I woke up around 1.50am with tummy ache, assumed it was the kebab from the night before so popped off to the toilet, I was in there a good half an hour before I realised the pains I was getting were actually pretty regular and figured I should time them. After an hour I decided yes they are contractions, yes I’m in labour! I went downstairs and woke up my OH who’d been sent to the sofa when our daughter took over the bed! I told him calmly “we’re getting our baby today”. I gave him the option of going up to bed or helping me set up the living room with the birth pool, he helped, and made LOTS of tea !!

By 5am everything was ready and the pool was full, contractions were getting pretty painful now so I decided to jump in. Bad idea.
My labour all but stopped, contractions became extremely weak and went from 2 mins apart to 6-7 mins. Darcie was up now and wanting to get in the water. She paced the room with me and we did bounces, anything to kick things back up again. We decided my OH should go to work as it seemed nothing was happening. 8.34 my mum turned up and made me ring the midwives. Contractions were about 3 mins apart and super intense, I rang for a midwife and text the OH to come back from work.

We were so pleased to welcome this little man on Wednesday, 6 days late but at home.

It was a slow start and I spent the morning watching Netflix and eating bacon butties (beats tea and toast).
My contractions were of no real pattern but one warm bath later they increased and intensified so it was a call to the community midwives. They arrived at 3pm, all relaxed and we chatted as they monitored the contractions from a far. I knew it was time to go in the pool then at 5:40pm he arrived.

Hot Water and Towels

In old movies you would always hear someone shout ‘get hot water and towels’ when a person was in labour, it has been debated as to what the hot water and towels were actually for! Perhaps to occupy the least useful person and get them out of the way, or maybe towels to mop up and hot (boiling) water to sterilise things.

Interestingly things really haven’t changed that much and in a recent poll asking local home birthing families what items they would recommend for a home birth, both old towels and a birthing pool made it to the top of the list! (See below for the full list).

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.