Birth story - Anna and baby Jessie

Planning for somewhere to have my second baby has proved tricky as the maternity care in our local area has been classified as inadequate in a recent CQC inspection. There are no home births available due to short staffing (which would have been my preference) and our local hospital which is a two minute drive away has had an outbreak of legionnaires disease so they are not offering water births. We felt our only option was to drive 30 minutes away to another hospital (also inadequate) but which had a pool.

I had been up in the night with our toddler then felt I needed to sit on the toilet and had some diarrhoea and some mild cramps which I put down to the diarrhoea. At about 3.20 I began to think the cramps were contractions and started using the Freya app. After three contractions it said I was in established labour. I rang the hospital and they said to wait 45 mins and then ring again to let them know what was happening and to get my parents to come over to watch my toddler. I knelt down at the end of the bed and breathed through the contractions using the app and had some paracetamol and ibuprofen. I asked my husband to run me a bath and then got in it. I actually didn’t like being in the bath: it was too hot, I threw up and said to my partner “I can’t do this without pain relief”. Looking back I realise this was my transition. As soon as I got out of the bath with my next contraction I realised I needed to push. I also realised we didn’t have time to drive 30 mins away for the birth pool so I rang my local hospital to say we were on the way.

When speaking to the midwife at my local hospital she recognised I was very far on and needed to push. She told me to hang up and call an ambulance. As I was pushing my husband was on the phone to the call handler. With my next contraction I pushed out the head then the one after the rest of the baby. My husband caught him and wrapped him in a towel. The paramedics arrived two minutes later and congratulated us. I held Jesse in my arms kneeling up in shock for fifteen minutes then needed to go on all fours again for the placenta. I gave Jesse to my husband for skin to skin and with a few breaths the placenta was out. We all went down stairs for tea and toast and some checks from the paramedics and at this point my mam and dad arrived, not expecting there to be an ambulance and baby! I said I didn’t want to go to hospital so they sent a midwife out later in the day to check me and Jesse. I needed a couple of stitches for a second degree tear so we went into hospital that afternoon for that and they did Jesse’s hearing check.

I felt very calm and surrendered to my body throughout the birth; I felt that I wasn’t really in control for any of it just listened to my body and completely followed the Freya app and then just did what my body told me. I absolutely knew in the moment what to do just simply by trusting the process. The scariest bit for my husband was essentially when the head was out but not the rest of him, I could sense him panicking and reassured him it would be ok and I would push baby out on my next contraction. It was about 1.5 hours from start to finish and we just couldn’t believe it happened like that.

Hugely grateful to the amazing paramedics who were so excited to help us and then the midwives who have supported after. Without the PBC course I would have a been absolutely terrified I think! We never expected our birth to unfold in this way but the basics of breathing techniques and staying calm was what got us through this crazy situation. So thank you.