And then there were 8...

Why an 11 minute labour isn't the easy option...

183:871506987 (Helen Pierce) — Sat, 22 May 2021 10:52:03 GMT

Why I gave birth in a car park, and other stories...

When you tell someone you have had very quick labours, the reaction is pretty universal. “Lucky you”, “Gosh, I wish I did”, “Oh that’s nice and easy for you”. Of course, I have no alternative experience to compare with, but as a veteran of 6 precipitous labours, I feel qualified to say it isn’t the easy option.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) states that first time mothers typically experience a labour of 11-21 hours, with those who have given birth before typically experiencing a shorter labour of 7-14 hours.

About 2% of women will experience a far quicker labour than this: a phenomenon called Precipitous Labour which varies a little in its definition but is broadly used to describe labours which are less than 3 hours in duration from the onset of contractions. Although precipitous labour can take people by surprise, there are some circumstances which make it more likely to occur.

*There is a higher chance of precipitous labour when:

*The baby is smaller and/or well positioned in the birth canal;

*The birth canal is wider, which can be naturally occurring or influenced by previous births

*There has been a history of previous precipitous labours, either for this pregnant women or for close relatives.

*The labour has been induced using oxytocin or prostaglandins.

The combined length of my own six precipitous labours, as recorded on my maternity notes, is just under 5 hours in total: less than half the average length of a first labour.

I can appreciate why it sounds like the easy option, and I certainly don’t claim that I would have preferred longer than average labours. However, as someone who has variously given birth in a car park, a bath and a hospital storage room, as well as two delivery suites and a rather wonderful home birth, I want to shine a spotlight on some of the realities of a fast labour.

A woman who experiences precipitous labour has a higher chance of:

* Heavier bleeding after the birth;

* Perineal and cervical tears;

* Giving birth without medical assistance, and without pain relief;

* Retained placenta;

* Postnatal depression;

* Difficulty with initial bonding with the baby;

* Injuries to the baby resulting from fast labour or suboptimal place of birth.

Part of my role as an antenatal educator is to talk to expectant parents about how they will know it is time to leave for their planned place of birth. There are generally two concerns: what if we make our way too early and are sent away again; what if we wait too long and the baby is born before we arrive at our place of birth.

The popular school of thought is to wait at home for as long as the woman feels able. Her oxytocin levels are likely to be higher there as she is in her safe space and more able to control her environment. This needs to be tempered with the very real hormonal impact of making the journey in to wherever the woman plans to give birth. Car journeys can be particularly uncomfortable for a labouring woman. From my privileged viewpoint as a Paramedic, the same can be true of ambulance journeys. Even a small baby is quite big in comparison to the birth canal they are descending through, and there are some considerable turns within labour which a baby has to negotiate, which can make sitting down feel particularly uncomfortable. Discomfort and pain push oxytocin away and invite in adrenaline, which has a stalling effect on labour, and so it is clear that keeping a woman as comfortable as possible during her labour is a good thing.

When considering when a woman should make her way towards her planned place of birth, the recommendation is to wait for labour contractions to feel regular and active, to wait for a clear pattern which indicates that the birth process is progressing and that labour is less likely to stall.

This makes perfect sense in terms of optimising that oxytocin-rich home environment, and gives the labouring woman an opportunity to build up the endorphins in her body which will enable her to cope more naturally with the pains of childbirth. Overall, the picture is a beautiful one. A heavily pregnant woman, breathing and moving in a way that helps her baby to descend through her pelvis, and allows her to feel in control and capable as her labour gradually progresses from early into active labour.

By contrast, the picture of a precipitous labour can look very different, particularly for someone who doesn’t know this is how their body will give birth.

In precipitous labour, a woman may not experience contractions until they become very intense, seemingly without build up and without a meaningful break between them. Alternatively, she may be aware of seemingly early contractions which feel very manageable in their nature, but then progress suddenly and without warning. A common feature of precipitous labour is the feeling that contractions are arriving one on top of the other, not allowing the woman to recover from the last before the next crashes over her. As well as feeling very intense in their nature, these relentless contractions can create a sense of panic in the woman who doesn’t understand what is happening and believes something must be wrong. In some rare instances, the first sign of precipitous labour can be the urge to push.

