really crazy."
He said after breaking the bag of forewaters, his son took his first breaths and "looked healthy and happy."
The couple expected a break between the birth of the twins, but he said the next contraction came soon and the baby came quickly after one push.
The midwifes arrived after the birth of the twins. "They were like, 'Oh my god, holy s---, what are you doing?" he explained. "I was like, 'I guess having babies? I don’t know.'"
After the births, the group was then able to get Morgan Miller back into bed and the babies cleaned up. "We all were just more or less celebrating," Bode Miller reflected.
He said the entire experience was "incredible" and he loved that his mother was able to be there to help his wife.
"It was one of her professions, one of her life’s great passions," he said on his mother’s work as a midwife. "She hadn’t done it in 25 years, so for her to truly deliver identical twins, her own grandchildren, with me ... and then everything go super smooth ... to be able to share that experience was incredible."
The couple share several children together: 5-year-old Nash, 13-month-old Easton, their newborn twins, Asher and Aksel, Bode Miller's two children from previous relationships, Samuel, 7, and Neesyn Dace, 12, and their daughter Emeline, who died in 2018.
Morgan Miller explained in her Instagram story the reason she wanted to be so transparent with her home birth story.
"I’m sharing because I want you to see we women are badass mothers and our bodies are beautiful," she wrote. "It’s a scary emotional ride but damn, we are capable of so much more than we even know."
More video footage and Bode Miller's version of the twins' birth is available here.
