Birth story - Grace and baby Moira

The lead up to the birth of my second daughter was a series of unfortunate events. I'd had a rough pregnancy (serious pre-natal anxiety needing medication, bad PGP where I was fitted for crutches on top of the standard crap that comes with growing a human - heartburn, restless legs etc). Luckily we never had any complications with the babys health, so I was given the go ahead for a homebirth.

My first delivery was a beautiful water birth at a birth centre, where my Mum "caught" my eldest daughter with my husband by my side. Since I would be giving birth during a national lockdown, a homebirth sounded like the perfect way to recreate the intimacy of my first experience. We'd ordered a birth pool and were ready for our second to come early - my first was 4 days before her due date and my second was practically falling out she was so engaged by 37 weeks. And then I got Covid-19. For the second time in a year. At 38 weeks pregnant.

I was completely beside myself. I knew that if I went into labour during my 10 days of isolation I would have to give birth on my own in a Covid ward without any of my support people. So I stopped doing my birth affirmations, I stopped listening to my body, I totally tuned out thinking I could avoid labour if I just didn't think about it. I managed to make it through the 10 days of isolation and thank goodness as well. I was so ill with the virus I'm not sure I would have had the energy to deliver without assistance.

So we went back to (not so patiently) waiting for something to happen. And then along came storm Darcy. England doesn't deal with snow well at the best of times and I was hearing horror stories about midwives not being able to make births. But babies come when they're ready and at 3.30 am on her due date I started to feel light regular contractions.

I woke my husband up, rang the midwives and called my Mum who was going to come and help out with my 2 year old. My first labour was about 12 hours long so I was hoping that by the time my older daughter came back from nursery at lunch we would have a baby sister or brother to show her. My husband went about setting up the birth pool and I pottered about timing the contractions, lighting candles and preparing the space.

Very quickly things started to speed up and I called the midwives back to tell them to hurry. They arrived about 20 minutes later and I was on the kitchen floor pushing!

All in from start to finish I laboured for 2 hours 45 minutes, not enough time to fill the birth pool up, for my Mum to arrive or for the gas and air to defrost on our radiator (cheers storm Darcy).

In the end I delivered our second, surprise, daughter without any pain killers, barring paracetamol and a tens machine and I'm really proud of myself!

I feel very fortunate to have had such a positive birth during such a crazy time in human history, and am looking forward to telling Moira all about her journey into the world when shes older, I wonder what she will make of being born on the kitchen floor next to the dog kibble!