Lizzie’s Birth Story

On the evening of 24^th February my parents came over for a glass of wine. I was having crampy feelings and sitting on an exercise ball. However, having felt I was ‘about to give birth’ for the last couple of weeks I wasn’t thinking much of them. 

I really felt on the precipice of something but equally felt it was most likely another false alarm… When my parents left I had a bath. I messaged my doula Amy so that she was in the know and didn’t go too deeply to sleep if I did end up needing her in the night. In the time of messaging and being in the bath the contractions became 3 in 10 and 45 seconds plus in length, 4x 4 in, 8 out breaths, so Amy made her way over. 

We got the birth pool ready and spoke easily between contractions. I was focussed on remaining calm, not entering ‘red’, staying ‘green’. We booted up the Tens machine which was really effective and the contractions continued to be around 3 every 10 minutes for the next few hours.

Around 5am the midwives arrived. Their arrival coincided with the sun rising, and shortly after my contractions began to slow. What had been 4 breath length contractions had become 2 breaths, and the intensity was far less. Amy and I joked that this was a werewolf baby, not going to be born in the daytime. The midwives and Amy decided it best was to leave and come back when contractions restarted. 

Before they went I was offered an examination of my cervix. We tried to do this on my VERY soft bed, and the examination happened too fast and was really uncomfortable. The midwife immediately stopped when I asked. If contractions hadn’t already stopped, they certainly had after this.

We agreed that I should get some rest and try to boost oxytocin – Amy made the excellent suggestion that maybe what I needed was a good cuddle with my dog Luna who was staying with my parents.

I headed over to my parents who live round the corner, stopping on the side of the road for small contractions, I still had my tens machine attached. I’d already at this point thrown up quite a lot. My parents offered me toast, fruit and cups of tea. A lot of it came up. I was put to bed in my parents’ room, my mum shut the curtains, and the dogs rallied round to offer support.

I was TRYING to sleep, but was still having pretty regular and increasing intensity contractions.

At some point my parents walked me home. Mum stayed with me. I must have messaged Amy, because she came back and took over from my mum which I was very grateful for.

Through the rest of the evening and into the night the contractions and the sick kept coming. I tried various positions in and out of the pool, up and down the stairs, but they didn’t seem to be changing or increasing in strength.

I’m a bit blurry about how the time passed, but at some point during the early hours of the 26th February Amy called the midwives to come out again. We discussed what the options could be from here, bearing in mind we were now well beyond 24 hours in.

I decided an examination would be helpful at this point and was supported with gas and air and found a much more comfortable position on my bedroom floor. The midwife told me my cervix was  ‘2cm dilated and paper thin’, which they said was great news because things had the potential to move quickly from there (if only!) then the midwives took the gas and air left again as once again, they felt things were slowing down. 

That wasn’t my experience. When everyone left I felt like things carried on. I tried to sleep but I couldn’t sleep through the contractions and still the sick kept coming. Nothing would stay down. My mum took over from Amy who showed her a pressure point on the sacrum but she is slightly (a lot) deaf and couldn’t hear when I asked her to stop as she was pressing too hard.

It was around here that my mum suggested we time the contractions. I tried to show her the Freya app but she wasn’t able to use it, keeping going to WhatsApp. I tried to use it myself but found every time I picked up my phone it was back in a different place to the button for pressing for a contraction and was getting increasingly frustrated by the situation I was in, and feeling quite powerless. 

She suggested we call the midwives. She told them the app wasn’t working (it was) and that it looked like contractions every 5 minutes when I could see they were every 3. It was difficult as I wanted to be ‘in the zone’ but equally needed the right message to be passed across. Thankfully the midwife asked to speak to me, and while speaking to me I had two heavy and long contractions and they clearly deemed that enough to get someone out. They said they’d phone back in 15 minutes. 

And the message was that the main contact midwife I had had during my pregnancy was coming out and she’d be over in 5 minutes. She was over so fast, and I just signalled to Mum it was okay and she could go downstairs now.

This midwife silently set me up with gas and air, and quietly sat in the room and watched. She reminded me I could choose whether I wanted to be checked on as she wasn’t worried about baby, and put on a great playlist. I could finally just relax and concentrate on what I was doing. She was everything I needed in that moment.

Shortly after this, Amy and the student midwife I had also had during my pregnancy arrived. Another community midwife swapped in (as my midwife wasn’t even on call – I’m crying writing this as she 100% got me through what was otherwise a real low).  

