It's taken me forever to post this... Being my first baby It's taken a while to adjust to everything! Life will never be the same again.
Anyway on with the birth story. On 10th February (Saturday night) I did some bouncing on my new gym ball and was having quite a lot of KNUF's (twinges down below), but then I had been having them for about a fortnight so that was nothing unusual. I went to bed at midnight and then got woken up at 2.00 in the morning of the 11th with tightenings. I managed to stay in bed until 5.30 breathing through these as I knew that any rest I could get would be helpful and I kept on telling myself that this may not be the real thing - although by 8.00 I had been having contractions very regularly and was contracting every 5 minutes so I don't think there was any doubt!
DH tried to call the midwife at 8.30 but no-one was answering so he called the labour ward who said that we may not be able to have the homebirth we wanted as they were very busy at the moment and that they would get someone to call us back. Midwife finally turned up at the house at 10.00 ish and examined me. She looked a bit shocked and said that she could not find my cervix and my waters were bulging - and hurried herself getting another midwife and her delivery pack ready.
She then said that she had gas and air but not the tubing to go with it so I would have to wait for the other midwife if I wanted any! By the time that she turned up (40 minutes later) my waters had broken and I was pushing so when asked if I wanted it said no as there didn't seem any point as I was nearly there and coping with just breathing (and being a bit noisy).
At 11.30 after some to-ing and fro-ing, and cutting the cord that was around the baby's neck meaning she was bungying up and down, baby Elizabeth Anne was born in our living room.
Midwives said that there was a great quiet moment afterwards when everyone just looked at her and everything was calm.
The midwifes were great and stayed with us for another few hours delivering the placenta, helping me bath and get into bed and settled.
It was lovely being able to chill out after and call all the relatives to let them know the news and hear their reactions!
I would thoroughly recommend a homebirth for anyone who has had a normal pregnancy who fancies it. I was able to go whereever I wanted in the house, have my own bathroom all to myself and really go into myself to focus on the labour. I found that the time went quicker than I thought it would. I would also recommend looking into active birth positions as I spent the whole time on all fours which I'm convinced help to speed things up and meant I could cope with the pain better.
DH was great and did as I told him the whole time (good man!), allowed me to just get on with things and made sure that I was topped up with energy tablets and lucozade to keep me going as we were very aware that the main reason for homebirths ending up in hospital was tiredness.
So we are absolutely delighted with the whole experience and with our beautiful little girl.