Birth story - Amy and baby Zachary

*Trigger Warning* - talk about Gestational Diabetes, big babies and tearing/stitches.

Having had 2 difficult labours previously I was introduced to the Positive Birth Company when pregnant with my 3rd baby in 2020. It helped me make the decision to plan for a homebirth and when it came to the labour and delivery it proved an absolute game changer. My story is on here somewhere if you’re interested.

So no brainier this time, OBVIOUSLY going for a home birth again, and obviously revising the course to prepare myself.

The pregnancy was uncomplicated, had a slight worry about being tested for gestational diabetes (due to last baby being large) in case that scuppered my plans, but it came back negative, so all good. Birth pool hired and rented a tens machine this time because I’ve always been curious about them and I’m planning on this being my last baby so it was my last chance!

I was fairly miserable during the summer I mean, it was hot wasn’t it! I’m not someone that enjoys heat anyway so there were some pretty torturous days but we made it through without major incident. Parenting 3 children (6, 4 & 1 almost 2) was really tough, that was definitely the hardest thing about this pregnancy. I also gained more weight than I’d hoped, but when he was born I felt better about that.

I’ve been extremely fortunate with my antenatal care and I’ve had the same midwife antenatally for all my pregnancies, so we understand each other. For my 40week appointment I had to see someone else due to her being on annual leave. As is standard where I live, the ‘new’ midwife offered to book me in for induction at 41weeks, which I declined. When she saw I was measuring 2 weeks ahead she said that she thought I should be sent for a growth scan. She went to check with her manager and came back confirming this was the case. I pulled a face I explained that I felt it would be a bit of a waste of time because I already know the baby’s going to be big (previous babies 8lb9, 8lb14, 10lb), I didn’t think they were going to be any bigger because I had less back pain, and I would still refuse induction. She said it was completely up to me, as long as I’m aware that they would recommend a scan. She went to tell the manager, was gone a fair while then came back with the manager who then talked through what would happen if I DID have a growth scan and baby looked big (basically a consultant appointment where I’d be told to be induced there and then), but followed it by saying that she was comfortable supporting my decision because I’ve got previous experiences to draw on, I’ve delivered a bigger baby at home already and worst case: I’m 5minutes from the hospital! So I left feeling really supported and encouraged actually.

I don’t really ‘drop’, and I don’t tend to have early signs of labour, so other than having very intense Braxton hicks (they literally started at 22weeks) I had no idea when baby might come. I went to bed Sunday night and couldn’t sleep, fairly standard. Finally dropped off at about 2, woke up at 6:30 having mild surges. I told my husband when he woke up and he went to battle stations; went downstairs to set up the pool, called the midwife, put out the towels, called both our parents to pick up the kids, prepared me some snacks…you name it my last labour he didn’t really get time to prepare…

By 11:30 the surges dropped off almost completely. I tried bouncing on the ball, walking round the garden, walking up and down stairs but nothing was really working. I struggled at this point because I felt guilty for jumping the gun and sending the kids away so early in the day and my husband not going to work blah blah blah. Also my husband was driving me a bit crazy because he kept asking ‘is that another one? Are you ok? Was that one?!’ I had to tell him to stop treating me like a patient! I was really tired as well, and my surges had been stronger while I’d been in bed, so I decided to go back to bed and he got on with some work on the iPad. I had my tens machine on and that whole stage was my favourite part of the labour. I was relaxed, fairly comfortable, the sun was shining behind the curtains and I had super chilled music on.

At about 3:30pm the surges really ramped up, I went downstairs, took off the tens machine and got in the pool…which had obviously gone cold so my husband was then filling pans with water to lower the level to then add more hot water, while trying to get through to a midwife…apparently not a straightforward task! It took about 20minutes to get through to anyone at all, and then we were told someone would call us back. The surges were really intense by this point and my waters broke at 4:15. I looked at Kon and said ‘I think we’re on our own!’ Again this was a strangely serene moment, but I was finding it hard to cope without the tens machine so was feeling like I’d rather have a midwife there.

THANKFULLY about 10minutes later there was a knock on the door and it was the midwife I’d seen the week before! I was so pleased to have a (fairly) familiar face and she had said she had a lot of experience with home birth. She was totally hands off, just went about finding her things and getting prepared. At 4:45 the 2nd midwife arrived and she was less hands off she started asking me questions and wanted to monitor the baby’s heartbeat between surges, which were basically one after another now. I let her listen once, then she started trying again and I asked her to stop, I knew the head was coming. The actual delivery was just insane. The other 3 were 2push jobs, head then the rest of them, but this one was probably about 4 or 5 surges with pushing, and I could tell the baby was big. I was in a sitting position, so once the baby was out I lifted him onto my chest and saw he was a boy! This was such an incredible surprise, we have 3girls and had just assumed it would be another one! We would have been thrilled either way but we had let go of the idea of having a boy so it really was a massive surprise.

I had the injection to help deliver the placenta quickly because I’d lost quite a lot of blood. When they checked me for tears I only had a small 1st degree so they didn’t give me stitches which was amazing because I’ve had them every other time. It also meant I just didn’t have to leave the house! No hospital intervention at all when they weighed him and read out 4.95kg off the scale we were so shocked, no wonder I’d been so flipping uncomfortable

My favourite thing about the next part (other than cuddling my beautiful son) was listening to the midwives trying to piece together a narrative for their notes my husband is brilliant at keeping track of times etc so he was able to help with a lot of the things they weren’t there for.

All in all, it went very well! I’d forgotten how rough recovery is, although was it worse because it’s my fourth and he was big? So, any of you expectant mums out there: get disposable pants! Use towels you don’t care about! Get maternity pads with wings! And just be kind to yourselves

Thank you PBC, you helped me so much!