My own fastest labour took just 11 minutes. I was in the hospital already, undergoing an induction as I was now weeks past my due date with my second baby, and I was ready to no longer be pregnant. I had spent 24 hours with a pessary in place which, even before the midwife checked me, I knew hadn’t had the desired effect. She removed the pessary and I consented to a vaginal examination to understand how my cervix had responded to it. My cervix was described as being a long way back, almost unreachable, still firm and closed. My Bishop’s Score, an assessment tool used to describe the apparent likelihood of a cervix to respond to induction, was low. The midwife confirmed what I already knew, that there was nothing to suggest labour was likely to start soon, and offered to run me a bath in the hope the relaxation might be useful. As I walked down the corridor to the bathroom, I had a sudden, and very strong, contraction. The gradual build up of contractions during labour serve to increase endorphins, making a woman more able to bear the increasing intensity as labour progresses. In my case there had been no build up. Just minutes earlier I had been told my chances of going into labour that day were pretty slim, yet that first contraction left me in no doubt that it had happened. Once the sensation eased, I continued walking to the bathroom and as I raised my leg to step into the bath, I had another contraction and felt the familiar sensation of something being born. I asked my husband to look between my legs as I was sure there would be a head, and he replied that I ‘wasn’t in labour’ so not to be silly. I asked again and this time he looked briefly before shouting for someone to come and help. My son, still in his waters, was being born. From my viewpoint, things get a little blurry around that moment. I know a lot of people rushed into that small bathroom, and I remember someone not being sure if I should put my second leg into the bath, or take the first leg out again. As I stood there awaiting further instructions, someone let the bath water out. I was told to climb fully into the bath and in one further contraction my son was born. I think back now, with 6 births to reflect on, and I remember the moment of birth with everyone except my second-born. His labour was recorded as a 0 minute first stage, and an 11 minutes second stage. As I sat holding him a short while later, I remember not quite being able to connect the baby in my arms with the one I knew had been inside me for all those months. We had picked his name out in pregnancy but I kept saying it over and over as I looked at him and it didn’t feel right to use it, because that name belonged to my baby and this couldn’t possibly be him because we hadn’t had a labour.

Much of my son’s birth is a blur, as you can imagine, but I have one very clear memory before the push that brought him into the world. I hung my head down and said ‘I’m just so tired, I can’t push’ and a midwife rolled her eyes and said ‘you’ve only had two contractions, how tired can you be?’.

Let me put on the record now that a woman who gives birth is allowed to feel exhausted. However her birth has unfolded and however long she might have spent in labour. She has just grown a human inside of her own body and has gone through whatever might have been her experience in order to give birth.

In my case, my cervix had dilated from 0 to 10 cm in one contraction, after a long night with not much sleep, and yes, I was exhausted.

The midwife’s comment, though, only serves to highlight the common experience of women who have a precipitous labour: It didn’t take long, that’s lucky. You can’t be as tired as someone who has laboured for a much longer time. It is perhaps indicative of our culture, of the need to compare everyone and declare someone to be the most hard done by.

Precipitous labour can be a very stressful and even traumatic experience, particularly for someone experiencing it for the first time. It can be helpful to know how to manage the stress of a very quick progression of labour:

* Breathing techniques can be very helpful for regaining a feeling of control and encouraging oxytocin and endorphin production, which can assist with pain relief and encourage bonding.

* Trust the labouring person’s instinct. If they feel that labour is progressing unusually quickly and with little respite between contractions, it is quite possible that they are experiencing precipitous labour.

* If this occurs when they are not in their planned place of birth, consider calling medical help to the woman rather than trying to get to a place where she can receive medical help.

* If she has the urge to push, call 999 rather than the hospital as it is important to have medical help on the way as soon as possible.

* Ensure medical help is able to reach you by leaving your front door open/on the latch. The woman may wish to lay on

her side whilst waiting for assistance to arrive.

