In a nutshell:
- Planned homebirth
- Waterbirth
- About 9 hours from start to finish
- About 4 hours in ‘established labour’
- No medical pain relief
- Hypnobirthing techniques: breathing techniques, positive affirmations, relaxations, visualisation and light touch massage
Having had a fairly traumatic birth with my first child, I really wanted my second birth to feel less scary and stressful. I read quite a few birth books and started following lots of online hypnobirthing teachers on social media, but it was the face to face hypnobirthing course with the wonderful Ashleigh (Mamastay Yoga & Hypnobirthing) that made a big difference to how I felt about my birth and was key to me to getting a positive birth experience! Not just in terms of what happened on the day, but it massively impacted decisions I made about my birth, especially where I wanted to give birth.
Why I chose a home birth
I didn’t decide on a home birth on a whim; I actually did a lot of research and it was a really tough decision. My main reason for wanting a home birth was that I was scared of a repeat of last time (feeling rushed, agreeing to interventions I didn’t really understand; a typical case of one thing leading to another and resulting in a heavily medicalised assisted delivery – very nearly an emergency caesarean). Some people look back on a highly medicalised birth and think ‘thank goodness I was in hospital or something bad could have happened,’ but I looked back and thought ‘if only I hadn’t gone to hospital, those bad things might not have happened’. I can’t possibly know for sure that I’m right, but that is what I believe. In the end it came down to weighing up the risk of what might happen to me if I went to hospital, with the risk of what might happen if I didn’t. I spoke to my midwife at length about what they could and couldn’t do at home, and possible scenarios that would mean I might choose to transfer to hospital, and how quickly I could get to theatre compared to if I were at the birth centre or on the labour ward, and in the end, I came to the conclusion that home was the safest place for me and my baby. (If you’re interested in reading more about the pros and cons of home, birth centre and hospital births, read my blog: 3 myths about home birth, busted).
My husband was a bit more dubious than I was, but he read a book called The Father’s Home Birth Handbook by Leah Hazard and this seemed to convince him. I haven’t read it myself, but James, who has devoted his working life to spread sheets (I think he says ‘finance’ at parties!) and so usually makes decisions based on facts and statistics, said that the book explained the data very clearly. Of course he’d have gone along with whatever I wanted to do, but having him fully on board was hugely important given the active role I wanted him to play in the birth.
Home Birth Midwives
I think it was mostly luck rather than design that I got to see the same midwife for most of my antenatal appointments. Research has shown that women who see the same midwife throughout their pregnancy (called a ‘continuity of care model’) have better outcomes, so I think I benefited from this. Towards the end of my pregnancy I saw a few other midwives who worked in my community team, and as it happened, I met the midwife who would attend my birth (though I didn’t know this at the time). They were really supportive of my choice to birth at home and my midwife even dropped the birth pool off at my house when she came round for the home visit. (I don’t think many places offer free use of a birth pool, so I was lucky there, too! Check with your midwife, though!).
The Birth Plan
I wrote my birth plan using image icons (see the Positive Birth Movement’s website where you can download them for free!) as I wanted to make it easy for my midwife to see what I wanted. I talked it through with James so he knew what was important and what was less important to me. This was really helpful as it meant he could answer lots of the midwife’s questions without bothering me, as we’d already discussed it and it was written down on the plan. For example, when we called her and she asked if we wanted her to come straight to us, or go via the hospital to pick up pain relief, he told her to come straight over, as he knew I didn’t want to be offered pain relief. He didn’t need to ask me, and he knew that if he did ask, this would only force me to focus on pain and potentially create pain where none existed (we go through the science of this on my course, by the way, but trust me, it’s true!)
Practising hypnobirthing
Me and my husband made sure we set time aside to practise some of the techniques we had learned on our hypnobirthing course regularly and I also made a big effort to surround myself with positive birth affirmations and to read as many positive birth stories as I could. I had the affirmations up by the kettle, in the bathroom, and by my bed – anywhere I knew I’d see them daily. I switched them around quite a bit, too! One of my favourites was:
My surges are not stronger than me, because they are me.
As I’d given birth before, and found the surges quite painful, this really helped convince me that I was going to be able cope with them differently this time.
