Birth story - Rosie and baby Rae

I was really lucky to have had a pretty straightforward pregnancy, bar some pelvic girdle pain in 3rd trimester (which was massively helped by seeing a Chiropractor), pretty bad acid reflux, and a lot of paranoia about reduced fetal movement, but each time we went in for monitoring there was never cause for concern. Other than that, I really loved being pregnant and loved my bump!

We transferred to the care of the homebirth team around week 28 which was the best decision we ever made. From then on, all my appointments were at home (which also meant my husband could join), we had continuity with the same amazing midwife who I got to know really well and even had on WhatsApp which was amazing for all my random questions and concerns, and the care just felt so personal and thorough. Most appointments she was at our house for more than an hour, it never felt rushed and we really got to chat through everything in depth.

My midwife had thought that our little lady may make an early arrival as her head had been so low in my pelvis for the last couple of months and my bump was feeling very compact! However my due date came and went, as did the next 12 days with no sign of baby. I had quite a lot of lightening pains and cramps from around week 36 which got more and more intense in the lead up to her arrival. My midwives knew I wanted as little intervention as possible, so at my 40 week appointment we were given lots of advice on how to try and naturally induce labour.

Apparently the best chance we had of these things working was on 40w+5, so on that evening we did the following: went for a reeeeeally long walk, ate spicy food (it was the heatwave so I couldn’t quite stomach curry and we opted for hot Nando’s instead 😂), 2 glasses of Prosecco, ate the core of a pineapple, and (very reluctantly after all the previous!) had sex. Unfortunately our efforts didn’t succeed, but I think we may have actually overdone it on the walking front considering it was so hot. I was so exhausted I don’t think my body would have let me go into labour! Outside of that evening I was also eating dates, bathing in clary sage, drinking raspberry leaf tea and trying to do the deed as much as possible.

At 41 weeks I declined a sweep and also had to have the chat about 42 week induction. I said I didn’t want to be induced without a medical reason so she got me booked in for an extra scan and monitoring. On day 41w+5, I went for brunch and a pedicure with my friend. When they turned the massage chairs on and were jiggling us all over the place, I googled to check whether it was safe for pregnant women. It actually said that as long as you’re full term they’re fine to use as the only risk is they could send you into labour, so of course I let it carry on doing it’s thing :)

That evening my husband and I went for a beautiful, long evening walk around Virginia water lake, followed by dinner at the pub, which must have really got the oxytocin levels flowing as a couple of hours later I went into labour! I should also note that my husband had been doing DIY reflexology on me, following YouTube videos specifically for inducing labour and of course he claims that was the driving factor!

At midnight I had a cramp that felt much longer and a bit different to all the other cramps I had been having. Straight away I suspected that this could be the real thing! Exactly 10 minutes later the exact same cramp happened again. Then exactly 10 minutes later, another one. By the third one, I knew this was definitely it which was a very weird and exciting feeling! As we had just gone to bed I decided to leave my husband asleep and just try to rest in between them.

The gap was getting shorter pretty quickly and by 2:30am I felt I had to get up, so I woke my husband and we moved to the living room. By this time they had already gone to 2 minutes apart so I called my midwife. She said to just keep doing what I was doing and she would be with me by 7am to check on me unless I call before and want her sooner. At 4am she called back to check how I was doing and offered to come earlier if I needed her but at that point I was still coping just fine. In this time, we got all our snacks out, watched our wedding speeches video to get the oxytocin flowing, and bounced on my yoga ball. I stood up, holding my hands round my husbands neck and he counted me through each contraction, which really helped me.

My midwife and student midwife arrived at the perfect time, just as surges were starting to get much more intense. They checked me and baby over, gave me some aromatherapy oils and got me into a position that would help labour to progress and for me to relax at the same time as I hadn’t been to sleep at all before I went into labour. This was laying sideways on the sofa facing the back cushions, with my top knee up over the top of the back cushion. The midwives decided it was best they left me to rest in this position and to call them as soon as I felt I needed them.

Pretty soon after they left, things got very intense and I asked my husband to call them. Clearly that position worked! They advised that he run me a bath and see if that helps to relax me a bit. He dimmed the lights, lit some candles, put my birth playlist on and poured a jug of water over my belly with each surge which I highly recommend! This really helped for a while and bought us another hour before I was asking for the midwives to hurry back with gas and air.

When they turned up shortly after, around 10am, and handed me the gas and air in the bath tub, I was a very happy lady. I stayed in the tub with the gas and air while the midwives finished filling the birth pool. At this point I was struggling to imagine how I would move between the bath and birth pool as my surges were so close together. My midwife suggested that as soon as I pass the peak of one surge rather than waiting until the end of it, I start my journey to the pool so that I had maximum time before the peak of the next surge (good tip for anyone needing to move location between surges!)!

We successfully made it to the pool with my husband carrying the gas and air beside me and getting into the pool was well worth it! It felt so good getting into the deep water and having space to move around and change positions. I spent the next 8 hours in the pool, breathing through surges with the help of 3.5 tanks of gas and air. My baby was moving up and down in my pelvis for a long time, which was the hardest part for me. Apparently this is due to having a really strong pelvic floor and it therefore taking a long time for the muscles to relax and stretch. Luckily my midwives were really patient and were continuously checking her heart rate and knew she was still very relaxed and happy so they let me take as long as my body needed.