An overwhelmingly common theme of positive birth experiences is the feeling of being in control, something which can be far less prevalent in a precipitous labour. Where labour has felt particularly uncontrollable, it can be especially important to foster a sense of control in the immediate postnatal period. Prioritising skin to skin between the mother and the baby aids bonding and has the added benefit of assisting with bleeding control in a birth situation where there is an increased chance of heavy bleeding. It is also important that a mother is made to feel validated and heard when she shares her birth story. Yes, her labour was fast and it sounds to many like that would be a positive thing, but she may have experienced that labour in a very different way and this should be acknowledged, not minimised.

Helen's 6 Babies, 5 with tongue tie

183:871506987 (Helen Pierce) — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 23:32:33 GMT

Guest post for The Birth Hub

It was my absolute honour to be invited to contribute to the tongue tie stories collated at The Birth Hub. Read my story here .

The Better Birth Podcast with Erin Fung: Positive Birth Stories

183:871506987 (Helen Pierce) — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 12:58:30 GMT

The Better Birth podcast is hosted by hypnobirthing and antenatal teacher Erin Fung. It was my pleasure to talk to Erin about 3 of my 6 positive births, which include a super fast car park birth, a positive induction, and a home free birth.

Listen to the podcast here

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but perpetuating myths will mould us

183:871506987 (Helen Pierce) — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 23:26:43 GMT

Language matters

As a Breastfeeding Counsellor, one of the things I spend a good amount of my time doing is dispelling well-intentioned (or perhaps just misinformed) myths. Most breastfeeding mums will have heard them along their journey:

“The baby can’t be hungry again, you’ve just fed them”

“You’ll make a rod for your own back, feeding them to sleep like that”

“You should let your partner do the night feed – so much easier on you”

“Blimey, if they’re asking for a feed that often then perhaps you aren’t making enough milk….”

They sound like harmless enough offerings, but the reality is they can do real harm. To a mother’s ability to trust her instinct, to her milk supply, to the baby’s emotional wellbeing. No one offers these things up because they mean to disrupt a mother’s breastfeeding journey, but that’s the very real risk.

Walk a few steps across to my work as an Antenatal Educator and Hypnobirthing Instructor, and it’s the same story with a different script:

“My birth was awful, let me tell you all about it….”

“Of course, they’ll have to induce you if you are still pregnant after a certain point”

“You think it’s hard being pregnant? Wait till you have a newborn to look after….”

Again, no one is trying to break the spirit of expectant mums, but what we deem to be harmless, perhaps even funny comments, can have a real lasting effect.

It hit home for me this evening as I sat down to write this blog. It’s been a couple of quite self reflective days. It started yesterday with an hour long one-to-one with my nutritionist and continued today with a few hours of Doula training, reflecting specifically on the power of just listening, and how we can miss the mark if we aren’t careful.

The final jigsaw piece of this blog came this evening on my Facebook feed, and I write this not knowing if the friend I am about to quote will be upset that I have used her absolutely well-intentioned words, which were not written directly for me, to make my point. (I've since checked, she is lovely and absolutely fine with it!).

“You need to be kinder to yourself. As you say, you aren’t overweight. Don’t deny yourself a treat. Concentrate more on feeling healthier and listening to your body. Are you still running? More running equals more cake”.

It sounds sensible enough, doesn’t it? It’s about feeling healthier, listening to your body. Yes. And yes!!! But underneath it are the myths that so many of us have heard, so many times, that they resonate as truths in our heads. Don’t deny yourself a treat. More running equals more cake. Food is a reward that you deserve and can earn.

Now, I am not a nutritionist. Far, far from it. And there is far more psychology at play here than I am wise enough to understand, far less be immune to. But I want to dust over the surface of what I do understand.

I have grown up believing food is good or bad. That ‘bad’ food is the tasty, sugary food that you reward yourself with when you deserve it. That restricting myself as punishment for eating too much yesterday is the right way to correct my relationship with food. It is imprinted on me and I am now, in my forties, having to work very hard to try to erase those myths from the blueprint of my mind.

