Birth story - Alice and baby Poppy

No midwives present!

Pregnancy:

Fairly smooth with a few periods of high blood pressure and concerns around high alkaline phosphate levels towards the end. I also suffered with sciatica in this pregnancy and generally found the pregnancy quite tough having a toddler to look after too!

I used PBC with my first baby and I had such a positive birth experience so I knew I wanted to use it again second time around! I actually posted a question on here recently because I was worried that I’d had such a smooth first birth that it couldn’t possibly be such a positive experience second time around which was a big concern for me. First birth was at 38+5 weeks and was 8hrs start to finish with me arriving at the MLU 10cm dilated and Finley born 1hr after arrival - only 70ml blood loss and no tears. Well, I shouldn’t have been worried!

I finished work on 7th Sept, excited to have a few weeks of rest, however on Friday 8th Sept after putting my little boy to bed, I lost quite a lot of clear mucus. It didn’t look like my show as there was no blood in it which I expected it to have but there was quite a lot of it. I went to bed as normal as obviously I was only just 37 weeks so it was unlikely to have been anything - I was wrong!

Similar to my first, I was woken at around 3.45am with what felt like trapped wind. I tried to go to the toilet but couldn’t and I was struggling to get comfortable back in bed. I wasn’t convinced it was labour as generally the pain disappeared when I moved. After an hour of struggling to get back to sleep I couldn’t lie down anymore and thought the pains were becoming more regular which is when I knew it was definitely labour. I started to time the contractions on the Freya app and they were around 30 seconds long coming every 4-7 mins.

At 5.30am I woke my husband. We were planning a home birth so I needed him to get set up downstairs with the birth pool and making the space look calm. He jumped straight to it and went off downstairs. After an hour the contractions were getting more intense and more consistently 4 mins apart so I rang my midwife to let her know I was in labour. Unfortunately my call was transferred to triage at the hospital who advised me that I was going to have to come in for assessment because the home birth service was closed. This made me panic as I suddenly needed my husband to find childcare for my little boy with his parents out of the country! He rang his brother who didn’t answer and started ringing around friends to help.

By 7am he managed to get hold of his mum who had rang round some neighbours to go round and wake up his brother and he wanted to ring the hospital to get some advice as I was contracting so regularly that we were worried about the car journey. He called the last dialled number in my phone which happened to be my midwife’s number instead of triage and she answered! Turns out the home birth service opened at 7am which triage didn’t tell us! She quickly scrambled to get someone out to us and said she’d phone us back to let us know who was coming out. She asked if I felt pushy but at this point I was ok, using up breathing to manage the contractions and I was still stood up and able to have a conversation in between contractions. I think the news that I was going to get my home birth and that my brother in-law was on the way must have been instant relief because everything then started to change.

As soon as we got off the phone to the midwife my contractions started to feel different and I could feel a lot of pressure in the bottom of my tummy. With the next contraction my waters popped with a gush at around 7.20am whilst stood leaning against the bathroom sink and at this point my husband left the room to get my sons bag together as my brother in-law would be arriving soon. In the meantime my little boy had woken up and was stood next to me in the bathroom passing me various toys saying ‘mummy take it’ … not quite so relaxing! With the next contraction I suddenly felt my body start to push without doing anything at all and I got into a kneeling position on the floor of the bathroom. As the next contraction came I suddenly felt the baby move down through my pelvis and I started to crown - At this point I screamed downstairs for my husband and I put my hand on my perineum to try and stop any tearing.

My husband ran in the bathroom just in time to see the baby come out in one involuntarily push with my toddler pointing and shouting ‘baby!’ and I scooped her up and put her straight to my chest. Instincts kicked in at this point and I grabbed a towel off the towel rail to put over her to keep her warm and started to rub her quickly as I knew I needed to get her to cry ASAP. After a LONG 20 seconds baby girl let out a big cry - we were so relieved! I looked at the time to make sure I got the time of birth - 7.33am and only 3 contractions between my waters breaking and her being born.

My husband phoned 999 and a few minutes later my midwife phoned back to tell us she was on her way over to us and ask how I was getting on. Once she realised the baby was here she stayed on the phone to coach me through the next steps. Given the quick birth they wanted the placenta delivered ASAP so I had to latch baby on to feed to start the contractions up again. She advised that I sit on the toilet as it was a good position for the placenta to be delivered. My brother in law arrived and my husband left my little boy downstairs playing with him. At around 8am I felt a small trickle of blood and then the placenta dropped into the toilet. The midwife finally arrived at 8.15am and my husband cut the cord with me still sat holding baby on the toilet.

I was then moved to my bed to be assessed with the 2nd midwife arriving and I’d got 1 small graze, no tears and only lost 50 ml of blood. After a couple of hours of observations the midwives left us to it and I was able to get some rest in my own bed without having to go to a hospital - absolute bliss! Of course I didn’t get any sleep as I was in so much shock at what just happened. We hadn’t even got the next to me cot out yet so my husband scrambled to get the baby things set up while I had newborn cuddles! 😂

Not quite the home birth I’d planned but an incredible experience and I’m so pleased with how calm I stayed despite a situation that was changing frequently and the terrifying prospect of having to deliver your own child with no trained medical support. An amazingly powerful experience and I am SO proud of myself and my body for delivering my own baby at home!