To be honest, at the group course we felt a bit embarrassed practising the relaxations, and even at home, the first few times I just giggled! I’d never done meditation or anything similar before and to be honest I felt like a bit of a prat! But we kept practising and eventually it felt relaxing. James practised light touch massage a bit too, but I didn’t really like it! Interestingly, during the birth he did it and it really helped, so I was glad he had that trick up his sleeve even if I didn’t think we would use it. It just goes to show, the birthing you can like different things to the everyday you!
I’ve included the planning, practise and hypnobirthing course in my ‘birth story’ because I really do think it’s a big part of why I had such a great birth experience! But onto the main event…
My positive home birth…
I woke at around 2.30am feeling uncomfortable but didn’t think it was labour. I kept visiting the toilet and just didn’t feel comfy lying in bed. I only felt comfy standing upright. I assumed the baby was just in an awkward position because the feeling wasn’t coming and going the way that I was expecting contractions/surges to. It was more constant. I found standing up and leaning on the window-sill eased the discomfort a bit but I was tired (it was the middle of the night, after all!) so I kept trying to get back to sleep, but without much success.
At 5.30am I threw up. I’d read somewhere that this can sometimes be a sign of early labour so I wasn’t worried. Shortly after, I started to feel the surges coming and going, feeling more like what I thought labour should feel like, so I started using the up-breathing techniques that I’d learned on my hypnobirthing course. As I hadn’t had much sleep, I decided to try and rest, so I built up lots of pillows on the bed and lay on my left side, as propped up as possible, with pillows between my legs, and slept between surges. Meanwhile, my husband was busy getting our 3 year old up and ready for nursery, so I was mostly alone, which didn’t bother me at all! I felt really calm, probably because I thought (wrongly!) this was going to be ages until anything interesting happened. I still wasn’t sure if ‘this was it’ yet. In fact, I remember saying to James, just before he left to take P to nursery, that maybe he could work from home today. His answer: ‘Well, I’ve got an important meeting at three’! He will NEVER live that one down!
After a couple of hours lying and breathing through the contractions, I felt like I wanted to move, so I got into an all fours position on my bedroom floor. James returned from the nursery-run and I told him to get me downstairs and get the birth pool set up as I felt things were well-underway and I was keen to get off my brand new bedroom carpet and get down to the ugly brown carpet in our front room that I had secretly hoped would be ruined during the birth so I could get a new one. (It wasn’t! Home birth really isn’t as messy as you might think! Two years on and I’m still stuck with it!)
Downstairs, I tried to sit on the birth ball, but it felt so uncomfortable, like I was literally blocking the exit! So I kneeled on the floor with my arms up on the ball, swaying. I also started recording my surges on the Freya app, which was useful as it told me when I was in ‘established labour’ and so gave us our cue to call the midwife (my husband was a bit busy trying to fill the birth pool and adorning the room with fairy lights to be counting the length and frequency of contractions!).
Hello, Midwife!
When the midwife arrived, I heard James greet her at the door and show her the birth plan, explaining a few important preferences and then giving her time to read the rest. She came into the room and as I had already met her at my appointments, I instantly felt safe and in good hands. It was nice not to have to think about introductions or small talk, as we’d done all that and now we were just concentrating on birth! My plan had specified that I wanted to be left to it and didn’t want to chat, and the midwife listened to this and didn’t attempt any small talk.
No Vaginal Exams
I wasn’t in the pool yet because I wanted to wait until the midwife arrived, just in case she wanted to do anything that might require me getting out of the pool! I knew that it was standard for midwives to offer a vaginal examination when they first arrived and even though I knew they were optional, I had heard stories about midwives getting annoyed when women declined and so even though I didn’t see the value in them, I had decided not to decline the first one as I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with my midwife! (I look back at this thought process now in horror, by the way! But I am just being honest!)
I tried a few times to get into a lying down position so she could do a vaginal examination, but it felt completely wrong and my body just wouldn’t do it! Thanks to my hypnobirthing course, I knew that the vaginal exam was entirely optional (and I knew that often they are more of a hindrance than a help) so I felt confident saying I didn’t want one. The midwife was really supportive of this decision; I was worrying about nothing! She said she didn’t need to do an exam because she could see perfectly well that labour was progressing nicely. She reassured me that baby was going to be here soon and helped me into the pool.