The trouble is, that mindset has led me into a very tangled place when it comes to food.

Food is food. Some is more nutritious, or less nutritious. Some is yummier and some less so. Some will fill me up more easily, some I can eat in huge unhealthy quantities without batting an eyelid.

I haven’t turned into a food guru and this isn’t a healthy eating blog. In fact, I don’t even understand what a healthy food relationship looks like yet so I can’t bring my last paragraph to any real conclusion. I am using the food analogy to draw a parallel to the power of our words in the perinatal world.

When I book a new hypnobirthing client, one of the first things I want to understand about them is how they feel about birth. Have they given birth before? Do they have any fears in their mind around giving birth? What worries them?

It is important that I find these things out because that’s really what hypnobirthing is all about. Booting out the plethora of negative associations that live in someone’s subconscious brain, ready to surface when the word ‘birth’ gets a mention, and replacing them with positive images and thoughts. Our subconscious brain is our protector. It spends its time instinctively rescuing us from what it thinks poses a threat.

We watch a T.V. programme where someone gives birth and it depicts complications, fear, discomfort…we listen to our friend retelling their own difficult birth story…the negative emotions seep into our mind whilst our guard is down and before we even realise it, our subconscious brain thinks we need to be protected from birth. It presents a danger to our wellbeing and we should be fearful of it.

Hypnobirthing focuses on flooding the subconscious brain with positive associations, so that when that person is preparing to give birth, they can do it with a calm mindset, free from the adrenaline and able to produce the floods of oxytocin that will play such a vital role in their baby’s arrival and the early bonding stages.

The same theory flows through all my work. Be it birth preparation, birth trauma support or breastfeeding, we need to protect or heal our subconscious from unhelpful thoughts which invite adrenaline into the room. Adrenaline brings fear and self doubt, and they are the real enemies that our minds need protecting from.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This post is not meant to offend. We have all, myself included, at some point said something which we didn’t mean to be interpreted as a reason for fear or self doubt, but which will have been absorbed as just that. If you are wondering what words can helpfully support a pregnant or nursing friend, here are some suggestions:

If you are not trained in breastfeeding support, please encourage a nursing mother to access trained support if she is experiencing difficulties. Support is widely available and I would be happy to signpost. The links section of my website also lists a number of helpful resources for breastfeeding support.

If you are talking to a friend who is pregnant, please don’t share stories which have the potential to make them fearful of their own upcoming experience of giving birth. The links section on my website signpost to positive birth stories which are more helpful to share.

If you need to talk to someone about a difficult birth or feeding experience you have had, again there is support available and my website links provide some signposts for this.

My story of pandemic pregnancy and giving birth during a national lockdown.

183:871506987 (Helen Pierce) — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:00:43 GMT

Birth in times of COVID

I was eight weeks pregnant with baby 6 when Boris announced the nation was going into lockdown on March 23rd 2020. I’m sure around the country the reactions to the news were as varied as the circumstances of those hearing it. For me, it was a relief. We had known it was coming, of course, and there are plenty who think Lockdown 1 (as it is now known, typing this from the safety of Lockdown 3!) should have been announced sooner than it was. This isn’t a political post about what should or could have been done differently. This is an honest account of being pregnant and giving birth during a global pandemic, and a national lockdown.

Eight weeks pregnant, for those not already privy to insider knowledge on the matter, is when the exhaustion hits. In fact it’s a bit like lockdown 1 for your energy levels, and you can be sure that pregnancy has a few more planned before you get to meet your baby. The nausea that had been niggling at the back of my mind in recent weeks had pushed its way to the front and reminded me daily that I was growing a human inside of me.

Suddenly, everything got much easier. Up until then I'd had 3 school runs a day. Trying to get 5 young children out of the house by 8:15am each day is no small thing. After school was a rush from one commitment to the next, dropping children off at extra-curricular clubs before heading off to classes myself as a children's Spanish teacher. Even the weekends gave little respite. We had a full morning of back-to-back swimming classes with the children every Saturday, and on Sundays we attended our gorgeous local church where we were married and where all of our children have been Baptised.

