Tabitha - birth story (or rather a story of how I came to give birth the way I did)

When I learned that I was pregnant with my first baby I was excited and proud and very, very much in need of information. I vaguely remembered a few things from biology class at school (many years ago) and I had one friend who told me a few things about her pregnancy, but other than that I really needed my GP to fill me in.

Unfortunately, she didn’t. On my initial consultation, she basically told me to come back if I still felt pregnant after week 12 and I had to persuade her to give me information on dietary requirements and a prescription for folic acid, the only two things I knew I needed to have. She did hand me a bunch of leaflets, but that was it and I felt absurdly alone when I left the clinic – as if I was the last person on earth to be pregnant and rather stupid for not knowing what to do.

However, since I was still rather new to this country at that point, I figured that I was experiencing a case of cultural difference and since there seemed to be rather a lot of living English children around, I assured myself that things might still work out OK, even if I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. This worked fine until I noticed bleeding one morning and went to the GP for help who told me she had never heard of that before but not to worry. And sent me home. Naturally, I freaked. All of my pregnancy books, the internet and a midwife I knew back home agreed that bleeding in early pregnancy is normal but might well be a sign of trouble and that this should be checked out. I began to feel that I really did not want to be in the care of a doctor who had never even heard of this. Happily, this was just before Christmas and after my ancient obstetrician back home assured me that all was well, I decided to look for some alternative antenatal care.

At that point I came across an article in the Guardian, discussing the ONE MOTHER, ONE MIDWIFE campaign. I had not been aware of independent midwifes in England but immediately felt relieved by their existence. And after some internet research, I was sure that I wanted my antenatal care to be with someone who would take the time to answer all my questions, who would get to know me well enough to be able to answer those questions that I simply didn’t know I needed to ask and who would most importantly be around for me throughout the pregnancy and the birth. I was also very pleased to be given the chance to choose who I wanted my midwife to be and was very happy when Amber was able to fit me in. From that moment on, being pregnant changed from something that was happening to me to something that I was making choices about.

Unexpectedly, this also included the choice of where to give birth. In my frantic introductory reading of pregnancy related literature, I had come across all sorts of takes on this issue and had already made up my mind that I liked the idea of a waterbirth. Yet, when Amber asked me if we were considering a homebirth, the thought had never even crossed my mind. My partner and I knew that Amber liked the idea and had done homebirths before but for the next 10 weeks we still thought we would have a hospital birth like everyone we ever knew, and would ask Amber to accompany us for emotional support.

To our own surprise, however, at 34 weeks, Jamie and I went to our hospital for a one-day parent preparation class and left it thinking that we could not, after all, just simply go there and have the baby. The place felt huge, old, and terribly impersonal and after a hospital tour a week later we seriously began to ponder our options. Given that so far the pregnancy had gone well, the baby seemed to be doing all the things it should be and that the hospital was only about a 15 minutes drive away from our house, we eventually decided to do what felt right – and in my case that was labouring at home and simply staying there and having the baby where I felt most comfortable.

We made this decision in week 37 and did not have a lot of time for preparation, especially since I was convinced the baby would be at least two weeks early. Three weeks later, everything was organised to perfection, but there was still no baby in sight. It all began to feel rather anticlimactic and I was about to suggest to retract and not have a baby after all when labour started very slowly on Tuesday night of week 41. By Wednesday morning, contractions came every 7 minutes and felt oddly good – at that point I honestly thought that people dramatised labour pains a bit too much. When I called Amber that morning, she asked me to let her know when my contractions got stronger and more regular and Jamie and I went to do what we had planned for our last day alone: Jamie went out to buy some food, I made some cookies (baking is meant to help with boredom during early labour) and later we went to play crazy golf in the little park around the corner.

While all of this helped with the waiting, there still was no sight of the baby by that evening. And the next morning, when I called Amber after a sleepless and really uncomfortable night, labour was still not firmly established. I spent the Thursday rolling around on our big birthing ball (highly recommended!) and realised that labour pains were every bit as bad as they are reported to be, even though my contractions were refusing to become longer or more regular. At least I had a show – finally, I had expected that for weeks. By 9pm, I was so exhausted that we called Amber again and after an examination she decided to stay the night.

At 11pm, Jamie began to set up the pool, and after a full day spent on all fours on the bedroom floor, entering the pool was wonderful. It really did feel like a bit of a holiday – but after a couple of hours in there, things were slowing down again and Amber suggested I went back up stairs. Somewhat to my surprise, after all that time, our daughter was born there that Friday morning at 3am, she had her hand wrapped around her head which had made her way out longer and more difficult but other than that she was perfectly fine. The placenta was delivered naturally an hour later, I went for a shower, and then straight to bed, with my new daughter Tabitha by my side and a hot cup of soup in my hand. When Amber left, Jamie joined us and watched the baby while I went to sleep. Since then, I have been asked by many people if the birth was dramatic, or terrible, and if it felt like a great caesura. To all these questions I usually say that it was long and hard and exhausting, but at no point have I felt as if I was doing something extraordinary, I simply had a baby and it really just felt normal, as strange as that may sound.