I didn’t push
It was at this point that I felt a change in my contractions and what many call the ‘bearing down’ sensation. Breathing through the contractions became harder and I started to use my ‘horse breath’ technique (that I had read about in the brilliant book Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth). This was bloody brilliant! I made a few low, deep, almost mooing noises too. I must have sounded like a nutter but it felt amazing! With each surge I just focused on breathing. I had no idea what ‘stage’ we were at, because I’d had no exams and had asked for minimal talking, so I wasn’t told I was in the so called ‘pushing phase’ or anything like that. I think this helped – rather than fixating on stages or how far off I might be from the end, I took one surge at a time and just focused on breathing.
I’d requested no coached pushing on my birth plan and my midwife respected that. I remember her saying ‘trust your body’ once, I think when I was making a particularly strange noise, but other than that, she was practically invisible! She checked the baby’s heart rate regularly without fuss or conversation (I’d stated she could do this without asking permission on my birth plan) so really she didn’t need to disturb me to ask me anything! I think the next thing she said was ‘get ready to catch your baby,’ which came as a bit of a surprise to be honest, as I didn’t realise we were there yet!
I was only in the pool for about an hour and my baby was born at 11.27am! I brought her up to my chest (with the help of the midwife) and cuddled her. She didn’t cry, but I knew this wasn’t a concern. Often in the birth is physiological and stress free, babies come out and are pretty chilled, too. She was just calmly snuggling into me. The midwife very discretely checked her without taking her away from me and I sat there in the pool for a while just looking from her to my husband in awe of what had just happened.
Birthing the Placenta
I’d researched options for birthing the placenta but to be honest, I wasn’t really as clued up as I might have been about the pros and cons of birthing it naturally or with help. In the end I think my birth plan said I would decide on the day, and so I did!
After some time in the pool, cuddling Daphne and finding out her sex, my hazy, birth-trance wore off and I suddenly felt very alert, and very aware of the fact that I was in a pool and naked and just felt a bit ‘ikk’! I really just wanted to get out and be wrapped up in a fluffy dressing gown! I also felt I wanted to get the placenta out so that I could relax and enjoy my baby. So, I asked the midwife for the injection to speed up birthing the placenta. I sat on my sofa (on lots of protective sheets actually!) with Daphne on my chest, and she helped me birth the placenta. It was over very quickly and painlessly.
The first breastfeed after birth
I sat there having skin-to-skin with Daphne and giving her her first feed while the midwife checked me over and gave me a few stitches. Honesty time: the first feed is sometimes depicted as this beautiful, calm, sensual moment, and maybe it is for some people, but I actually remember feeling a bit, well, ‘ikk’ at this point. The thing is, I love breastfeeding, I actually love the feeling (when it’s established!) but I forgot that initially, and when you’ve not done it for a while (or at all), it can take a bit of getting used to! One woman was sewing me up down there, and another was chewing on my boob. It wasn’t a beautiful moment, but it was definitely fine!
A couple of hours after Daphne was born, the midwife left and it was just me, James and Daphne, cuddled up on the sofa. It was such a lovely afternoon! We joked about how it was the most relaxing day we’d had since our elder daughter, Penelope (‘P’), was born, as we were both at home, P was being looked after elsewhere, and Daphne was asleep; we literally didn’t know what to do with ourselves! We just drank tea and chatted and it felt surreal not to be working, or rushing to pick P up, or making anyone tea, or doing housework! (not that I’d recommend having a baby as a way of getting time to yourself generally, but it did work out quite nicely on this one day!)
A few hours later, Penelope came home and met her little sister. She was just so excited to see her! She’d spent the morning at nursery, the afternoon at our friends’ house, and was home to meet Daphne and able to sleep in her own bed, with all of her family around her that night. I think this made a really positive impact on how well she adapted to being a big sister. I spent three nights in hospital after having P, and with no children at home, this didn’t feel like a big deal. But I think having us all together, from the off, was a wonderful start for our new family of four. This was actually one of reasons I was drawn to a home birth.
What made it a positive birth?
