I planned to have a homebirth with my first child, but unfortunately after 22 hours of labour at home, and a baby who was almost crowning, but simply would not ‘pop out’ we went to hospital and he was birthed there within an hour or two, with the help of some Syntocin.
Having gotten so close to having the birth I wanted, I was determined that this time, I would have my baby at home.

As with my first son, I had a lovely non-eventful pregnancy, and was well cared for by my independent midwife, who was also the midwife who ‘caught’ Tyler.

Things began very slowly, on Wednesday night, I was in bed just dozing off, when I felt a pop, and some of my waters leaked out. I didn’t get any pains to speak of, so went back to bed and slept for the rest of the night, waking in the morning with some mild period like pains.
I was having bloody show, so thought my plug must be coming away, and there might be some action from my cervix.
Then all the leaking and bleeding stopped, so I thought – false alarm, and dh went off to work, but called a little later, and said he had decided to come home after all, which was nice, because I was getting light pains again, so thought things may be starting.
Nothing really happened at all, until about 3:30pm, when I began having contractions with a vengeance, and they were very intense, enough so that I had fleeting thoughts of ‘I want drugs!!’
I had one particularly strong contraction, and felt myself begin to grunt through it, and thought to myself: “that felt like i was pushing!”
I decided that was just silly, as I had only just gone into labour really, and didn’t mention it to my partner.
With the next contraction though, I yelled to Ian “OMG – I’m pushing!!”
He got straight on the phone to our midwife, who we had spoken to earlier, but we thought things were progressing slowly, so she was waiting for our call.
He was in such a panic, he did not even say who he was, just “You’ve gotta come now! She’s pushing!” His worst nightmare is the thought of an unassisted birth.

Up until now I had been in the living room, leaning on furniture, and pacing around, but could not stand up any more, and felt an intense need to take my skirt and knickers off, as I knew this baby would not be long in coming.
I crawled up the hallway towards the bedroom, where I wanted to birth my baby, resting with contractions, and calling instructions to dh to lay down plastic and sheets.
I was in the bedroom pushing nicely, with dh applying hot towels to my lower back when our doula arrived, (we had rung her previously, and asked her to come when she was ready) and dh was so happy, to no longer be by himself with me, he almost cried!!
Our doula was great, she got straight onto the hot towels, and was strongly massaging my lower back with each contraction.
A little while later our midwife arrived, and by this time Louie’s head was on show with each contraction, a piece about the size of a 10-cent piece.
He was eventually born about an hour later, and was very white, just covered in vernix, as he was a little early by my dates.
He needed a little bit of mucous suctioned out of his nose and mouth, and a whiff of O2 to get him breathing properly.
Unfortunately I tore a fair bit, and needed to be stitched by our midwife, not something I would like to go through every day!

Our 2 year old son was present for the whole birth, and he was just great, took everything in his stride, was not distressed in the least, spent most of his time bouncing on the bed, or reading books, playing with toys, etc.
Even when I was being quite vocal, it didn’t phase him, he just gave me a couple of funny looks
We are very indebted to our Doula, as she helped out in so many ways, including supporting our toddler, and really helping to keep him feeling safe, happy, and at ease.

All in all, it was a simply wonderful birth, and best of all, it was at home!

Louie was born at 7:22pm after 4 hours of active labour, 8 lb 2 oz on the 19th of January.

He had apgars of 9, and 10.

It Was supposed to be a Waterbirth! The Homebirth of Marley (05/05/09)

This baby really wanted to be born, he snuck in right under the radar, only days after Ian and I agreed completely we were only having two children, I suddenly realised my period was late, and when I tested, hey presto, pregnant!

I rang my doula of choice straight away, worried she may be booked out, I had decided I did not want to have a midwife present at this birth, I wanted an unhindered birth, and this doula provided exactly the kind of support I was looking for.

This was a really different pregnancy for me, a lot more difficult than my first two, which I put down to me not being terribly fit beforehand, whereas I had been for the others.

I plodded along feeling pretty tired, running around after my two other youngsters, slowly getting bigger and bigger, seemingly much bigger than ever.

I was getting great support from my doula, we had long lovely meetings where we chewed over the failings of the maternity system in Australia.

I watched a good number of really inspiring homebirth dvds during my pregnancy, getting the boys to watch as well, to make sure they were prepared for how I may look and sound in labour, they really enjoyed them, which was reassuring.

I fully expected to give birth a little before my ‘due date’ as Louie had been a week ‘early’ and I was tandem nursing, something I expected to impact my pregnancy by the end.

Well, ‘due date’ came and went, I was not really coping with it too well, I was determined to let bub come in his own time, but was surprised (and annoyed! Whoops!) at how wrong I was about him being early.

I got a pretty bad cough around this time, and a few days later I popped some cartilage in my ribs from coughing, wow, the pain was just excruciating! I couldn’t really take anything for the pain and I didn’t really want to being pregnant. I went to see my doc, I just wanted to get my ribs taped up, and see if I could heal up before I went into labour. I was in a bit of a panic about it all, it was so painful.

My doc was not at all reassuring, in fact she told me to go straight to the hospital and be assessed for a c/s. Hmmm…. I don’t think so.

I decided to simply wait it out, and see if I could heal up, so from wanting bub out in a hurry, I was now willing him to wait, wait, wait, and let me be able to cope with a homebirth.

