My first born, my son was born in hospital with no problems 41+1, 6/4/14. I had chosen a hospital birth because of my previous history of pelvic fracture but I always really deep down wanted to have him at home; but I risk managed the situation and was happy with my decision in the end. I used hypnobirthing and was completely calm. It was special I will never forget it. No drugs apart from good old natural oxytocin.
With my second born, my daughter, born 8/7/17 I was going down the route of hospital birth in the MLU as it was a good experience and I hadn’t really been asked anything about my birth plans. I had chatted about my thoughts on the hypnobirthing refresher course with the lovely Sandra. She got me thinking about my deep down thoughts about homebirth. With a new seed sown I spent weeks pondering before mentioning it to the midwife. For reasons I won’t go into I ended up discussing it with the manager of community midwifery who offered a visit from a very ‘’homebirth friendly midwife’’. Well that was it, the fabulous Midwife gave me that final confidence to go with my gut feeling.
One of my concerns was that I vocalise during birth and didn’t want my son to be scared. My son is 3 yrs 3m. I discussed with my hubby and answered his questions and he agreed that this actually would be great if resources permitted we could birth our daughter at home. We discussed that mummy would have baby at home…something my son wanted to actually happen so I didn’t leave him! We explained that mummy would roar like a lion to help baby come out! He said he would roar with me. Our plan was for him to play with Grandma and go out to the park.
I had been having practice labour since week 32 so I was convinced she would arrive early, but she actually arrived at 40+6! As before, I had refused any meddling to supposedly get things going. As I knew my baby would come when she was ready. I had lots of long episodes of surges for hours in the final two weeks and I really thought at times I was in labour but obviously wasn’t. These were slow changes building up to the real thing. On Saturday 8th July I had been having some strong surges in the morning but they were irregular at times and wore of by lunch. During the morning I did the washing and the shopping and came home for lunch. I did have a few ‘stand in the aisle still’ moments in Morrison’s, but as I said things went quiet again soon after. I just listened to my hypnobirthing CD and snoozed…nothing happened for 40 mins and I thought it was a no goer again.
The cat shot in to see me going berserk and meowed so loudly that I thought he was in pain himself! Seconds later I experienced an enormous surge and that was that…the cat had spoken and Baby E was born 3 hours later in lounge. It was beautiful and amazing. The midwife was only present an hour before baby was born and she was surprised at how calm I was in advanced labour. Upon arrival she called for the second midwife to come.
Both midwives were so lovely and respected my wishes and birth plan. They checked baby’s heartbeat no problem during strong surges and guessed I did not want any internal examinations: things were clearly progressing just fine. I suddenly felt baby’s head move further down and it felt the time had come to meet our little one. I concentrated much more on the birth breathing this time (something I could have done better with my first born) and the midwife commented that I birthed her head really well controlled! I was surprised to hear that bit because it did seem fast to me!
I did not tear either so was pleased about that! That first moment seeing our little daughter being passed up to me in our own home was amazing and so emotional. I seemed to have more strength to help lift and hold her up to me this time; I am sure this is because I was super chilled at home.
As soon as she was born we rang Grandma at the park and our son met his little sister literally only minutes after she was born; something I really wanted to happen. Holding my son and baby daughter together was so special and he was delighted to meet her!
I gave birth to both our babies on all fours it just seemed that was the right position for me. These are the most amazing moments of my life. I feel very grateful for having two gorgeous children, grateful for an amazing hubby, grateful to grandma for looking after my son and grateful for such lovely care by midwives in our own home. Grateful for two wonderful births. I love oxytocin!
My single piece of advice to any mummy to be is believe in yourself, stay strong, fear nothing and the calmness will come and help you. Xx