Hello,
I haven't posted on this thread before, but some of you may remember my post from a month or so ago about first-time homebirths.
Well, all went to plan and two weeks ago we had our baby at home. Just wanted to share my postive homebirth story with you all...
It started with a tiny show on Thursday afternoon (baby was due on the Saturday). I didn't want to get too excited because I'd had occasional cramping pains for about two weeks, and knew my body was gradually preparing itself. Later that evening the cramping got worse and I felt generally a bit weird (getting tetchy about dog hairs on the sofa and tidying up....). Woke at about midnight with strong contraction-like pains - stayed in bed for about an hour feeling a bit panicky - could this really be it?
Eventually woke up DH and we got up to drink tea and see what would happen. Contractions much easier when out of bed, felt much calmer - about 7 minutes apart, quickly moved to 5 minutes. We rang the Delivery Unit at about 4am to ask them to let the midwives know. Had a chat soon after with one of the team of on-call midwives. We were both calm and dealing with the contractions so we agreed that there was no need for her to come out yet.
Spend the rest of the night playing cards (great distraction, even if I had to jump down on all fours every few minutes!), and when this got too difficult alternating between bath/ball/bed. DH was great and helped talk me through contractions.
By about 7ish the contractions were 3 minutes apart - but then seemed to become more irregular, but more painful. We asked for a midwife to call in later that morning to see how we were getting on. Midwife arrived at 10 am, and contractions disappeared for her visit! However, she had a look and saw that I was 5cm dillated.
No sign of waters breaking.
When she left us, things started up again and got stronger - but still bearable. I kept active, tried to eat some toast etc. By about 2 pm, the pain had got much worse and I began to feel a bit out of my depth and wanted the reassurance of the midwives - so we called them and said we felt we needed a bit of help.
Our main midwife arrived about 40 minutes later. I'd moved up to the bedroom by this point and was glued to my birthing ball. She had a look and saw that I was 7-8 cm. The midwife was very diplomatic and left us to it as much as she could - apart from coming and checking the baby's heartbeat.
After this point things are a bit more blurry - I remember the contractions being very hard to work through. As there was only an hour of gas and air, I didn't want to waste it as I didn't know how much worse things would get. In the event I never even saw it!
Things got increasingly focused and instintive and I seem to have gone off into my own world and didn't really interact with people as I had been. Was sick a few times.
The second midwife arrived at some point.
Baby had moved to an OP position at the last moment so I ended up pushing for nearly three hours. It was the hardest thing I've ever done and by the end I wondered if it would ever be over. The midwives and my DH kept me focused by reassuring me that I didn't want to transfer at this stage...but if the pushing went on much longer we would have to (clever ploy!).
As the waters still hadn't broken - the midwives asked if I was happy to have them broken. Gabriel was born about half an hour later - beauituful and healthy, he'd been happy all through the labour!
I had an assisted third stage as I was so tired by this point. Very glad I did.
Fortunately the perineum remained intact, although I did have a tiny tear in the vaginal wall which needed a couple of stitches.
The midwives were fantastic - a good combination of support and practical common sense.
Being able to have a bath and be in my own bed afterwards was amazing!
Without a doubt the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm so glad we did it at home. I think if we'd been in hospital there would have been much more pressure to speed things up a bit and I suspect we would have had an assisted delivery.
So glad I had the chance to find out my own inner strengh/resources instead - I still can't believe I did it!
Good luck everyone.