The up-breathing and down-breathing strategies really helped me stay calm all the way through, which I know helped keep my oxytocin flowing and was probably why it all to happen so swiftly and with no stalling or complications. I felt in control from start to finish. I also think that for me, the knowledge I had gained from the hypnobirthing course about what is actually happening to your body when you give birth helped me to understand all of the intense feelings and embrace them, rather than fear them. When surges were powerful I thought ‘that’s good, it means birth is working’ rather than ‘ouch! I can’t do this!’ (Which is how I reacted with my first labour, without the benefit of Hypnobirthing).
Having a birth plan was a big help, and having a birth partner who had been actively involved in writing it also made a big difference. Not having to break out of my lovely birth trance to explain to people what I wanted to happen meant that the oxytocin kept flowing and by body just kept doing what it needed to do.
Lastly, I think being at home took lots of pressure off and allowed me to feel in control. When you’re on your own turf, you just feel more at ease. There’s also the fact that you don’t have to move right when labour is starting to feel intense, which can feel uncomfortable and unnerving, often resulting in stalled labour or more painful labour (because a relaxed mum feels contractions less than a tense mum). However, if you don’t think a home birth is right for your circumstances, I think that there is lots you can do to try and achieve the benefits of a home birth in another setting. Practically, you can bring things to make the room feel nice, but I think it’s just as much about mindset. It’s harder to feel in control on someone else’s turf, but it can definitely be achieved.
Knowing my midwife also had a big impact, but I know this isn’t something that’s easy to control. You could, however, try and get as much continuity of care as possible during antenatal appointments by speaking with the receptionist and trying to book in with the same midwife each time. Every maternity service operates slightly differently, but it’s definitely worth talking about. Other options are having your own private midwife, or hiring a doula.
Why does it matter how positive the birth was?
There’s an idea floating around that birth is bloody awful, and is just a means to an end. Something you have to get through to get your baby. Whilst this is certainly how many women experience childbirth, I wholeheartedly disagree with anyone who thinks this kind of birth is inevitable, or even normal.
There’s also this notion that ‘all that matters is a healthy baby and mum at the end of it‘. I’m not disputing that we all want a healthy baby and mum, but rather that seeing this as some aspirational goal, I see it as the floor target; the bare minimum, I guess.
A positive birth can have a massive impact on how you feel as a mum, those early weeks, and years, bonding, your mental health. The impact is real, and important. And a positive birth is absolutely attainable! It’s not that wacky an idea. It looks different for everyone, and isn’t always a home birth. It could be a planned induction where mum feels fully informed, or a planned home birth that turns into an unplanned caesarean, but where mum is informed and makes decisions that are right for her all the way through the process.
I don’t think I can even put into words the impact that having a positive birth has had on me. It’s made me feel really confident, like, ‘if I did that, anything’s possible‘ confident, which after years of self doubt and second guessing myself, is pretty refreshing! Since giving birth to Daphne, I kind of go through life assuming things will be ok, and that I will succeed. It’s a pretty amazing mindset shift (and I wish I could bottle some way of achieving this without having a baby! I am sure there are other ways!)
I read a book (Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage by Rachel Reed) that made me realise this isn’t that wacky a thought. Quite a lot of women feel this was after a positive birth! We just don’t hear much about it (I’m not surprised! I mean, I can see your eyes rolling, I know this sounds like something Amanda from Motherland would say!)
I also think, and this isn’t very sciency, but I really do think it had a big impact on how smoothly Daphne adjusted to her new world. She’s been a really calm baby. When she was small I remember thinking she just never cried! She’d make some noise that indicated she’d like some milk, or a nap, but we didn’t have many full on ‘why’s she crying?! moments with Daphne. She’s totally chilled. Is that anything to do with her birth? I’ve no idea! But I’m not the only one who’s noticed this connection. Lots of hypnobirthing mums talk about how calm their babies are.
But life-altering mindset shifts and calm babies aside, having a positive birth matters because, why shouldn’t you have a positive birth? Why should you have a horrible time of it if you don’t have to? We need to change the broken record about birth being awful and set our sights a bit higher. Having a positive birth is absolutely attainable!
If you’d like to prepare for a positive birth, check out my hypnobirthing courses. I would love to work with you to help you to create your own positive birth story!
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Pea in the Pod Hypnobirthing 