I was healing well, and then I did it again, more cartilage was torn, I was over 41 weeks now, and really feeling stressed about it all. I just kept trying to heal up, still willing bub to stay put, and finally, on the evening of 41 weeks and 5 days, I got a bloody show, and started having the mildest of contractions.

This was around 9pm, so I rang my doula, just to let her know something ‘may’ be happening. I really couldn’t sleep, and the pains were niggly enough to make Ian think full blown labour might be imminent, so he convinced me to ring my doula again, and ask her to come over.

Well, she came, and nothing changed. We all tried to get some sleep, and that morning I was a bit annoyed it was not really happening, and feeling silly for having got my doula out so early.

We could see bub had his butt sticking out of my belly on the right side, and my doula offered to do some rebozo work on me to see if we could straighten him up. She put the rebozo around my back, and held both ends, and pulling the ends alternately, she flicked my belly side to side. It felt lovely and relaxing, and then suddenly I felt a really odd sensation, I could feel bub sliding further down into my pelvis.

I lay down for a sleep, and it must have been less than 10 minutes later, my waters broke, rather more than a trickle, this was midday. I was elated, good progress at last!! Yay for the rebozo technique!

I was chatting to my doula out by the clothesline (she was getting the washing in!) and suddenly had a doozy of a contraction, waters leaking like crazy, I realized there was no point having any clothes on any longer, so stripped off on the back lawn, and I had a huge bloody show from that one contraction, things were really heating up. This was about 1:30pm.

I asked for the birth pool to be filled up, dying to get in, and while I was waiting I had a couple of really good contractions while leaning on the edge of the deck, I must have been in transition at this stage, as the thoughts of “Whose stupid idea was a homebirth?” flitted briefly across my mind, and then I started to get ‘pushy’ feelings with the next contractions.

I got into the pool, and it immediately felt really wrong, I couldn’t get comfortable, I felt totally ungrounded, and like a beached whale that was just floating this way and that, I just had to get out of there.

We moved into the lounge, but I felt too exposed there as well, so my doula hung her rebozo over a door in the hallway for me to hold onto while in a semi squat. It was a really good position for me, but my hands couldn’t hold on after a while, they were just too tired, I was gripping it too tightly and the muscles in my hands were giving out.

We moved to the bedroom (where my second son was born as well) and I leaned over the edge of my bed. It felt too low, so we found the ironing board, and I leaned over that with my head on a pillow, grasping it like it was my lover, trying to breathe my way through every contraction, trying to relax as much as humanly possible, labour was really underway, and my body was intent on pushing this bub out.

I have long pushing stages unfortunately, and this was no exception, just over 2 hours of pushing, and then bubs head was on view. I put my hand down on my vagina to feel this little head sitting right on my perineum, pushing its way out of my body.

I find crowning such a difficult part of labour, the pain is so intense for me I tend to push way to hard to get my bubs out, and tear badly. I was SO determined this time not to make that mistake, and I made myself go ‘elsewhere’ while the crowning was happening; just relaxing while my body did all the work.

When my doula could see bub was about to pop out, she called to Ian to come to the bedroom to see, and I immediately tensed up, and said “No, I don’t want them here!” I was working so hard getting this crowning right, I kind of got stage fright, and didn’t want to be watched. I felt my body close up, and the baby got sucked back up into my body, it was a really uncanny feeling.

My doula stalled everyone, and I got back to labouring to get this baby out, it took a few more full on contractions until baby was back to crowning again, and then out he came, he had his fist tightly stuck to his head, and this meant I had to work a little to get him out, and as his head emerged, with two loops of cord, his arm came at the same time, then his whole body slipped out really easily.

He breathed pretty much straight away, and was quite mucously, so I faced him slightly down to drain it out.

I was overwhelmed that it was all over, and I was sitting on my bedroom floor with a gorgeous baby in my arms. I didn’t look to see what sex he was, I just stared and stared at him, until Ian broke into my reverie to ask “what have we got?” and that was when I discovered I was the mum of three boys!

Marley was 9lb 4oz, my biggest baby by far.

My big fear of bleeding was unfounded, I hardly bled at all afterwards, and my placenta came out really easily after a couple of pushes. I also had only a small tear, nothing which would need stitching, I just treated it with colloidal silver spray, and it healed very easily.

Marley was very interested in the breast straight away, and as soon as I got him positioned right, he latched on really strongly, and fed like a little champ.

So, I proved the doctor wrong, no unnecesarean needed, although my ribs were extremely sore afterwards, two and a half weeks on, they are still sore every morning when I wake up, but get a lot better during the day.

I did REALLY want a waterbirth, but obviously I am just a land birther, I like to have my feet planted squarely on the ground to bring these babies earthside.

I am ecstatic with my choice to have no midwife present, this was my best birth so far, my doula provided the most amazing emotional support I could have wished for, if I ever have any more babies (I’m not) I would definitely have my doula again.

My lovely doula very kindly prepared the placenta for me, she made me a placenta smoothie to drink immediately after the birth, and cut the rest into small pieces so I can eat them every day to stave off a repeat performance of PND.

So far it seems to be working a treat, I’m feeling pretty upbeat despite being fairly sleep deprived.