fbpx
 
Emily’s Birth Story

Emily’s Birth Story

I remember standing in my kitchen just before lunchtime, thinking about these backaches and cramping sensations that kept coming regularly. I didn’t really start timing them properly, but they felt like they were coming every 10 minutes all afternoon. Becoming more intense as the hours went by, but not enough to make me want to start timing them. I think I was nearing active labour around 5 pm when the intensity and frequency picked up yet again, every 4-5 minutes I would stop what I was doing to focus on the contractions. My beautiful doula, I mean daughter (3.5 years old), loved hanging around during this time. She would see when I was having a contraction and tell me to “stand” if I wasn’t already, and “dance” while we swayed side to side together. At one point she noticed I was holding my breath or tensing up, and goes “big breath mummy” and reminds me to “relax mummy”. Her innate knowledge of what birth is made my heart swell.

We do the whole dinner, bath and bed routine, and read Bronte’s favourite book “the Dinosaur Department Store”. Thomas then insisted he’d take over. While he got her to sleep I called my midwife to let her know where we were up to, and that we would see her later that night or early in the morning.

I headed for the shower and sat on my exercise ball and enjoyed the warm water running over my lower back. I wasn’t in there for long before my waters broke. Thomas knew we were getting close (I disagreed, I felt like we still had a long night ahead of us) and called the midwife at 7:25pm and she said to head straight over to the birth centre, luckily Nan was already on her way over to babysit Bronte for the night so we didn’t need to wait around for long.

We would have arrived around 8 pm. I heard the bath running and I couldn’t have hopped in fast enough. I wasn’t in there for long when the midwife says, I think you’ll have a baby by 9:30! I looked at her in disbelief, up until this point my labour had been quite easy-going and calm… I was thinking, surely it can’t be THAT easy!? ?

Soon I had hit transition phase… I remember telling myself to focus on each contraction, growling my way through them. This was definitely the most challenging and intense part of the birth. It was such a relief to eventually feel the overwhelming urge to push. After maybe 20 minutes and a few gentle pushes, I caught Brinkley at 8:46 pm. Having a hands-off birth, allowing my body and instincts to take over felt wonderful and oh so rewarding. ❤️


I wanted to share my positive birth story with you and say thank you for everything you do and stand for. I’m so glad we crossed paths, I really enjoyed the Belly Balance sessions and got so much out of them.

Emily xx