Positive home birth story
One of my recent clients has kindly given me permission to share her incredible birth story - a perfect physiological second time homebirth after a covid restricted hospital first birth. I am so grateful to you, both for involving me in your journey, and for permission to share - I hope it inspires and empowers. Names have been changed for anonymity.
“My 'due date' passed and I was starting to get a little anxious that it would never happen! I went for long walks each day and tried to focus on relaxing as much as possible in the evenings. I was getting a few braxton hicks in the days leading up to birth and had a few 'false starts', where I thought things could be happening but then went to bed and everything died down.
On Monday evening, we watched a film while I sat on the birth ball and then went to bed as normal. At 1am I woke up to what I thought could be my first surge, but as I had had some false starts, I thought I would just try and go back to sleep. I managed to breathe through until about 2.30am when the surges became more powerful and I was getting a couple every 10 minutes, so I woke up Richard to help.
He nipped downstairs and set up the living room - candles, a nest of pillows, lavender, relaxing music - and we spent an hour or so in there just calmly breathing through each surge.
I used the Tens machine at this point which worked well and Richard went to set up the birth pool. The surges intensified, so I called triage to let them know and we arranged childcare for our daughter who had woken up and asked what on earth we were doing up but helpfully went back to bed! At this point I was swaying to country music (!) through each surge holding on to a chair in the kitchen. Our daughter was picked up by my parents in law at about 5am.
Unfortunately, our phones were on 'do not disturb', so we missed a phone call from the midwife, but managed to get through at about 5.30am. She could hear on the phone that the surges were intense so said she would be here as soon as she could. She arrived at 6am and I was relieved to see her, my surges were feeling 'pushy!'. I was kneeling on the floor beside the birth pool breathing through.
She checked the baby's heart rate and asked if I wanted to be examined. I replied that I felt pushy and just wanted to get into the pool which she was fine with.
My Tens machine came off and I got into the pool. As soon as I got in, my body started involuntarily pushing through each surge. Down breathing went out of the window and I just focused on breathing slow and controlled and letting my body do what it needed to do, as it seemed to be doing it without conscious effort from me. A second midwife arrived at this point. I had a feel down there and let the midwife know that I could feel the baby's head and could also feel that the waters were still intact. She offered to break them but I declined, as I felt that that would make things get more intense too quickly. They broke on their own about 5 minutes later! She later said this was probably a good thing as my perineum was cushioned for as long as possible and the reason I didn't have a significant tear. I asked for some gas and air at this point to take the edge off.
At around 6.50am my body completely took over. It was almost as if I'd fainted and was watching myself from afar in slow motion. My body completely changed position (without any input from me) from a squat to almost standing holding the edge of the pool and made a noise which I can only describe as 'primal!' for a good 30 seconds. The head was born and I came back from the bizarre but amazing euphoric out of body experience, reached down and felt the shoulders wiggle out one by one, then pulled my baby up on to my chest. We realised that we had a boy and I held him in complete disbelief as to what had just happened. He was born at 6.57am. The midwife said 'Now that is how you give birth!'
I was offered a managed third stage which I declined. 10 minutes later I had another surge and felt the placenta which I caught in my hand still in the pool. Richard cut the cord after it had stopped pulsating and I handed the midwife the placenta who scrambled to find something to put it in!
I stepped out of the pool and we went to the living room, nestled on the sofa, all three a bit bewildered by what had just happened. He had his first feed, we had tea and crumpets and the midwives stayed and wrote up their notes in the kitchen. An hour or so later they came to do our checks. I had a very small 1cm 2nd degree tear which was repaired on my sofa with local anaesthetic and gas and air, this was fine.
The midwives packed up their things and left us to it at about 10am. We went upstairs to bed to catch up on some sleep, although it felt like we hadn't long since been there!
Recovery and feeding are going really well and we're still riding on a high of what an incredible experience that was.”
Get in touch if you’d like to discuss how I can support your birth (or postnatal) journey - doulabeagarwood@gmail.com
Doula Bea xxx
