Home Birth story – Helen & Michael’s second baby

I had planned a homebirth with my first baby (born July 2018) but had gone into hospital anyway due to waters breaking before labour started and needing monitoring for infection risk and having a big wobble on the day. This time I was determined to stay at home!


On Thursday night I was aware through the night I was getting some cramping/early surges but tried to ignore them and keep sleeping as had had a couple of nights like this already with nothing happening and I knew I'd need energy if it was labour starting. By Friday morning at 4am I could no longer sleep through and counted roughly one surge every 5 mins. I had also started needing to do some 'up breathing' to remain comfy through them. I got up and woke up hubby. Our 2 year old was sleeping and we left her to it. I phoned Inverurie triage at 4.30 to let them know I was in early stages and it was my own community midwife who picked up! She wasn’t on call for homebirth unfortunately but said she thought it was best she sent out the on call midwives straight away. I was a little surprised as didn’t think I was very far on but agreed as I know some of them live quite far away from me. We set up the living room and dining room according to our plan with electric tealights, music, diffuser etc and I used my ball to lean and roll on through surges. I made sure I ate some toast too in case I didn’t get a chance later.

The midwives both arrived around 5.30am. My surges hadn't picked up much and if anything I think they died down a bit when they arrived as I felt a bit self-conscious. However, once we got chatting and I relaxed I felt them come on again. My 2-year-old woke up about 7am and her dad took her to nursery. We asked my parents to pick her up and take her to their house afterwards. By 8.30am my surges were stronger but not that close together. I put on my TENS machine to help me out. The midwives offered me the choice of them staying put or leaving and coming back when I was a bit further on. They also offered me a vaginal examination (VE), to see what was what down below. I originally thought I wouldn't want this but agreed as wasn’t sure how established I was and what decision to make. It turned out I was 5cm so the midwives weren't going anywhere! Almost immediately after this the surges intensified, and I was soon asking for the pool to be filled and for the Entonox to be set up. I got in the pool about 10-10.30am and my surges changed gear and I felt strong downward urges. I tried Entonox but found I didn't always want it. I had about 4 strong surges where I couldn't resist the urge to push down. I wasn’t able to control my breathing very well for these final surges and made quite some noise as she was born but it was a short 'pushing phase' and Rosa was soon born into the pool. Being told to reach down and scoop her up was an amazing feeling. This was the moment I had been looking forward to all through! I sat back in the pool for skin to skin and the first breastfeed. It got a bit cold in the water so we got out and dad had skin to skin on the sofa while I got checked over in the living room. I had two grazes but was lucky enough to avoid stitches. Rosa's temperature had dropped a little low while all this was happening so the midwives stuck around to monitor her temperature for a bit. Luckily it started to pick up once she was all wrapped up and cosy.

The midwives left around 3pm and we ordered pizza. My parents kept our elder daughter overnight so that we could enjoy our first night with Rosa just the three of us. This ended up being really helpful as we got a call asking if we could go to Inverurie for the newborn check that evening as they didn’t have a midwife who could come out to do them over the weekend.

I'm so grateful to have had such a straightforward and positive birth at home and would definitely recommend it to anyone considering this option.


Thanks Andrea, it was a great birth so thank you for helping with our preparation and planning for it! I do feel very lucky to have had this experience of birth. I was so terrified when I was pregnant with my first I'd never have thought it possible! I wanted to share the story (I’ve also shared it on the Grampian Homebirth Facebook page as I feel that group is really great in normalising that option and helping women to be informed and make positive decisions).