Hazel, Richard and Archie's Home to Hospital -

First Time Mum

 

I decided to go for a home birth as I do not like hospitals. Having started my pregnancy in London it wasn’t even

mentioned as an option but when I had my booking appointment at 24 weeks when I moved to Bristol the midwife

was really pro home birth and so I started to consider it. Having taken Joey’s hypnobirthing course and

understanding a bit more about labour I made the decision to go for a home birth as I knew I would feel more

comfortable and relaxed. I had early signs things were about to begin on Saturday morning and kept active during

the day. My contractions started ramping up at about 5pm so we made sure we had a good dinner and started to set

the house up. The contractions were manageable but getting closer together so we called the hospital at midnight,

they put us through to the community midwife on call who said to call back when we thought we needed her to come

round. 

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We called at 3:30am and she arrived at around 4am and found I was 7cm dilated. I chose to have a VE (vaginal examination) as by then I wanted to know how I was doing and knowing I had made it to 7cm really gave me a boost. We had the pool set up and filling so when the midwife arrived I started on the gas an air and waited for my husband to put enough cold water in the pool to cool it down! (Note to birth partners don’t run it at bath temperature). I had been progressing well, but sensed things had slowed down, as did the midwife, so I got out of the pool around 7:30am. The midwife examined me again and I was 9.5cms so she suggested I move around more and try out some different positions to try and get things going. Including sitting on the toilet but I found that unbearable. She suspected, as my waters had not broken, the bulge of the water was not putting enough pressure on my cervix. After an hour she examined me again and suggested she break my waters, which worked and the head moved down and got things going. However, there was meconium in the water so I had to be transferred in. The only slight wobble I had was when the paramedic asked if they needed to blue light in and the midwife said yes. The midwife suspicion that the head would put enough pressure down to dilate the last 0.5cm was correct and by the time I was in hospital (10 mins later) I needed to push and he arrived within an hour of going through the doors safe and well. Not quite the ending we wanted, but as I had transferred in from home they sent down to midwifes from the MLU to deliver Archie and they were brilliant, I don’t even remember them looking at my birth preferences but they kept things as natural as possible without being asked. All the techniques learnt definitely helped although a lot of my preferences went out the window at the end I still had a really positive experience! I felt in control of my birth throughout I took all suggestions from the midwifes when things slowed down as I sensed it had before they even told me and I knew something needed changing. All of the midwifes I came across were amazing and I will definitely try for another home birth again if we have another baby.

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