Caroline’s Unplanned Home Birth
Giving birth completely alone (unintentionally) on your bathroom floor to many may sound like a nightmare. A birth horror story if you like. This birth became Caroline’s reality when she unexpectedly and VERY quickly had her baby at home.. But her birth is far from a nightmare; despite this being far from Plan A, Caroline felt calm and empowered by her unplanned home birth.
After the birth of my firstborn during the Covid pandemic, I realised that I had been very underprepared. Though everything turned out just fine, I knew that I would have made different choices had I been armed with a few more tools, information and confidence.
With my second baby, it was really important to me that I be better prepared and not blindly follow advice without practicing my EBRAN. I wanted, if possible, to have a drug and intervention free birth. I wanted it to be an empowering and natural process in the midwife led ward right next door to the ward where the epidural lives (just in case I wasn’t up to the task)
High Risk Pregnancy
During my pregnancy however, I was classified as high risk; due to the size of my baby. This meant induction and a labour ward. Two things I wanted to avoid if possible. I completed a lot of research and spoke to the midwife consultant about the recommendations that were being made to me. I used EBRAN with the medical team of my hospital in the final trimester and following further tests we reached consensus that I was fine to go full term despite an initial desire that I be induced at 37 weeks.
As it transpired, when labour did come I didn’t even make it to hospital…
Labour Starting
I lost my mucus plug on the Sunday night followed by minor contractions on and off for the next few days and quite an uncomfortable Tuesday evening. I used the TENs machine to get some rest during the more intense waves.
Wednesday came and the contractions eased off in the morning and resumed around 2pm. It turns out in the cat/elephant analogy, I’m a cat. I instinctively retreated to the bathroom at 4pm while I waited for my husband to pick up our son and give him dinner and put him to bed. Thinking we would head off to the hospital some time that evening.
Labour Ramping Up Quickly
Contractions quickly ramped up and the TENs machine was no longer helpful. I instead relied on the calm and safe environment I’d made myself. With a hot bath, dim lighting, a soothing playlist and the rectangle breathing. I hyper contract and found the counting round the rectangle was not helpful on the longer contractions so I switched to an app timer. Knowing each minute that passed was 1 contraction done and it usually stopped after 3.
After a few hours I started to feel shaky, sick and worried that I wasn’t going to be able to do this and no longer wanted to be alone. I called down to my husband at this point. By the time he made it up the stairs I realised that I had been in transition and now I needed to push. I was shocked it had all happened so fast but I told him the baby was coming and he took our son to a neighbours house.
Baby’s Unexpected Arrival; Unplanned Home Birth
For a moment I felt afraid of birthing the baby on my own and to worry about what happens if she was to get stuck. I realised I couldn’t wait so I pushed all doubt aside, got down on all fours on top of a pile of towels and tried the down breathing. Now I could feel my stomach muscles pushing my baby down and I realised I just needed to tribal scream the baby out. I felt her crown and gingerly held her head while I waited for the final contractions to push her out. Then I scooped her up, untangled her cord and held her until my husband got back a few minutes later.
We called the ambulance at this point. I used my EBRAN to establish that I didn’t need to go to a hospital because I was not bleeding excessively. I was allowed to cut the cord myself and I asked the midwives sent by the nearest hospital to let me birth my placenta physiologically as well (despite it taking longer than their preference). A few hours later I was wrapped up in bed with my newborn daughter. I did have to arrange for some of the newborn checks to be completed at a later point but other than that I feel I made the right choice to stay home and recover.
Reflecting on Birth
Though the experience was quite a shock as I had never intended to have a home birth; I would never advocate doing it alone without emotional and professional support to ensure delivery is safe. I know that the calm and control I felt as a result of all that I learned in preparation for the birth was the reason it went swiftly, smoothly and a fraction of the pain I had experienced during my previous labour.
The Bump to Baby Chapter really worked for me because the information was all familiar but the bite size chunks allowed to me to listen to what I was worrying about at that exact point in my pregnancy, share the short explanations with my husband so he could listen to the key information that mattered to me and the most helpful was the pain management and breathing techniques explained.
