{Birth Story} Islay’s Birth
Roberto and I are incredibly happy to welcome Islay Sofia (8lb 7ounces, 50.6cm) into our world, born naturally at home in the early hours of Monday morning, 14th November.
A brief recall of my experience:
I started to feel period like pangs throughout the Sunday. My husband and I finished watching a film that evening when I suggested maybe we should start timing these pangs, ‘they can’t be more than 10-15 secs every 30 mins’, when in fact they were lasting 50secs every 10 mins!
So we called the on-call midwife at 21:00 to say things are starting to move along but plan to get a good nights sleep. Instead things intensified and we were back on the phone to the midwife at 23:45 to say that we’re definitely having this baby tonight! (at this point surges we’re coming every 2-3 mins).
Our Doula, Emma, arrived and I got into the birth pool around 01:00. I was in the pool for ~3hrs and whilst I really enjoyed it initially, was pretty sure that overall it slowed things down and made it so I couldn’t feel Islay descending so well, which frustrated me as it felt like she was descending down the birth path then retreating back up again continuously. Plus I didn’t really have a clear ‘pushing phase’/2nd stage.
Eventually I got out of the pool (initially to use the toilet!) and between 3-5 surges later she was born (but not before her head sat on my perineum for 1-2 surges!). Islay was born at 04:26 on the Monday morning, and we laid in bed with our daughter skin to skin. She was routing around and intermittently opening her eyes. I was so relieved to have her with us after what felt at the time like a long phase of little progress. My husband cut her cord (when it eventually stopped pulsating) and the placenta came naturally ~30mins later.
I had to go into hospital after for 2nd deg stitches (which I was really trying to avoid but in the end was actually not an issue, nor did I find the stitches at all painful with the local anaesthetic) and ended up electing to stay overnight for breast feeding support.
I feel very fortunate to have achieved my dream for a drug free home birth, and so very grateful to all those who supported me and Roberto to make it a reality. A special thanks to Jade Gordon for teaching us the invaluable hypnobirthing tools, Emma Liddell, Judy Cameron, Carmela our midwife and not least, my husband, Roberto!
