We were privileged to be able to have Her Majesty the Baby at home as opposed to on a hospital ward.
This was a major decision for us, as it would be for any parents to be.
But we were assured by the care regime that the necessary home support network was in place to facilitate this.
Fast forward to the day in question, and its a matter of “all the best laid plans”, etc.......
We began to Birth at home late afternoon – Rush Hour, in other words.
We rang the Duty Midwife as instructed, only to be told she was 40 miles away, would "start to make her way up to us", but that "there was no guarantee that she would make it in time, in which case we would just have to manage ourselves or call the Emergency Services”.
We sat dumbstruck for a moment looking at each other when we hung up, then every single stressbusting™ tool at our disposal was drawn upon in the hours that followed.
We acknowledged that our SMI™ had just been pushed through the roof - see our previous post entitled "Have an SMI™ (Stress Management Index™) to accompany your BMI" for an explanation of this.
So regaining calmness was our first priority – we had to remain calm to get through this together and determined to do this by regulating our breathing and making ourselves as comfortable as possible.
For a summary of the breathing techniques we favour and practice, please visit our previous posts entitled "Identifying & Stressbusting™ Panic Attacks" and "Stressbusting™ Techniques to Manage & Calm Overwhelm" respectively.
We also knew we had to quickly adapt our plans while dealing with immense pain - see our post entitled "Stressbusting™ when things don't work out quite as you'd expected".
The overall exercise thus became less about our best romantic laid plans and more about ensuring as safe and comfortable a birth as possible in the circumstances - a matter of acting on our priorities (see our related post entitled "Break Time Quickie - Act on your Priorities").
We had to condense our "5 Key Steps to Stressbusting™ Decision Making" (see our earlier post so entitled) into a few minutes to agree a plan.
In this regard, we had bought a birthing pool for home use - but the contractions had came on so quickly that MikeyM™ ended up hurling this (half made up) through the patio doors into the garden, where it ultimately served as a paddling pool for Her Majesty months later!
Pain remained an important issue that we knew we had to manage and keep a close eye on at all times.
This was because without a midwife in attendance, we couldn’t access the gas and air we had stored at home for the birth and neither was an epidural available on a home birth such as ours.
We therefore headed straight for the bed and laid down together.
There, we successfully used some of the breathing and other imagery techniques we have shared in earlier posts to enable us to control our anxiety levels and pain for the duration of the remainder of the birth.
We began to focus on the end game when the pain would have passed and we were holding our beautiful new baby daughter in our arms.
See our post entitled "Break Time Quickie - "Imagine2Create" for an explanation of this technique.
We eventually gave birth with only 2 over the counter painkillers we had in the drawer as pain relief.
As the birth approached, we thought it prudent to call the Emergency Services as recommended.
If a transcript of that call were available, it would be priceless.
MikeyM™ was asked by the operator to examine the underside of LouLoU™ and report his findings:
MM: What am I looking for?
Operator: A baby
MM: Well we know there is a baby here!
Operator: But where is the baby?
MM: It’s still inside its Mum
Operator: But can you feel the head?
MM: What does that feel like? I can’t feel any hair, if that’s what you mean
And so on, and so on.
In the end, the Operator concluded in the interest of safety, given the lack of midwife attendance, that the Emergency Services would be despatched.
In the meantime, we had called our (now off duty) local midwife directly who had heroically succeeded in sourcing babysitters for her own children so she could get to us just in time for the birth.
It was beginning to look like a Christmas Special episode of “Doc Martin”! 🤓
Her Majesty then duly popped out safely into her Daddy’s hands like a little pocket rocket, with the security of a midwife having just arrived into attendance after all.
By which point Emergency Services had arrived, followed by the Duty Midwife too – about 10 minutes after the birth.
So we ended up with a veritable houseful as opposed to the ‘private birth’ we had been aiming for 😀.
The whole process lasted around 5 hours, but passed in the blink of an eye.
Within an hour of the birth we were lying on the bed together with Her Majesty between us, sharing a Chicago Town pizza under the post birth observation of the Home Care Team sitting at the bottom of our stairs, who departed after an hour or so – an equally surreal as beautiful memory that will stay with us forever.
Now we still live in the home where Her Majesty was born and her birth certificate is unique this day and age in referencing a home birth that was commonplace in years gone by but not so much so today ☺.
The lessons we learned from this, one of the most vivid experiences of our lives, is that being open to adapt even best laid plans at a moment’s notice is critical to wellness and prospering.
And that it is amazing what ingenuity, courage, teamwork and stoicism we as humans can generate and draw upon should the contingencies of a particular situation necessitate it 👌.
Would we recommend a Home Birth to others?
Most certainly, but be ready to stressbust™ just about anything when the day in question arrives!! 💥
Big Love,
LouLoU&MikeyM™👋💯💖💜 xxx