A beautiful home birth story.  I love how relaxed Chloe and David were in the early stages of labour, even going out for tapas!  You can read how they trusted what was going on and how this relaxation allowed everything to unfold exactly as it needed to. 

It was amazing!…..

At 6 days past my ‘due date’ at about 3pm I started feeling some tightenings that started in my back and radiated round to my belly. I’d been having a fair few braxton hicks over the last few days so didn’t pay them much attention, especially as the day before I’d had a stretch and sweep and the midwife had declared that there was nothing going on ‘down there’ at all, my cervix was so closed in fact that she couldn’t perform the procedure. I figured I was in for a bit of a wait so I’d been using my time to relax as much as possible. 

An hour or so later however they were still happening and after a little clock watching I realised they were happening every 10 mins or so, but only lasting for a short while each time. I let my husband, David, know at this point as I realised that we might finally be ready to roll! 

We had planned to go for dinner that night and knowing these things can take there time we decided to keep the reservation and at 8pm went out for a lovely Spanish tapas dinner together, knowing it was likely to be our last just the two of us got quite some time. During dinner the tightenings started to get longer in time and by the time we left the restaurant we thought there may be a chance our baby could be with us in the next few hours! It was such an exciting thought. 

Anyway on returning home we decided to set everything up, David set up the lounge with the pool and I got some time to do some breathing and sit on the birth ball. 

We then went off to bed as knew we could be in this for the long haul so to speak.. well that didn’t last that long as I just couldn’t get comfortable, so about 30 mins later we were back downstairs. We continued our breathing techniques and massage until the early hours of the morning and eventually both fell asleep in the chairs in the lounge. 

In the morning things continued as they were and I ran myself a bath, after that we kept at it with our breathing/hypnobirthing techniques, but added in the tens machine which was a godsend. After a couple more hours we decided to call the midwife as it had been quite a while and we were still just off the ‘3 in 10 mins’ mark but wanted a bit of reassurance that everything was all ok. 

Out she came and after a quick observation told us that I was 3cm dilated! I was not amused that we were only that far along, haha.. anyway she advised me to make myself have a rest and put me in to bed and sent David out for snacks and energy drinks stating that once my body was properly fuelled things would get moving again. 

So anyway unconvinced that I could possibly get any sleep or even rest lying down I dutifully got back in to bed and promptly fell asleep. On waking a couple of hours later and after some food and a drink, the midwife gave us a call back as they were changing shifts and she wanted to check in on us. We told her that the surges had slowed right down and that we’d managed to get some rest and she said now was the time to get up and start moving around! 

Excited, that’s exactly what we did. And after just 30 mins or so my surges were coming pretty quickly and we called the midwife again to get them to come out to us. 

At about 7.30pm the midwife turned up and took one look at me and declared that I was indeed in the thick of active labour and she got to work with David filling the pool up with warm water. I got in the pool at about 9pm and immediately found the water relaxing! At 10pm she called the second midwife in as my surges had shifted in to pushes and Cora was born at 11.19pm in the pool. It was amazing!! 

I scooped her out of the pool myself and we all had our first family hug. And a good old cry! 

Anyway after that I delivered the placenta while David had some good dad hugs and Cora decided to do her first poop all over him. Haha! 

Then courtesy of Cora’s swift entry (in the end) to the world and her arm coming out at the same time as her head I had to have a few stitches whilst chilling on the couch… a very strange experience but was just so happy I don’t really remember it well. 

After a few checks and maybe the tastiest bacon sandwich and cup of tea ever the midwives left us to it and we all went off to bed… and I haven’t slept since.