I love being busy - I thrive on it - but the first trimester joys of nausea and exhaustion have always taken their toll and having an extra child to look after each time only compounds that. Alongside that, as someone who experienced miscarriage before ever knowing a healthy pregnancy, the all-consuming fear of what might be has always weighed heavily on me during those first 12 weeks, so I wasn't sorry to be told we had to immediately apply the brakes and stay home.

A few weeks later, and just two days before my dating scan, I turned 40 - a big deal for anyone, but especially so for a woman who has not finished building her family. Everything changes at 40. It is a significant, and in most cases final, decade for pregnancy, and even though the growing embryo within me had come from an egg who was still in its 30s, statistically my risks were immediately increased just for blowing out those candles.

My husband has been with me for the first scan of every pregnancy, including the one where we found an empty uterus. He held my sick bowl when I wondered how I would make it to the scan for my eldest daughter in the face of hyperemesis. He was there when I had no sickness at all with our eldest son and had convinced myself they would say the baby had died.

When I booked an early scan due to bleeding with our 2nd daughter, he again sat with me, holding my hand when I didn't dare to believe they would find a heartbeat. Through every pregnancy, he has always been there to hear the heartbeat for the first time, and for the anomaly scan where I always hold my breath, desperately hoping everything looks as it should.

Due to COVID restrictions, I was alone this time. I asked the sonographer if I could film the ultrasound for my husband, or even video chat with him so that he could meet his baby too. My requests were denied. So it felt cruelly ironic, alone at my dating scan for what is almost certainly our final baby, to be told that there might be a problem. I had walked in with an increased risk of trisomy defects because of my age, but where usually the scan would reduce these risks, this time it had increased them. It was a borderline finding, something was 0.1mm outside of what would be accepted as a normal measurement, but it mattered. COVID restrictions also meant that my booking bloods, normally taken a couple of weeks before the first scan so that all the risk factors can be calculated, were only taken on the day of my scan. They would be rushed through, but it would be a day or two before anyone could tell me whether they made a genetic defect more or less likely. I returned to my car, where I had expected to phone my husband to tell him everything looked great, and instead I phoned to tell him that we weren't sure. That it could go either way. That more tests were needed.

The successful dating scan, as for many parents-to-be, is the point where we excitedly gather our families to share the good news, and although it’s fair to say that delight gave way to a degree of ambivalence in our families some time ago, we still had news we wanted to share. But this time it wasn’t so simple. It wasn’t simple because we couldn’t invite everyone round, as we usually would, and it wasn’t simple because we couldn’t be sure things were going to work out for this baby. We had 5 young children to protect. Was it better to tell them they had a sibling on the way, and crush them with bad news later? Or should we keep quiet even as my bump became ever more obvious, saving them any heartache, but also denying them the knowledge that there had ever been a baby. As the fog of that first scan gradually lifted, I was sure I knew what I wanted to do. We had always spoken about our November baby, who we lost almost as soon as we knew I was pregnant, and the children are all aware that their eldest sibling, for reasons we can’t know, never got to be born. It felt wrong for us to keep this from them. So just as we have done each time, we sat them down, showed them the scan picture and shared the exciting news. Now…even in a national lockdown it would be optimistic to expect 5 children under 7 to keep a secret that big, and in any case I felt baby 6 deserved to be announced and shared just as enthusiastically as our other children. Whatever might come next, we would want the support of our loved ones.

Some wonderful outcomes of lockdown life were the innovative ways that people found to connect with each other. A local photographer was offering socially distanced photoshoots to provide a sense of community at such an isolating time and I asked to be involved. She took a gorgeous doorstep photo of our family, with baby 6 peering out from the scan photo, and we used it to share the news with our families, and our wider circle through Facebook. We also shared our hesitation: that we weren’t sure yet whether we would get to meet this baby who we already loved so much, but that we wanted his or her existence to be known and enjoyed. Locked away in our house at a time when everyone felt so distanced, we felt so much love pouring in from those close to us.

