Minnie's birth

I was determined to have a natural birth and particularly to avoid an induction so I borrowed enough money to hire an independent midwife. Fiona (very experienced - really knows her stuff) and her assistant, Kerry (relatively new, very friendly, and someone I clicked with on a personal level) visited me for all of my ante-natal checks, each one lasting about an hour, so I felt very comfortable with them by the time I was full term.

This time there was no pressure on me to consider an induction. Fiona gave me the facts, and let me make my own decision. She recommended a homebirth website, which gave me a lot of confidence.

When I was forty-two weeks and one day pregnant, I sat up one night reading about birthing-pools. I was so taken by the idea that I decided, if I hadn’t gone into labour by the morning, to order one for myself.

As I turned my computer off and went to bed, I began to get contractions. I didn’t tell my husband, Alastair, as I hardly dared believe it was true. I slept for two hours before waking up and finding they’d got stronger. The first couple were OK, but then one came that was hard to deal with. I started doing the breathing and visualisation techniques from the Hypnobirthing book. It worked. For the next five hours, every ten minutes or so I’d have a contraction, but I didn’t want to call the midwife in the middle of the night unless something major was happening, so I just lay there, relaxed, and breathed through them.

Unlike the time before, I knew the sex and name of my baby, and it really felt like we were working together. When one visualisation stopped working, I’d make up a new one, and it was good. I imagined my belly as a hill, with all the strength and energy of the Earth, and I would breathe in, making the hill as big as I could, then blow the contractions over the hill and far away, on the wind. I made up a song, which I sang in my head to Minnie; it was a chant, to help us work her closer to the opening.

Finally morning came, and I woke Alastair up and told him to call his work to say he wasn’t coming in. Then I called Fiona, who was satisfied that I could do without her for a while. I packed Dawn off to playgroup with Alastair.

I wanted to cook some food for later, so that we’d all have something to eat when things got tiring (a bonus of homebirths). I found I had an ingredient missing, so I sent Alastair to the shop. A few minutes later, I discovered that my tomatoes were mouldy. Alastair didn’t have a mobile phone, so I set out to meet him. We met, and walked along the street together. When contractions came, I found that I could walk through them, but stopping was agony. Thankfully I managed a sort of Moses-act on the sea of traffic, and then paced up and down outside the shop while Alastair bought the tomatoes.

Back at home, I discovered that I couldn’t even chop a cucumber in between contractions, I was so distracted. It took me about two hours to make a salad. When contractions came, I would put my head on the counter and sway my hips till they went. By mid-morning, they were getting painful, so I got in the bath. That was nice for a bit, but my movement was so limited that I soon found I had to get out.

Fiona rang Alastair periodically, and at 2:00 she and Kerry came over. They brought their knitting, made themselves tea, and sat and chatted. It was good fun. I found that when I wanted a break, I could sit on my exercise ball and rock, and that slowed things down. I ate some lunch, and then got up to move around again.

Shortly before 3:00, Fiona suggested that Alastair and I go out for a walk. We went around the block, but this time walking was very uncomfortable, not to mention the embarrassment of stopping to have a contraction in full view of the neighbours.

When I got back, it took me a while to find a way of getting comfortable. I tried various positions on the ball, then clung to the banister, before settling in a doorway. I held the doorframe, swinging my hips in a wide figure of eight and blowing out through loose horsy-lips.

A little after 4:00, I felt the now-familiar, slightly sick, ‘I can’t do this’ feeling, and was sure I was in transition. Fiona offered to go and get the gas-and-air, but I asked her to examine me first to see how far along I was. She did, and told me I was only four cm dilated. I was devastated! I got up from the sofa, and instantly my waters flooded out, all over the floor.

Kerry dashed about cleaning it up, while Fiona stayed with me. Straight away I felt the urge to push, so I knelt down and leaned on Alastair’s lap as he sat in an armchair. I felt sick, and my perineum was burning, but half an hour later, with an unused sick bowl next to me and Fiona behind me to catch the baby, Minnie arrived, leaving only the tiniest tear that needed no treatment and caused me no pain once it had happened.

Fiona handed Minnie to me through my legs, which was difficult because my brain was elsewhere, the cord was short, and Minnie was so slippery. Then I sat back on the sofa to breastfeed Minnie while Fiona and Kerry performed the clean-up operation, hunted out towels and blankets, made notes, and delivered the placenta naturally, which took ten minutes. Fiona waited until the cord had stopped pulsating before helping Alastair to cut it.

oOo

I won’t go into all the advantages of homebirth here, because there are too many, but one I have only just discovered is that when you wish, three years afterwards, to write out the story, the midwife has already done most of it for you. Fiona presented me with a bound copy of all my notes from pregnancy, the birth, and the weeks afterwards, where she had thoroughly chronicled all our meetings and telephone conversations, with her own observations and some amusing anecdotes, as well as all the usual medical jargon.

 Me in labour. About 2 hours to go.

My newest baby.

Dawn's new little sister.