Our beautiful, beautiful son was born at home on Saturday 6th Feb in the morning, weighing 9lb 1oz. He is utterly perfect, with lots of hair and scrumptious velvet skin. Just looking at him makes me well up.
But a little fore-warning. Don't read this yet if you are a little fragile or anxious about your own impending birth. Especially your homebirth! Things turned out fine for us but didn't exactly go to plan.
Thursday 4th, 40+2, saw my MW who offered me a sweep, which I declined. I'd tried to find my cervix earlier that day and it was well out of reach, so I didn't think we?d have any success. Then DH and I headed off for an acupuncture appointment to try an 'alternative' induction method. I was very sceptical, but game for everything at that stage.
Friday 5th, 40+3, still no cervix to be found. I went to the hairdressers that afternoon, thinking I wouldn't get another chance for quite some time. At 6ish I had a bit of a show and was getting very mild period type backache, but nothing major so we still went out to visit friends, and when we got home watched 'Lost' and went to bed.
Saturday 6th, 40+4, wee small hours. At 2.30 in the morning I felt a little gush, thought, whoops, here we go, and dashed to the loo, whereupon I found myself experiencing a contraction that simply would not go away, and so 20 or 30 minutes later DH rang the hospital to ask them to send out a midwife. Finally the never-ending contraction did die down, and regular contractions started coming every 3 minutes or so. Then every 2 minutes. I got off the bed and knelt down on the floor leaning on the birth ball, and didn't budge from that spot! My mum arrived after a 40 mile dash, but still no midwife, who apparently was coming from miles away and struggling through the fog. DH managed to set up the entenox for me (thank goodness) and at this point I released DH temporarily to start filling the birth pool, knowing that my dad would take over the job.
Eventually the MW arrived around 5ish I think, closely followed by the second MW. The pool never really filled in time, and anyway I couldn't have made it downstairs if my life had depended on it so the water birth was abandoned, sadly. And after what seemed like an age of pushing, I eventually felt his little head move around the corner, as the MW put it, followed by that ring of fire that everyone describes, and which I'd never felt first time around. In actual fact, it was quite a welcome feeling since I knew I'd nearly done it. And then he was here, only 5 hours from whoops to hooray, all 9lb 1oz of him, with his hand up beside his head as he crowned, and screaming his arrival to the world. I felt completely elated and joyful.
But then unfortunately things started to go wrong.
(The abbreviated version of what happened next is a swift change from planned skin to skin and physiological 3rd stage to syntometrine, cord cut rapidly, baby given to DH, a 2L PPH, blue light dash to hospital, third degree tear, theatre, spinal, another 500ml blood lost, stitching, blood transfusion, 2 night stay in hospital. Blah. I didn't even get to hold DS until a couple of hours after the birth, when I squeezed in a quick bf before I went into theatre. Not what I had hoped for, given my plans for a wonderful home birth.)
However, we are home now and recovering well, and immensely grateful for all our blessings. DS is snuggled happily next to me as I write this and pregnancy already seems like a distant memory. We are both doing just fine.