First Home Birth Story - Birth Before Arrival
I had a few days to go until my due date for my second baby. A friend came round with her two young children - she was a year ahead of me with her boys and I had been watching what life was like with two with a similar age gap, I did feel a little nervous! We had the normal kind of day that you have with an 18 month old - trip to the park, lots of snacks, not much chance to sit down.
Once they had gone I sat down on the floor to tidy up the toys and my waters broke. I was never really sure when my waters broke with my eldest but this was much more like the sudden gush that happens in films, normally in the aisles of the supermarket. I phoned my husband many times (he didn’t answer as he was cycling home from work) and then phoned the labour line. We were planning a home birth so the midwife came over to check me out, watched me continue to tidy up with toys with no obvious contractions and then left us for the night.
I had a very long labour with my eldest, complete with several trips in and out of hospital, so we weren’t expecting anything to happen very quickly. I was conscious that my waters breaking meant that I was now ‘on the clock’ and would be under some pressure to head into hospital the following evening if nothing happened on its own - I was very keen to avoid giving birth in hospital again.
Getting Ready For A home birth
My in-laws arrived to pick up my eldest and take him back to theirs for the night and we settled in for what we thought would be a long night. The online food shop finally arrived (one of the few times the delivery had been late!) and I realised that I really didn’t want to eat anything. We made our base in the sitting room, my husband and I taking turns to bounce on the birth ball and trying to watch something on TV to keep us distracted. I can remember leaning on the windowsill in the sitting room during contractions and worrying that I wasn’t really coping with labour this time round. We were a couple of hours in and I already felt like I needed a bit more from my breathing than the calming Centred Breath that I had learnt in my Daisy Birthing classes - time for the Escalator Breath.
My contractions didn’t feel like they were coming particularly thick and fast - the midwife had told us to phone back when I was having three contractions every 10 minutes and we weren’t at that stage. (I know now, after having four babies, that my contractions don’t tend to ramp up and get close together like they do in the textbooks) I didn’t want to phone too early and have someone in the house and in our space for hours and hours while labour dragged on.
By about 11 o’clock my contractions were strong and coming more frequently so we decided we better phone. My husband called the labour line and went through the standard questions with them, then they wanted to talk to me. That wasn’t really possible by that stage, and as Mark took over the conversation again I suddenly felt a very strong urge to push. I never felt that with my eldest so it was a bit of a surprise!
Birth Before Arrival (BBA)
At this point Mark was told to hang up and phone 999 and the call handler talked him through the birth while I concentrated on this new, very strong sensation to bear down and birth my baby. I was so determined to have this baby without any assistance that I probably did myself some damage; if I had slowed down a little then I might not have torn in the same way. But the need to bear down was strong and I was terrified that everything would stop like it had with my eldest.
Shortly after Toby was born on the sitting room floor, the paramedics and then the midwives arrived. Mark’s main piece of advice for anyone in this situation is to put the door on the latch so you don’t have to leave your partner and very fresh baby to run and open the door! Everyone was lovely - looking back it is a little strange welcoming people into your house with your bare bum on display but I think the paramedics were mainly relieved that Toby had arrived safely and the hard work was done!
Reluctant Placenta and Second Degree TEars
Compared with the speed of Toby arriving, my placenta was very reluctant to come. I guess this was after the shock of having a baby on our own and then the house filling with people, not the best conditions for the oxytocin to flow for those last contractions to birth the placenta. We waited a while and then I was given an injection of syntocinon to encourage some contractions. My placenta finally arrived while I was sat on the toilet, which is where I suggest you go to people in my antenatal classes if the placenta is taking its time - it’s where we are most used to opening and releasing!
After that things didn’t quite go to plan. The midwife was worried that I had a third degree tear so Toby and I set off to hospital in the ambulance so I could be properly checked, with Mark following in the car. The benefit of transferring to hospital after a home birth is that the midwives come with you but don’t get pulled in to supporting other births in the hospital so we were well looked after while we waited.
It turned out to be a second degree tear, so not as bad as expected but I found the process of being stitched up really difficult. I was angry and disappointed that we had ended up having to go to hospital - after the safety of being at home and the kindness of the home birth midwives it felt quite jarring to be in hospital and interacting with medical professionals I wasn’t familiar with. The midwife wanted me to lie in bed with my legs in stirrups while we waited for the doctor so she didn’t have to waste any time in stitching me up - I refused. This is not a dignified position at the best of time and particularly not after giving birth in private at home without so much as a vaginal examination.
The whole experience of having stitches was not a positive one (my Daisy breathing techniques got a lot of use again!) but it was done. We finally made it home again by mid-morning - we got caught up in the morning shift change and then had a midwife who wanted us to stay in hospital until Toby had his first poo. At this point I threw the toys - we weren’t supposed to be in hospital, we were there because of me rather than Toby and I just wanted to get back home again!
Making it Home AFter Birth
When we did get back home I think the shock of what had happened settled on us both, as did the reality of looking after a tiny baby at the same time as an 18 month old (who now looked like an absolute giant in our eyes!). We spent the next few days muddling through and missing the visits from the midwives - Toby had been born just before midnight so we had different ideas about what counted as day 0 and when the midwives would be coming! (If I had my time again I wouldn’t have been trying to get up and out in the first days anyway but I thought it was the right thing to do at the time)
I ask myself a lot if this birth was so much quicker than my first because I was at home - I know second births are often quicker but what was the impact of feeling safe and comfortable and confident because I had done it before. Granted, my first birth hadn’t turned out the way I had hoped but I had laboured for hours and hours and coped with it so I knew I could do that part. It does make me wonder what birth might have been like with my eldest if we had birthed at home. And then what the impact of a more positive birth experience would have been on our postnatal experience. I know home births are not for everyone but, for me, there is something about hospitals that puts me on edge and does not help me to relax or the oxytocin to flow.
Toby’s birth gave me a huge amount of confidence in myself and my body and I think went some way towards healing the feelings of failure I had after my first birth. And it’s given my husband something to use as an interesting fact about himself for any ice-breaker session!