Mollie’s Birth Story

With my first child I had planned a homebirth, ended up labouring at home for 20 hours before being transferred in for ‘failure to progress’. I ended up with a category 2 caesarean section. My son was back to back throughout pregnancy & labour with his head in the wrong position, which ultimately meant he got stuck in my pelvis during labour. 

Fast forward to 2023, I found out I was pregnant with baby number 2 and my community midwife suggested I tried for a homebirth again. I was over the moon to have her support from the beginning. At 41 weeks & 6 days, my son was having a sleepover at my mum’s house and just as I got into bed (around 1:30am – insomnia 😭) I felt my first twinge. I knew instantly it was the start of labour, I’d had braxton hicks for weeks and knew instantly that this one was the real deal. 

I managed to lay down and rest between them as they were around 10-15 minutes apart until 4am, they started to get stronger and more frequent so I woke my partner who started to work his way around the house gathering everything we needed to set up for my homebirth. I also started using my wooden combs, squeezing them and doing my hypnobirthing breathing for each contraction. At 6am I rang my mum to let her know I was in labour and asked her to make her way round. By 7:30am, my partner had half filled the pool whilst I was in the bath. Things really ramped up, the contractions were now 3 in every 10 minutes and I was struggling to talk through them so my partner rang my community midwife who advised me to get in the pool and she would make her way over in the next hour. By 8am I could feel pressure so a quick phone call back to the midwife to hurry her up and she arrived within 15 minutes. I agreed to an examination as the pressure was really intense and I was 5cm dilated. My baby was back to back and my waters were bulging. I started to use the gas and air, along with squeezing my combs (I had one in each hand by this point). I had done a workbook on optimal fetal positioning to help my get my baby into a better position prior to labour, so opted to do some of those exercises/moves in the water, really focussing on asymmetrical movements and creating space in my pelvis to give her the room to turn around. 

I felt a really big movement and with the next contraction my waters broke. The release felt amazing in that moment but the contractions afterwards somehow became even more intense. At this point I decide the gas and air was doing nothing for me so I stopped using it and went back to hypnobirthing breathing techniques. The pain in my back was unreal but thankfully the second midwife rubbed my back for every contraction which helped so much. 

At around 12:30pm, I felt like I was starting to lose my cool a little which alerted the midwives that I was likely in the transition period. My 3 year old son had been bobbing in and out throughout my labour but at this point I asked my sister to take him out and about for little while. I asked the midwife to examine me again to confirm that I was definitely fully dilated, and I was! By this point it was around 1:45pm, as I stood up the midwife grabbed my son’s step stool and suggested I put one foot up on that whilst I was pushing. I couldn’t manage to get back into the pool so stayed at the side instead. After a few contractions with my foot on the step stool things really progressed and the midwives could see signs that she was descending. Her heart rate dropped a little during one of my contractions so they decided to ring an ambulance “just in case”. A few minutes later at 2:22pm she was born! The paramedics just walked through the door as she was passed through my legs into my arms. 

I had wanted a physiological third stage but as I had a haemorrhage after my son we were quite cautious. My blood loss seemed to pick up a little so we swapped to active management instead and my placenta was delivered a few minutes later. I had a second degree tear but my skin was quite thin so we agreed to be transferred in to have a doctor do my sutures. We were at the hospital for around 3 hours altogether before coming home and introducing Navy to her big brother! 

My HBAC was the most healing experience and I feel so fortunate to have had such a great community midwife support me along the way! Despite training to be a midwife myself, I learnt so much from the extra research and the hypnobirthing course I had done during my second pregnancy. I really wanted to be as fully informed as possible so I could really advocate for myself and my baby, now I encourage everyone I know having a baby to do the same! 

Mollie & Ty