Homebirth in the bath (unintended!)
We both found your course so very useful, and I just wanted to share my lovely birth experience with you so you know how much you helped us!
So the birth...
I woke up on Sunday morning with some trapped wind type pains and kind of jokingly said to W this might be it! We were going out for lunch with my parents and W's mum for a pub lunch and I kind of forgot about it.
Then the plan was that they were thinking of dropping us off in York to watch the football (the euro finals) and eat at a friend of ours house. But then I wasn't sure I wanted to because my tummy was still cramping and I asked mum and dad to drive home and W said he'd drive us into York after I'd had a lie down.
So I went to lie down and listened to some birth rehearsal hypnobirthing tracks form the course and when I was listening I was thinking hmmm this sounds very much like what's happening now!! So I got up and told W and we both got excited that we were going to meet our baby soon!
He started finishing off the hospital bag whilst I sat on the birth ball leaning over the back of the sofa listening to relaxations and timing my surges and doing 'up breathing'. I also decided that I would try the tens machine too. The app said I was in established labour almost immediately but I didn't think it was that bad - so didn't figure that this means you should ring the midwives (it did mean I should have rung them but I was waiting for the app to tell me to go into hospital!).
Then I decided I would like to have a bath so W ran one whilst I was coping pretty well with the surges, I walked to the bathroom and decided I needed to poo and this is where I think Transition stage happened as the surges were very intense, I also got a bit confused with my breathing as I had been practicing 'down breathing' whenever I did a poo! I thought I felt something so decided to get in the bath on all fours.
W asked if he should ring the midwife's and I said yes, whilst he was ringing them I had a few more surges in the bath and spoke to a midwife in between them and told her that I was feeling an urge to push in each surge now!
She said to hang up and dial 999 and ask for an ambulance to come.
Whilst W did that I had a few more surges that didn't really hurt but I could tell baby was on it's way out. I remembered thinking should I try to slow it down through a couple of the surges, and then I felt down and felt like a bag type thing coming out.
On the next surge he came out still in his sac. I looked at it under the water, which was really strange, then pulled it out the sac broke and I saw it was a boy!!
I sat back in the bath pulled him in close next to my skin and looked at W who was on the phone to the ambulance saying “my girlfriend has just given birth in the bath!”
I was so calm and relaxed through it all, I didn't panic once, well maybe a little bit on the toilet! It was extremely useful having all the knowledge you gave us of what was happening to my body and I listened to loads of positive birth stories in the run up and did lots of birth rehearsals, which must have really helped.
The paramedics arrived about 10 minutes later and were trying to tell me to cut the cord and get out the bath but I said I wanted to wait for it to go white and that I was quite happy in the bath.
All in all I just wanted to say thank you and share my story with you, I couldn't have done it without doing the course and having the knowledge that it gave me. I also wasn't surprised or scared when he came out en caul as I knew about it already even though it is pretty rare!
Forever grateful, S, W and baby x