The home birth of Alexander John Stones

When I was in the bath at 9pm on Thursday, I had a sore Braxton-Hicks contraction, so decided to get out of the bath. We were in bed by 9:30pm when I had another, which was so uncomfortable I got out of bed. After that I was antsy and unable to get comfy to go to sleep, rather like I’d been the previous night. I kept getting up to go to the toilet. Already I was wondering whether I might be in labour, but told Jonathan that I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions as they were only as strong as some I’d had in the past, and they hadn’t been labour. There was a camping mattress lying next to my bed, set up earlier in the day as my “dry land labour” place next to the birth pool, which I’d started assembling. I’d left it folded in half so that I wouldn’t walk dirty feet over the cloth cover, but decided to open it up properly so that I could sleep on it, so that my constant toilet trips wouldn’t be so disturbing to Jonathan. Actually doing that disturbed him even more, so he offered to go sleep in another room and went. I suspected I was in labour but didn’t want to say so in case I was wrong and I looked silly for thinking mere Braxton-Hicks contractions were labour.

Pretty much from then (around 10:15pm) I gave up on the pretence of sleep. In between contractions I half-heartedly read a book and a magazine. I didn’t have time to get out my labour food of rice and soup, and quite frankly I have no idea how I would’ve been able to eat it. Sharon’s other idea of baking a cake in labour also seems ludicrous – maybe other people’s labours have long gaps between the contractions at the beginning, but mine were 30 mins for the first two, and 20 mins apart after that.

I tried a bath at 11pm, but found that it wasn’t deep enough for my tummy to be in the water when I was in my most comfortable position, which was on hands and knees. I knew by then I was in labour but was determined to let Jonathan sleep for 3 hours before calling him, as I knew how annoyed I was that this was starting after a day of being awake, and not when we were rested. But by then I’d managed to make a noise in rooms on either side of the room where Jonathan was trying to sleep, so around 11:30pm he came back into the bedroom asking how I was. He claims that he had been awake the whole time, and listening to my progress, and only came through because I was suddenly quiet!

By the time Jonathan came into the room, I’d settled into one position for contractions, which I stayed in for the rest of my labour. I was kneeling on the camping mattress next to the bed, with my arms on the bed. I had my head and arms on a pillow so I was fairly upright. Each contraction I would grab Jonathan’s hand and he would comfort me through the contraction, reminding me to breathe in and out deeply. If he wasn’t there (at first he still thought that there was time to finish constructing the birth pool, though I knew there wasn’t), I was inclined to panic and not breathe regularly and deeply. He also helped me to realise that there was time between contractions where I could think and talk rationally. At that stage, the gap was about 10 minutes. He told me that my contractions were around 30-40 seconds long, which really helped, as if they were really sore, I could count down from 20, knowing it was nearly over. I went on believing that they were 30 seconds long, until I heard him tell Sharon on the phone that they were a minute long! It also helped when I worked out what it felt like just before a contraction so I didn’t feel ambushed by them. (I would get unable to make decisions when a contraction was on me, and say “I don’t know!!” to the simplest question like “would you like something to drink?”)

Jonathan wanted to do an internal to see how dilated I was (he learnt this on the home birth ante-natal course we did), but I was scared it would be very sore, so I refused for quite some time. When I eventually let him at 1:30am, the contractions were about 5 minutes apart and I was 5cm dilated. He said Sharon said we should only phone when I was 6-8cm dilated, which seemed rather advanced, as I knew that some people go from 7cm to fully dilated in a couple of minutes. I was also worried that she’d not take us seriously like she did with the lady who called to say she was in labour while we were at an ante-natal class. Sharon took about an hour to finish up the class and leave! So I made him phone at 1:45am, and again at 2:15am to check how far she was by then. She was just around the corner, so I needn’t have worried. When I mentioned that the next day, she said she was surprised to hear we were only calling for the first time after 4-and-a-half hours of labour.

