Birth story - Brittany and baby Joeli

*Trigger warning* - use of the word ‘contractions’, emergency services involvement

Our first baby was born back in 2020 and although her birth was medically uncomplicated, the circumstances (including COVID restrictions at the time) presented some tough mental challenges. Of the 13 hours I spent labouring in hospital, I was alone for about 10.5 of them and my husband only just made it in to be present for the birth itself. This time around, I was so looking forward to having him with me for support and as an advocate the entire way through. We had planned to have the baby in the birth centre at the hospital.

On Monday (at 40 + 3), I had my first sweep. During this appointment, the midwife said my cervix was already very soft and stretchy and that she was surprised I wasn’t in labour already. She advised me to go home and stay active and she was sure that the baby would make an appearance in no time. I left the appointment and almost immediately began to lose my mucus plug. That evening, I started having mild contractions. They continued throughout the night, but never increased in intensity and remained about 6 or 7 minutes apart. Due to what the midwife had said, I felt that I ought to stay active in order to move things along, so I stayed up and bounced on the ball, went for little walks etc - all whilst watching some familiar and comforting films. However, when it got to 2am I began to feel utterly exhausted and decided it would be best to get some rest. I slept from about 3am until 5am. When I woke up, the contractions had stopped completely. I felt quite flat on Tuesday (the following day), since I had been quite convinced that things were starting and it had seemingly all ground to a halt.

On Wednesday, I called the midwives as I began to feel slightly anxious about the fact things had stopped and not started again. The midwife I spoke to on the phone was excellent. She reassured me that I could visit hospital for monitoring at any time if I was worried about the baby for any reason. She booked me in for another sweep with her on the Friday.

On that Friday (at 41 weeks exactly), I went for the second sweep. This time, although the midwife reiterated the fact that my cervix was already 3 to 4cm dilated and very soft and stretchy, she didn’t echo the first midwife’s sentiments about how soon I might go into labour. I was grateful for this, as it meant I left the appointment without high hopes or expectations. It made me realise that I had put so much pressure on myself following the initial sweep. This time, I left feeling confident that things would start again at the right time. Another thing she did that really helped me was to book in my induction. Just having a final date in mind helped me to feel more relaxed, knowing that if I got to that date and the baby hadn’t made an appearance yet, I would be going into hospital and not leaving without my newborn. Furthermore, the midwife was confident that the induction would involve minimal intervention due to the progress I’d already made cervix-wise. She said it was likely they’d only need to break my waters and that would be enough to start things off pretty quickly. I went home feeling so much more positive. I knew the end was in sight, yet I wasn’t feeling under any sort of pressure or expectation. My husband and I spent the evening with our daughter, who was in a great mood and making us laugh and smile so much with her toddler charm.

I woke up just after 6am on Saturday morning to my waters beginning to trickle away. I woke my husband to tell him, but I assured him we weren’t in any rush since I wasn’t having any contractions yet.

At 6:20am I began to feel mild contractions, but I was still able to talk through them. My husband and I slowly started to get things sorted - arranging childcare for our toddler, making sure hospital bags were packed etc. I went to the toilet at 6:30am and things really started to intensify quickly. The contractions began to get very painful and I started feeling my body begin to push. I couldn’t believe this was happening so quickly, but I remembered the sensation of my body taking over from my previous birth and therefore asked my husband to call the hospital and let them know that we were on our way.

In the time it took for him to find the phone number, things were moving along again and I began to feel the baby’s head. At this point, I told my husband that he’d need to call an ambulance instead. At 6:45am he called 999 and the operator talked him through what to do while we waited for the ambulance crew to arrive. He managed to move me from the toilet (!) into the living room and he quickly grabbed every towel we owned and put them down on the floor. By this time, I knew the baby was going to be born any minute.

Whilst still on the phone to the emergency services, my husband managed to use another phone to call our neighbour who then came and took our toddler away (she was understandably starting to get quite unsettled by this point). Moments after she left, the baby’s head was out and my husband was coaching me through each contraction as per the instructions from the emergency services operator on the other end of the phone. In the end, he delivered our beautiful daughter himself at 7:02am on the living room floor, minutes before the paramedics arrived. It had barely been 40 minutes since the first contraction, so we were both in utter shock.

The experience was completely surreal but with such a wonderful end result. And being in our own home was actually lovely - having our own shower and not having to go anywhere after the birth was great. I can now really see why so many people plan for home births now!

I am so proud of my body for what it has achieved and also so proud of my husband for taking charge and bringing our daughter safely into the world with me. We can’t believe how we’d flippantly talked about how excited we were for him to be present for more of this birth… well, it turned out he was more actively involved than we could have ever imagined!