I think my mum also left around this time. Suddenly things felt a lot louder, check-ins felt relentless and people whispering sounded like full blown conversations in my ear. The tapping of the midwife’s laptop sounded super loud, and the ring doorbell seemed to go off constantly announcing another arrival at the front door. 

I tried to play music in my headphones but it felt like I’d put them on and a moment later be asked again if the baby could be monitored. I tried asking not to have monitoring for an hour rather than every 15 minutes (baby had always been totally fine), but the response to this of ‘remember what we discussed, it’s really important we check on health of baby’… took up more time not being focused on what I was trying to do. 

I asked for less people in the room, trying to recreate the feeling I’d had before… but then felt awful as was asked who I wanted to leave and so I asked that just the main midwife remained. I didn’t want everyone to go, I just wanted noise and movement to stop.

I was in and out of the pool trying to intensify contractions. At some point around now I got water on the gas and air and had a pretty intense time breathing through while the midwives fixed it with spare parts. I think it was around now I agreed to have my cervix dilation checked and it was discovered I was at 10cm (great news!).

One of the midwives suggested my bladder might be full and blocking the exit as I just couldn’t pee which may also explain the slow progress.

In the end my bladder had to be drained twice!

The checks continued, and I went to sit on the toilet, and in the shower for a period. We tried a couple contractions without gas and air to intensify things.

I could feel the bubble of waters – I was really surprised how plastic-y it felt! It just didn’t seem to want to go and I was concerned that this was holding things up, so in the end we decided to break my waters.

Then apparently 3 hours went by!

By now everyone was getting a bit concerned at how long things had been going and I was told that I would need to transfer to the JR if the baby wasn’t born soon.

I tried various positions, holding onto Amy and squatting, hands and knees, lunging. I was told to put knees together and feet out, and push like having a big poo.

The whole team of now 3 midwives and Amy were telling me that’s it, just a bit more, just a bit more. It felt like always a bit more!! I felt exhausted and it was burning but I knew I didn’t want to go to the JR for further intervention (let alone the trip to the JR while going through this!).  

Eventually when nobody was expecting it as the contraction had passed, Freya was born into this world at 1209 on the 27^th February 2026. Those last two pushes I have no idea where I found the energy from.

Freya was placed in my arms. There is a video of me in this moment, completely drained of everything. I couldn’t really believe this thing was a total human that had been inside and was now in my arms. I was asked to check the sex, and looked at the umbilical cord announcing that as suspected it was a boy, haha. Someone else advised me to look again! A girl. A baby girl.

I took the injection to expedite the delivery of the placenta as the team were concerned by how exhausted I was and the risk of blood loss given my iron reserves being on the low side.

I then had a shower as Freya had done a sticky meconium poo all over me on arrival.

I was checked for whether I needed stitches, again slowly, with gas and air, this involved a finger up bum to check the extent of damage but genuinely at this point I was so elated at having done it – birthed at home – nothing could faze me. Unfortunately the midwife suspected a third degree tear which was not suitable to be repaired at home.

Seamlessly an ambulance arrived at the house to take Freya and I to the JR for stitches. The team were all so lovely.  I don’t think my house had ever had so many people in it. My mum arrived at the doorway and my parents followed me to the hospital with one midwife from the birth with me in the ambulance.

What a wonderful team: 5 new midwives, Amy, my mum, the dogs. A wild 48 hours.

Something I’ll never do again but not a traumatic experience as I felt fully in control throughout.

Since Freya’s birth a few people have suggested that my home birth wasn’t ‘to plan’ because I had to go into hospital afterwards. I think exactly the opposite of this. If I had not been at home I am convinced that I would have faced considerably more interventions and seeing how my body reacted to the changes in people I honestly don’t think I would have made any progress. 

The aftercare has been brilliant, post operation at the JR, 24 hour feeding support at the Horton, and visits at home. 

12 days later I’m AMAZED at my body. My stomach has pretty much gone back to usual except for a brown line down the middle, I can now sit down comfortably, and my bladder works fine. My energy also, given the sleepless nights seems superhuman, perhaps the placenta tablets! Plus there’s the existence of a new little bundle of joy that I grew using just this same body! Who will grow into an adventure (or otherwise) cat… Freya <3 

I am immensely grateful and hopeful about the world and future from the experience we had, and to my body. What doesn’t break us makes us stronger. Plus my house feels like it’s been christened in some otherworldly beautiful way by the experience.

I don’t feel there is any way that I could have had a better experience for my first birth, and am immensely grateful to the whole team who were involved in my pregnancy, birthing, and post birth experience.