Eventually she started making her entrance, and again the stage where her head was being born took quite a long time. Apparently because I’m a horse rider, this is why I have really strong pelvic floor and perineum muscles (who knew!), which I guess is a good thing, but just made things a little slower and harder in this case! It was so incredible when I looked down and could see lots of hair waving in the water as her head was just sitting half way out! Freaky but amazing. In this pretty vital moment, my third bottle of gas and air ran out and it’s true, you really lose all your manners when you’re in labour 😂 I made it known pretty loudly that it had run out and proceeded to tell them (loudly) to hurry despite her being impressively fast at switching the canister. My husband compared her speedy changeover to the tyre changes in the pits in formula 1😂.

As her head was stuck like this for a while, my midwife suggested that I try with one more surge, but if her head wasn’t born in that one then they would like to get me out the pool and do an episiotomy, as she was getting a bit worried that I might tear really badly. One of the midwives then suggested getting me into a deep squat in the pool for my one last try, and as I couldn’t even imagine trying to get out of the pool with her head half out of me (plus I wanted to avoid the cut), I pushed with everything I had and her head was born! I don’t remember feeling the ‘ring of fire’ possibly because I had been slowly stretching over a long period of time. I had to wait for the next contraction for the rest of her body to come, but in this time my husband was able to look down into the water and see her little face looking up which was amazing for him.

With the next contraction her body was born and the midwife said ‘pick her up out the water!’. She had to repeat herself because I couldn’t quite comprehend that there was a baby in the water after all that time! It was the most incredible, unbelievable, surreal moment looking down and seeing her floating in the water. I pulled her up, turned around and had my first cuddle with our gorgeous little girl.

I stayed in the pool for about 20 minutes, having skin to skin and while my husband cut the cord. Unfortunately as I stepped out the pool, a large amount of blood fell on the floor, which admittedly I thought was the placenta falling out and bursting everywhere 😂. They weren’t sure why I was bleeding so much so they quickly got me on the sofa and gave me the injection to deliver the placenta. The midwife advised me to have some big puffs of gas and air which made me think this was going to be a lot worse than it was! Even though my placenta turned out to be unusually massive, this part was a walk in the park! It turns out the bleeding was due to the placenta being so big which meant my uterus was unable to start contracting back down, leaving lots of blood vessels open. Once the placenta was out, the bleeding slowed down and I was able to enjoy some time giving Rae her first feed.

Once I’d laid there for about half an hour feeding, my midwife wanted me to try and pee and have a shower, however when I got up I felt incredibly faint and sweaty. They got me down on the cold bathroom floor and started trying to get a cannula in to get me on a drip. It took a few attempts due to the low blood pressure but we got there in the end. At this point I got very lucky as normally they would have called an ambulance and transferred me in, however my midwife felt that as the hospital was so busy and hot (it was the heatwave), it would be much nicer to keep me at home where they could do everything that the hospital would do anyway. As our second official midwife was in fact the matron (as no one else was available!), she supported my main midwife in that decision and they agreed to try and keep me at home.

They got a bit creative at this point as there was no stand to hang the drip on, so they hung it on a coat hanger, took a frame off the wall and hung the bag of fluids on the nail 😂. This DIY drip meant I could relax on my own sofa while the the midwives kindly stayed for many more hours to make sure I was okay. We spent the hours chatting away and having a post-birth pizza party 🍕I did have about 4 minor tears, but my midwife said she could either stitch them or I could leave them to heal naturally, but have a bath in tea tree oil and have my husband dab some expressed colostrum in them twice a day. This worked a treat and they healed up pretty quickly!

Having given birth at 17:49, they only left around midnight and came back at 7am the next day to check on baby and my blood levels etc! I feel so grateful that doing this course gave me the confidence to have a home birth.

The home birth team, especially at our hospital, are incredible and their style of care is so in line with everything we learnt during this course. They supported me completely with declining sweeps and not wanting to be induced at 42 weeks. They also kept intervention to an absolute minimum - I didn’t have a single VE during labour, instead they watched how I was moving, listened to the sounds I was making, asked how I was feeling and looked for signs on my body (such as the bottom of the back bone protruding slightly outwards)to know roughly how far along I was. I think that had they done a VE and told me how many cm I was, it would have negatively affected my mental state as I always thought I was much closer to her arrival than I actually was, so it really helped not knowing and simply knowing baby was happy. They also did some aromatherapy with me, kept the environment very calm and gave me really inspiring, motivational words when it was obvious that I needed a little boost.

In the appointments following birth, I still was seen by the same midwives, so we had such a lovely time de-briefing and chatting about the birth. Homebirth midwives have such tough, antisocial working schedules as they are on call so much, so they obviously have to be incredibly passionate about home births to work in that area, and you can really feel that. Despite labour being long and intense, having the most unbelievable care from my husband (luckily he loved watching the digital pack with me and took it all on board) and the homebirth team made my birth so incredibly positive.

I look back on that day so fondly and honestly feel like I just want to relive it all! Pulling Rae up out of the water and holding her for the first time was the most mind blowing moment of my life, and I had that feeling that many women on here talk about… feeling like an absolute superwoman! Our bodies are incredible, and by training our minds to trust our bodies, giving birth can be the most incredible experience. I wish every single pregnant woman knew about hypnobirthing, because my birth would have been nothing like what it was without it. My husband and I go on about hypnobirthing to anyone who will listen, as we really want to do our bit to spread the word! Thank you PBC!! You’ve got this ladies!! (Well done if you made it to the end of this very long story!!)