Sharon arrived at about 2:30am. She gave me an internal, on the bed and to my surprise, lying on my back. I can’t remember how dilated she said I was. I remember her saying “9cm” at some stage but I think that was later when I was back in my labour position kneeling next to the bed. When she said “9cm”, she said that only the membranes were holding the baby in. I had got Jonathan to position my alarm clock so I could see the time, and I remember working out at 3am that I’d been in labour for 6 hours. I was amazed because it felt like a fraction of the time, and like I was only just starting labour.

Because the first stage had felt so short, I expected the second stage to be short, like half an hour, but it actually took about an hour, with both Jonathan and Sharon telling me that the baby’s head was appearing and then disappearing back again. Jonathan and Sharon wanted me to feel it, but most of the time I felt it would be too distracting to try to reach down there in the short gap between contractions, and when I eventually did, it felt wet and icky and I didn’t want to feel it, even though I knew it was the long dark hair of my baby that they’d described to me. In contrast to the first stage where I couldn’t imagine sleeping in labour, in the second stage I went into a dozy trance for the minute or two that I got between contractions. There was no panic in that stage, and I even think that I made some witty (albeit one gasped word) answers to suggestions that Sharon or Jonathan made that I thought daft. Throughout the second stage I felt I had to have Sharon’s lovely warm hand on my tailbone. I got encouraging hints as to my progress from what Sharon asked Jonathan to fetch.

At some stage there was a bigger push feeling with a contraction, and whoosh, my waters went all over the towels they’d put down on the camping mattress. I was rather surprised when Sharon said I should push, and I didn’t really try that hard at first, remembering all the scare stories about tearing if you push at the wrong time. Then she explained that the urge to push would feel like needing to poo. I was glad she had explained that, as I might have tried to resist it, but instead I pushed like going to the loo, and then I felt my body push on beyond that feeling. I’ve seen pictures of primitive tribes who stretch their lower lips to hold a tobacco pouch. When I stretched for those big contractions, I visualised my bottom gaining a horizontal tobacco pouch out the back! As I continued with the tobacco pouch stretches I worked out I could pile two or three on top of each other during one contraction, and that got me further. Eventually I got to a stage that the head wasn’t slipping right back in after the contraction, and was staying there in between. The last few contractions I’d tell myself that I’d make the big effort and this would then be the last one I had to do, but then during the contraction I’d decide that I couldn’t do it this contraction, and I could tolerate just one more. At the very end the gaps between the contractions got quite long, and I was able to get my breath, drink some water (doctored with rescue remedy drops, I was told later) or lemon barley ice cubes, instead of grabbing them like a runner at a water-stop.

At 4:13am on Friday 11 April 2003, on a contraction that I only sort-of believed could be the last, the head popped out. I could see it between my knees, with dark, bluish skin and dark hair. The shoulders didn’t come out the very next contraction, but soon after that. Before it happened, I felt a strange sensation as if Sharon was pulling the baby into the right position, but I realise she can’t have been, so it must have been my uterine contractions doing it, which is awesome. The whole second stage I was amazed at what my body was doing all of its own accord. Sharon caught him, and passed him up to me. As soon as the body came out, he started crying and went pink.

I held him for a minute or so, eventually remembering to check that he was a boy as the obstetrician had said at the scan. Then Jonathan clamped and cut the cord under Sharon’s direction as it had stopped pulsing. Jonathan took the baby and I sat on Sharon’s camp toilet and birthed the placenta, which was surprisingly quick, only a few minutes. The baby was still crying as didn’t like the new experience of gravity after weightlessness in the womb, so Sharon suggested that I get in the bath with him and put his ears and torso under the warm water to comfort him, which I did. Jonathan sat at the edge of the bath and we discussed his name, coming up with a to-be-confirmed name, which we confirmed a couple of days later: Alexander John Stones.

Once Sharon had dressed him and shown me how to give him his first feed, she examined me, and weighed and measured him. My perineum was intact, and I had just a slight tear on the labia, which stung when I pee’d for the first 2 days. He weighed 3.2kg and was 53cm long, head circumference 36cm.