My experience of Samuel's Breech birth at home

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I am an extremely grateful mum that I was able to have both my babies normally at home. In hospital, under current hospital protocols, both births would have required intervention. In particular the birth of my son (who was an undiagnosed breech) would have been a very different experience, probably traumatic, for all of the family. As it was, I never left my home and I have no scars from a caesarean section or an even an episiotomy or tear. I feel enriched and empowered by the experience and achievement of his birth and I bounced back very quickly afterwards to be able to care for my children. I think how it happened also allowed the gentlest possible transition for my one year old daughter Jade to becoming a big sister. Although she wasn't present for the actual birth, I did not have to leave her for a stay in hospital.

At the beginning when we were deciding about maternity care for this pregnancy we had considered a home birth under NHS care for financial reasons, and as it was a second baby with an uncomplicated first pregnancy and birth I thought it would probably be straightforward. After a long discussion we decided to go for an independent midwife, Jane Evans, who we had had with our daughter's birth and had built a relationship with. We knew she was skilled and experienced and gave a fantastic quality of midwifery care. I think sometimes ignorance can be bliss unless something unexpected happens and things go wrong, and being a qualified midwife and knowing the system with (in my view) too many women having traumatic births and caesarean sections and the repercussions afterwards I was prepared to do anything to finance having Jane. I would have gladly taken out a loan or sacrificed holidays for the next however many years if we hadn't reached an agreement. We felt nothing was more important than my health and the health of our child and we wanted the best possible care. Ironically we had even said we would feel safe in her hands if a situation such as a breech baby arose!

On the whole I found the experience of Samuel's birth much harder than Jade's. The pregnancy had been very straightforward, with far less discomforts than my first pregnancy, I think because I was a lot fitter running around after a toddler and walking miles with her each day. It was very hot towards the last few weeks of pregnancy and Samuel ended up being born on the hottest day on record.

Contractions began about a week before his due date one Wednesday evening, and got stronger and stronger and the waters broke about midnight. I thought he would be arriving in the next day or so I called my mother to come to look after Jade, and she arrived in the early hours. We all went to bed to try and get some sleep, as the contractions had died off to about one every hour. Samuel actually wasn't born for another four days, and I continued to have at least one very painful contraction every hour for this whole duration of time. Every evening they would get up to every four minutes for a few hours and we would think "this is it" and then everything would all peter out in the early hours of the morning.