My first child Eleanor was born by emergency caesarean section after a long and difficult labour in hospital. My husband and I felt that there were more ‘weak spots’ than there should have been in the care I received in the hospital, in particular there was a significant lack of continuity of care – in 5 days in hospital I don’t think I saw the same midwife twice! My caesarean was a complicated and unpleasant operation, and my daughter needed to spend time in the Special Care Baby Unit. We will never know if I would have been able to give birth naturally if I had had different care, but it was clear that we could have had a better experience. It became very important to us that we have just one midwife throughout pregnancy and labour for our next baby, so we enlisted the help of an independent midwife. Unfortunately the midwife we initially engaged found herself unable to continue to provide care for us during my 32nd week of pregnancy. Liz was recommended as an alternative midwife, and she hit the ground running – within 2 hours of finding out I would not be able to use my original choice of midwife Liz was on my sofa and listening to why I wanted continuity of care. From that point on she made it her goal to help me have my baby in the best possible way, without any of the traumas of last time. During the run-up to my due date Liz made huge efforts to get to know me, my husband Kelvin and Eleanor. Normally mothers employing an independent midwife are aiming for a home birth, and although I had had a poor experience in hospital before I felt I lived too far away from a hospital to be confident with a home birth. Our house is also difficult to find and I worried that if I needed an ambulance transfer into hospital they would not be able to find us. On the whole I felt happier with the idea of a hospital birth with Liz and Kelvin as birth partners. I wanted to spend as little time in hospital as possible though, and Liz and I spent a lot of time discussing ways to achieve this! By the time the last 8 weeks of my pregnancy were up I felt calm and ready to give birth – my planning was meticulous and everything was ready.
However, babies don’t always arrive according to plan!
I woke up in the early hours of my due date feeling a little bit queasy. My daughter had had a tummy bug during the day so I dismissed the queasiness and went back to sleep. At 2am I woke up again and realised that the nausea was coming at very regular intervals. Liz had told me to call her if I felt even just a bit ‘different,’ so I rang her and apologised for waking her up. With typical Liz calmness she told me not to worry and she would come and have a little look at me. Throughout our conversation I felt like a fraud as I hadn’t had anything that felt like an actual contraction! I imagined that Liz would turn up and be bemused that I had confused a tummy bug with labour.
Liz arrived at our house just after 3am, and found me in a very different frame of mind to the me she had spoken to on the phone. My best friend had taken Eleanor to her house as we were still anticipating going to hospital at this point. Kelvin had got our hospital bags ready and filled Liz in on how I was doing. I was busy thinking that this labour felt very different to the labour I had with Eleanor – much more intense and faster. I was a bit concerned that I was feeling discomfort across my tummy constantly and asked Liz for reassurance that my C section scar was OK as no let up in pain between contractions is a sign of potential scar weakness. Liz commented that there was no let up between contractions because there was no ‘between!’ Then she hit me with the bombshell – in her opinion I was not going to get to the hospital, and she asked Kelvin and me to decide whether to attempt to get to hospital or whether to change our plan and carry on at home for an unplanned homebirth. My main concern for this baby and the reason I wanted to be close to hospital facilities was a worry that the baby wouldn’t come out – Eleanor had got well and truly jammed. Once I was aware that this baby was on his way in a hurry all my worries fell away and I was happy to be at home with Kelvin and Liz with all her experience.
So she called for Sarah, the second midwife, and began to prepare our bedroom for our baby’s arrival. Kelvin was kept busy fetching things from Liz’s car, and I carried on breathing and swaying in our bathroom and bedroom. The bathroom door in our house is only about 4’9” high and it was just the right height for rocking on – and that’s the only time it’s low height has ever been of use!
Once Sarah had arrived at our house and all of the homebirth kit had been brought upstairs into our very little bedroom there did not seem much room for everything that was going on. Sarah was preparing a corner of the bedroom to receive my baby, Liz was by turns offering tips and advice if she felt I needed help or leaving me to it when I was making good progress, and Kelvin was making good use of all the ‘man stuff’ that Liz had taught him prior to the big event. Both Liz and Sarah did not think it would be long before my baby was born, but the baby needed to get himself into a slightly better position and he spent some time squirming around to achieve this. Eventually I felt him making his way down – an experience that was new to me. I felt a huge rush of energy and excitement as it dawned on me that this baby was on his way out, and without any of the trauma of last time. I had only been in labour for a couple of hours, I wasn’t tired, and I could feel my baby helping me out with his movements. 
I was sitting on Liz’s birth stool in my own bedroom and Kelvin was holding my hips during contractions and rubbing my back between them. Liz told me to blow raspberries to try and slow things down, and try as I might nothing was slowing my baby down! He was born in rather a hurry just before dawn.
I felt absolutely elated that I had given birth to my son, who we named James, at home, without difficulty, and so quickly. So I was surprised when Liz told me I had experienced some tearing. I was on top of the world and can honestly say that while it was not without discomfort I would not call what I had just gone through painful. I had always imagined that women who suffered tears must feel excruciating pain, but here I was with tears and had not even felt them happening. Liz and Sarah were also concerned about the amount of blood I had lost in a short space of time, and rather than the natural third stage we had discussed they sprang calmly but quickly into action and delivered the placenta in a managed third stage. Just 4 minutes after giving birth to James I was on my own bed cuddling my baby and drinking a cup of tea – a world away from how things were after Eleanor’s birth. Slightly annoyingly, having given 
birth at home I still had to go into hospital for stitches to repair the tear. Liz called for an ambulance and in an ironic twist the driver knew exactly where my house was (dispelling my concerns that an ambulance would not be able to find us) as he had been called after the death of the old lady who lived in the house before us. It was fitting that in being called to take me to hospital he had seen a full circle of life in our little house. As the ambulance took us to hospital the sun was shining through the first misty morning of the autumn, and it seemed like the most perfect morning ever.
Liz continued to provide excellent care for us after James was born. She came to the hospital with us, helped plot my rapid escape, and visited us daily for the next week. I can’t begin to thank her enough for helping make the first moments of my son’s life one of the most exciting, peaceful and euphoric experiences I think I will ever have. Our family is complete now, but if I ever found myself expecting another baby, she would be the first person I would call (after Kelvin, of course!)
