Birth story - Megan and baby Jesse

Pregnancy:

I was very lucky to have another low risk, smooth pregnancy. I’m one of those annoying people that love being pregnant & didn’t get any symptoms throughout. In my second trimester working from home (over COVID) took a toll on me mentally and physically so I made a pledge to myself to keep active and get back into a positive mindset. I kept active doing yoga, swimming & lots of walking right until the end. I read Siobhan’s ‘practical ways to make your birth better’ book after my sister & sister-in-law had both recommended it, fell in love with hypnobirthing and decided to do the digital pack too.

I knew early on that I wanted a homebirth since the stand alone birthing unit I had my daughter in had closed & with the Covid crazy I just wanted to be in my own environment and have my husband present throughout. I had a super quick labour with my daughter (she was born within an hour of getting to the birth unit) so I always had in the back of my mind that I could have another quick one & didn’t want the rush of getting to a hospital in time. I joined a Facebook group called ‘homebirth uk’ which was a great support network & would recommend anyone planning a homebirth to do the same, if anything for research & advice.

The big day:

I had a trickle of waters in bed at around 8am and period like pain from then on, though wouldn’t describe them as ‘surges’ it was more of a constant ache. Things ramped up pretty quickly around 10am and I was getting surges every 4 minutes so we arranged for our daughter & dog to be collected by my mother in law and we called the labour ward to let them know we’d need a midwife out ASAP. As my first labour was very quick the one thing I wanted this labour to be was a bit more organised and a lot less rushed. I had a to-do list for my husband to get through & a ‘home birth kit’ all set up in a box downstairs ready to go so everything could be smooth sailing. We had already blew the birthing pool up the day before so all we needed to do was fill it, we decided to quarter fill it then top it up just before I wanted to get in. My husband did an incredible job setting the room up with my candles & getting the diffuser on with my Neals yard essential oils. These little things sound so trivial but they really do set the scene for a zen birthing zone and to me they made such a positive difference on my environment.

2 midwives arrived at 11am and when examined I was 5cm dilated. Surges were coming every 3-4 minutes and were bearable. At 12pm I thought I would give the tens machine a go, as soon as I turned it on my full waters gushed everywhere, I hated the tens machine, it bought me no relief but it definitely seemed to shock my waters out. I knew from then that I didn’t want the distraction of any other pain relief methods so relied solely on my hypnobirthing breathing techniques.

I wanted to be examined before I got in the pool because I didn’t want to get in too early. At 12:20 I was examined and was 7cm dilated so we topped the pool with hot water and shortly after I got in. The relief was just incredible and really took the edge off.

For the next hour I up-breathed through the surges. At around 1:30 I began to get anxious and doubted myself saying ‘I can’t do it’ and remember thinking I physically couldn’t push my baby out, I know now this was just transition. This is when the surges got really intense & I was squeezing the life out of my husband, having my arms wrapped around him while I laboured felt like it gave me twice the amount of strength. By this point I just wanted silence and to be embraced with him in our established positive position, so every time he gave words of encouragement he was politely told to SHUTUP I had around 25 minutes of pushing which felt a lot longer as babies head kept dipping up and down, I began to think he was stuck. My amazing midwives gave me positive reminders to go with my body & that I was in complete control, which at the time was so empowering and gave me confidence everything was ok. Babies head was born at 1:53 and I can still remember now what a relief it was! While we waited for the next contraction his head began to turn which freaked me out beyond belief but apparently this is their way of preparing for the shoulders to come out. At 1:55 our baby boy was born. His cord was super long and wrapped round his neck twice but the midwives very quickly unravelled it and I bought him calmly to my chest, shortly after my husband revealed through a gasp ‘it’s a boy’ which was just priceless. My husband and I had a good 5 minutes of sobbing happy tears whilst cradling our boy still in the pool, I will never forget that moment it was just euphoric.

We had golden hour (more like 90 minutes), delayed cord clamping (the cord took a whole hour to finish pulsing) and a physiological third stage. My placenta took a while to come but after passing urine and a few pushes it was out. I was incredibly lucky to have no tears or grazes and the midwives said this was because of how controlled my pushing was and listening to my body. We didn’t weigh Jesse for a good couple of hours but between me, my husband and the midwives we all played guess the weight and I think the heaviest guess was 8lbs so we were all flabbergasted to learn he was a chunky 9lbs 5oz!!!! He must have heavy bones because he definitely doesn’t seem like a 9lb’er and my bump didn’t seem that big either!

The midwives were absolutely amazing and it made me so incredibly proud and grateful of our NHS. Between them & my husband the pool was drained and packed away within the hour and our living room looked like nothing had ever happened. My daughter, Mother in law & my Mum all arrived within a few hours, a bottle of Moët was opened and a dominos pizza ordered as a push reward. I couldn’t have been happier that my dream home birth went to plan and that we had safely welcomed our son into the world underneath the twinkling Christmas tree, 1 day before our first wedding anniversary! Jesse was born to Coldplay ‘Hymn for the weekend’ playing in the background which will forever be his special song

I’m so grateful to have found the positive birth company, it taught me so much about making my labour the best experience it could possibly be and also so effortlessly got my husband involved with such a simple but powerful concept to birthing better.