The 10 weeks that followed that first scan were a rollercoaster ride. Statistically we were very unlikely to come through every possible complication unscathed. There were many extra appointments, all of which I had to attend alone, and many difficult conversations with the midwives, which then had to be repeated when I got home. I had never had a pregnancy like this one. It was terrifying and isolating, and COVID made it so much harder. Perhaps one day I will write more about those weeks, but to keep myself vaguely on track [spoiler alert], we were one of the lucky families – it all worked out okay. At 23 weeks gestation, the Consultant told us our baby looked as healthy as any other baby might look. If there was anything wrong, he couldn’t pick it up through his many tests. The pregnancy bumped itself back onto the tracks and the weight of the world lifted from us.

Previously I’ve always given birth in hospital, or in the hospital grounds at least (another story that deserves its own blog post one day!). My Consultant felt very strongly that it would be a good plan this time too. By now, the fact that I was 40 and having my 6th baby had been bolstered by the news that I was Group B Strep positive and soon afterwards I was found to have Gestational Diabetes. Both diagnoses were new to that pregnancy. Mix in a healthy dose of global pandemic and there seemed to be a number of compelling reasons for me to agree to a due date induction.

I should probably introduce some background here, that for the past few years I have been training in various areas of perinatal work. My learning journey (my husband will be rolling his eyes at that word!) has taken me to the edges of my comfort zone and really made me examine my values and my reasoning. Homebirth, in particular, has always drawn me in, as compelling to me as the clear medical view that I was not a suitable candidate. With each baby that I have brought into the world, the evidence for my need to give birth in hospital has seemingly strengthened. Yet with every new course I attended, every new piece of research I devoured, I became more and more sure that homebirth was something we and our baby would benefit from experiencing. I will, no doubt, talk more about homebirth at another time, but for the moment I will say that it was not a conversation anyone wanted to have with me. My husband wasn’t thrilled with the idea, my midwife felt I wasn’t suitable for the Homebirth Team, and by virtue of the fact I even had a Consultant, I wasn’t ticking the low risk boxes that typically lend themselves to giving birth at home. But in my mind, the cogs were turning.

COVID restrictions had relaxed a little by the time I reached the third trimester, but as my due date approached, the second wave was very much upon us. New mums were emerging from hospitals with stories of being alone for induction, of having to consent to invasive examinations before their partners could be permitted to accompany them, and the idea I was hanging onto, that I might have two birth partners instead of one, was categorically off the table for me. For a while I tried to reconcile myself with what sounded like the sensible plan. We knew that I would labour fast, that the baby and I would both need some hospital attention after the birth, and that being induced at my due date allowed for all of this to happen in a safe environment. Yet the voice in my head got louder with each passing day. I wanted to be at home. I wanted to have my husband and my Doula present, and whilst Government guidelines allowed for this, hospital guidelines did not.

In my 5th birth I had tested a theory, using my natural oxytocin to manage my postpartum haemorrhage, and I felt confident that in a safe, familiar environment, on my terms, I could probably offset many of the potential risks which a hospital birth might exacerbate. Yes, a hospital was the safer place given my risk factors, but it was also a risk factor in itself. Induction, on a day when my baby might not feel ready to be born, in a hospital filled with restrictions and masks, and without the support partners that I wanted, felt as inappropriate to me as my suggested homebirth did to my Consultant. A huge part of my time as a birth worker is spent empowering parents-to-be to examine their options, to ask the questions, to make the decisions which feel right for them once they are suitably informed and armed with the facts. It is still a far easier narrative to preach than to follow. I had read the studies. Yes, I was older, and a grand multip, but actually compared with a younger woman experiencing her first birth, my risk of an adverse outcome was lower. That said, the NICE Guidelines were clear when it came to Gestational Diabetes. In my particular circumstances, it was ill advised to go beyond 40+6 weeks. I suggested to my Consultant that we could schedule an induction for then and I would try everything in my power to kickstart labour before then. Of course, lockdown and Group B Strep had removed many of the techniques I would typically have turned to...

