Sam’s Unplanned Home Birth

Birth Story by Sam, Hypnobirthing Mum

So many people have asked as we had an unplanned home birth how it all happened, so I thought rather then repeat the story I’d share a brief version for everyone to have a little insight into the best day of our lives.

Leading into Evie’s birth I wanted to be as prepared and organised as I could be to give this baby the best shot at a natural drug-free birth and also to make me feel empowered and strong on the day of her arrival. I did a bit of research and came across hypnobirthing and it sounded like something I’d like to try. We booked in for 2 private 8 hour lessons a month and a half before our birth. I am so so grateful we did this as there is no way we would of had the experience we did without meeting Kate from Positively Hypnobirthing.

On the night

10:55pm Friday

I woke up and my waters broke, I went to the bathroom then woke Marty up. He told me to go back to bed as we had a long road ahead of us. So we msgd our labour photographer, my mum and midwife and just said waters broke, will keep you in the loop. I then rechecked my hospital bag, tidied and got organised for an hour and hopped back into bed.

Midnight

Mild contractions started (felt like light period pain) so I just hopped into bed and slept until about 3:30.

Started to intensify

So I hopped out of bed sat on the birthing ball listening to meditation with Marty helping support me reading affirmations and doing massages every contraction, again just felt like intense period pain. But in between contractions there was nothing so I just rested. Marty called the midwife, told her how far apart contractions were and she said stop timing go back to bed and just call me at 8, it’s going to be a while still.

4:30am

They intensified again so I stood in the shower and used the water through contractions and it soothed the pain so much. I then thought I better try and sleep because this could be a long day. So I hopped back into bed and continued to sleep in between contractions.

6:30am

Shot out of bed like I’d been shot! The pain had gone from a 5/10 to a 9/10 and I looked at Marty and said, I can’t go in the car if I have another contraction like that. He told me to have a shower to help pain and he would go make us toast for breakfast to keep my energy up 🤦🏼‍♀️

I was having 4 strong contractions that lasted a minute every 10 minutes, they say you need to have 1 minute 30 contractions to be ready to head into the hospital so Marty just thought we still had so much time. He kept me calm, talked me through how strong I was and massaged and tickled my back through contractions (He ended up eating the toast as I was heading into TRANSITION😂

7am

I told him he better call the midwife because I could feel her head on the ball. He looked at me and I think my facial autism told him I wasn’t joking so he called our midwife and she wanted to speak to me, I couldn’t speak as I was deep in hypnosis. All I said is ‘my body is pushing’ she said I’m coming and told Marty to call an ambulance.

7:25am

Mum arrived after receiving a text while at the gym and being so excited she forgot she had a car and tried to run here lol

7:38am

Beautiful baby Evie is born onto our bed with mum and Marty by my side telling me how strong and amazing I am.

I remember looking down, seeing this beautiful baby, hearing her noises and just thinking – we did it!! She’s here!! I cannot believe our beautiful little girl is here. I scooped her up off the bed, held her to my chest and laid back onto the bed and had skin to skin while the midwife did the rest. (I’ll leave out a few details as may be a little too much).

I was so blessed on the day to have 3 of the most kind and lovely ambulance ladies who started their shift early when they heard the call as they didn’t want the two men finishing there shift to have to come to a birth and I am so grateful they did. Our birthing space was completely silent and calm and I felt so safe and comfortable the whole process, which probably helped her come so quickly.

I then got wheeled to ambulance were they waited until I latched Evie on and breastfed the whole way to hospital. Once we arrived

we got put in a private room, had a couple of stitches, a sleep and Evie had her injections and got weighed. We were then discharged 5 hours later to come home to our beautifully spotless home that mum cleaned for us while in hospital and hopped into bed and both our families came over and we had dinner and cuddles celebrating the arrival of our precious little Evie. What a magical day, as much as we didn’t plan a homebirth I would 100% do it again as it was the most magical experience I could of wished for.