Birth story - Sophie and baby Ziggy

I am so pleased to be sharing our birth story with you all. After our previous baby was born with Gastroschisis needing immediate surgery and a monitored hospital birth, we really wanted a home birth this time for a completely different experience. I’m happy to say that we got our perfect birth at home and our surprise baby boy, Ziggy Jay, was born at home on Monday 28th of August at 5:44am.

On Saturday I was feeling a little disheartened at going past 40 weeks as I was worried about the inevitable chats about induction and monitoring, and I didn’t feel at all like labour was on its way. I took my little boy for lunch and to the local little play area and summer fair and bought some goodies for a pamper session to get my oxytocin flowing. I never needed to use them (so they will definitely be getting used over the next few days!)

Around 9pm on Saturday evening I was sat on my birthing ball when I started to feel the odd tightening. I told my husband that I thought something might be happening but also that it could be nothing and I was probably making it up. By the time we went to bed around midnight they had started to happen about 8 minutes apart. We got into bed and I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep with them. I propped myself up in bed and listened to the pregnancy sound bath. I was timing my surges and around 4am I woke my husband to tell him that they were closer together and that I wanted to go downstairs to nest. We called our home birth team but were told that they were already out with another lady and if things progressed we would be looking at going into our local MLU. My surges were quite strong and all I wanted was to be in water, so we ran a bath and lit some candles in the bathroom and I lay in there for around an hour, having surges every 5 minutes.

I was starting to feel really tired, so I got out and lay in bed. Suddenly the surges started to slow down and by the time we got up around 9am they had almost stopped. I wasn’t really worried, and spent the day relaxing on the sofa. After a short walk to the end of our road and back my surges started up again every 10 mins.

I sat and watched rubbish on TV and cuddled my little boy until bedtime which really helped to keep me grounded as I didn’t want him to see me uncomfortable, and then I got into bed around 11pm. My poor husband had an awful migraine at this point and had gone to lie in our sons room with him as he wasn’t settling. I propped myself on all fours over lots of pillows, put on some relaxing music and grabbed my wooden comb. Over the next few hours my surges got stronger and closer together. I managed to breathe through them, the worst part was dry heaving and feeling very nauseous after every surge.

By 3am they were coming every 3 minutes and I couldn’t move during each one. I woke my husband and told him to get the pool ready, and we called the midwife to come out. When she arrived she listened to baby and examined me on my request. I was already 7cm dilated. I stayed on all fours on the floor breathing through my surges and using my comb as my husband filled the pool, I got in it as soon as I could which felt amazing. Our second midwife came out around an hour later and brought the gas and air which I started to use. I remember getting to a point where I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore and asking “are we nearly there yet?” I wanted to beg them to take me into the MLU for drugs, but I knew that this was probably transition and to push through it. My midwives were wonderful, guiding me through and encouraging me to relax and go with my body.

Then suddenly I felt a pressure and according to my husband I started to moo. In one breath baby’s head was out, birthed in his waters. Three more breaths later and he was born and placed onto my chest. We had delayed cord clamping and then I got out of the pool to birth my placenta as we are having it encapsulated.

As far as giving birth goes… this was pretty perfect ♥️ hypnobirthing definitely helped me to understand what my body was doing and to stay calm through my birth.