My Consultant did his level best to talk me down. We reached an impasse and I agreed I would come in for monitoring at 40+3 weeks, the date at which he felt it was best to induce me. “I’ll see you on Friday for induction”, he said. “For monitoring?” I replied, “yes, see you then”. At 40+2 weeks, we entered a second national lockdown. It was bonfire night but all firework displays had been cancelled. Before bed, I took a long bath and listened to the pops and bangs of a few local fireworks being set off by the neighbours. I felt strangely calm. I was expecting to see my Consultant the next day and had all my evidence printed out, ready to make my case for expectant management. I’ll never know what it was that brought on my labour spontaneously. Perhaps it was the tiny silver balls my reflexologist had taped to the acupressure points in my ears and on my ankles a week earlier. Perhaps it was the knowledge that I needed to give birth before my induction/monitoring appointment later that day. Perhaps my inner confidence had created the perfect oxytocin storm. Perhaps my baby boy was just ready to enter the world.

At 2:58am on the day of my appointment, I woke to the unmistakable sensation of my cervix dilating. I feel as silly saying that now as I did then. I can’t describe it. I just knew that was what I had felt. I woke my husband and we waited. Five minutes later the sensation returned. I texted my Doula. “Are you awake? I think this might be it”. I didn’t dare to ring in case I was wrong. The text might not disturb her. I asked my husband to go and turn the heating on in our shed, and I waited to see what would happen next. Another five minutes passed and I had a third contraction. By now I was clear that was what they were. I rang my Doula and she answered within 3 rings. It was a little after 3am, I had had three contractions, it felt real. She said she would make her way over.

My labours have always been fast, my quickest birth having happened 11 minutes after a midwife had examined me and declared my induction unsuccessful. I was confident it wouldn’t be long until we met our baby. Once I had spoken to my Doula, I made my way downstairs and into the garden, towards the shed which I had set up for the homebirth I so desperately wanted. The freebirth I had decided was the right decision for me. I stopped a few times as the contractions surged through me and the familiar sensation of a rapidly progressing labour took hold. Time galloped on without my knowledge and I have no idea how quickly my Doula arrived, but I remember the first thing she asked was whether I could still talk during a contraction and that I said no, not really. I was close. At 4:16am, 78 minutes after I had woken up to that first sensation, my son slid into this world. I remember saying ‘someone catch the baby!’ and then bending down to scoop him up myself from the cushioned floor of my empty birthing pool where I had promised my husband I would give birth to avoid making too much mess. And then we all just sat there, in the low lighting of the shed, basking in the absolute glory of my son’s safe arrival. A short while later, the placenta was born, safely and without incident. My son’s birth was perfect.

My husband woke our 5 other children so that they could come and meet their brother, and once I was sure nothing could interrupt the beauty of his arrival, as promised to my husband, we sought medical help. My son and I were kept in hospital overnight, as I knew we would be. We were monitored, I had some minor repair work (the definite downside to each of my 6 very fast births) and the following day we were back home. My Doula is also a birth photographer and the images she captured for me that November morning are so very special to me. They pay testament to the power of a woman. The physical power but also the emotional power. I only have to look at them to vividly remember the sensations of my son’s labour.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

A study in April 2020 found a 72% increase in the number of people, in their third trimester or postnatally, who had considered freebirthing due to COVID-19 restrictions, with the LGBTQ+ community being disproportionately affected.

As an informed, empowered woman, approaching my 6th birth, with a good knowledge of my rights and how to access evidence to base my decisions on, pregnancy during the COVID-19 Pandemic was difficult. Not only because of the specific details of my own pregnancy, but because of the bigger picture. It was disempowering and upsetting to be told I must attend my antenatal appointments alone, and it was an absolute deal breaker for me that having a hospital birth restricted me to only one birth partner. Ultimately this was the reason behind my decision to freebirth. I was fortunate to be in a position to make that decision from a position of knowledge and understanding.

I can only imagine how it must have felt, must still feel, to be a first time parent in the current climate. Improvements have crept in as the pandemic has progressed, but restrictions remain, and as someone with the luxury of comparison, I feel sad for those who are experiencing pregnancy and birth for the first time under the restrictive and limiting conditions that currently exist.