Birth story - Alex and baby Lauren

I've been meaning to write this for ages and this is much longer than planned (sorry)... I had a very positive birth, it was everything I wanted (apart from a very dismissive midwife on an unplanned trip to the hospital) and I am so grateful to the positive birthing company for helping me achieve it.

At my 16 week appointment with my midwife, she mentioned a home birth and I really liked the idea of it but I knew I'd have a job convincing my partner so I softly approached the subject with him. We had a quick look in to it and was put off by the FTM stats of 40% end up in hospital so we decided against it.

Then I discover the PBC and the online pack, I started it, taking my time from about 28 weeks. I knew from the start that I really didn't want a c section unless absolutely necessary and wanted as little intervention as possible. The more I went through the course, the more I decided I wanted to revisit the home birth idea, it just seemed to fit everything I wanted. And the whole science of giving birth described in the pack made me more certain this was the right thing. So I discussed it with my partner again, this time he could see I had really thought it through. I explained the benefits to him, he's not someone who can sit in a room and not get up and walk about, he likes to be able to help and I knew being confined to a room or a ward would drive him nuts (which would then drive me nuts too). We also live just 5 mins away from the hospital so we could get there fast if any issues. The hospital only have 2 birth pools and i was worried that they might already be in use by the time I got there. We arranged an initial chat with the home birth team and within minutes he was sold on the idea so we transferred over to the home birth team and met our midwife, Lauren.

From the start, she knew I was really against being induced and wanted to do this as naturally as possible, and fully supported us on this.

We got to 40 weeks and nothing, so I agreed to try a sweep on 40 +1 as I'd started to suffer with SPD. But they couldn't do the sweep as my cervix was too far back and we booked in again for 41 +1, although my midwife seemed confident she would see us before then.

After the failed attempt of a sweep, I'd been getting the odd niggle and a bit of discharge but convinced myself it could still be days. I only told my partner and my mum as I was already getting fed up with the 'any news' texts, never will I ask anyone that ever again knowing how annoying it is! On 40 +3, I went out for a family dinner, everything felt totally normal that evening. Once home, my partner went to sleep, and I was wide awake, I felt a huge gush of water at 11pm and straight away rung the labour ward who asked me to come in just to check it was my waters. A little frustrated i had to go to the hospital but off we went.

When I arrived, i saw a midwife who instantly just made me feel uncomfortable. She told me the baby was back to back even though I knew she wasn't, she also insisted the contractions which had started on the long walk from the car park to the ward were just tightenings (definitely were contractions), she also told me there was no way i would have my home birth as I was a first time mum and that she would see me back on the ward within 24 hours. Determined to prove her wrong, we went home and started timing the contractions with my partner making sure I focused on my up breathing, especially when I was losing focus with the pain.

As they started getting intense, we started timing them, they were lasting longer and longer but never getting under 3 minutes apart. I kept feeling like I needed to go to the toilet, so my partner and my mum kept helping me up and down the stairs, when I'd get to the toilet I couldn't go but it felt like I needed to push. Eventually we called the labour ward again as although my contractions were still more than 3 mins apart, they were lasting for at least 90 secs. My midwife called and I explained I needed to push, she turned up pretty quickly and when examined, I was fully dialated (Think the walking around the house and constantly walking up and down the stairs helped speed things up). My partner started getting the birth pool ready, my midwife called the second midwife and asked her to be as quick as possible and then said to me if I needed to push to go ahead.

The 2nd midwife turned up around 7am just as the pool was ready. The warmth of the pool felt amazing and was exactly what I needed. I really started to push at this point but i remember feeling exhausted after a while but i had such amazing support which helped me get through it and Lauren arrived at 7.39am.

My labour lasted less than 9 hours from the moment my waters broke (proved the hospital midwife wrong completely) and it was definitely the most amazing experience of my life. And not just for me but my partner too, he is already saying when we have another child, that will be a home birth too. I am so grateful to the PBC for becoming so informed on my options and having the perfect birth, whilst being prepared if things didn't go quite how I planned and how to manage that. I can't recommend it enough!