My waters started to leak in the early hours of Saturday morning just after my husband had gone to work at the bakery. I dropped him a text to update him and tried to get some more sleep between surges. He came home later on that morning and we rang my parents to come and collect our older daughter and rang our lovely midwife Kelly to update her. We prepared our living room and started to blow up the pool, once this was done and in position we decided to go out for a walk and some lunch in the pub. At this point the surges were coming every 10 minutes.
Once home we watched some DVDs and practiced our hypnobirthing techniques for relaxation whilst I sat on my birthing ball. We set up some relaxing music, candles and fairy lights and shut the blinds. Kelly came round to check on us around tea time then left to refuel. Shortly after my surges became more intense and we started to fill the pool, at around 7pm I phoned for Kelly. At this point I was reading my affirmations that I had on the wall and breathing through surges. I listened to the hypnobirthing CD and lay in the pool whilst my husband sat reading and resting.
When Kelly arrived she did her observations and gave us some privacy, not long after I felt my waters break and I immediately felt that the baby was coming. I asked my husband to get into the pool and we chatted and breathed together as I breathed the baby down.
As I felt the head emerge we practiced the depthometer and I was laughing as I birthed the body, my husband received the baby and we called Kelly to unwrap the cord from around his neck. I then put him on my chest and we relaxed and fed as my husband and midwives Kelly and Rachael kept the pool warm, It was quite sometime later that I remembered to have a look and realised to my surprise that we had a little boy! Dylan Henry was born at 9.50pm.
When the pool started to get too cold we cut the cord and got out and Kelly assisted me in delivering the placenta which was a little trickier than expected but Kelly was brilliant at reassuring me throughout. I then got a shower whilst dad had cuddles with baby Dylan. Whilst Kelly and Rachael cleaned up we had sandwiches and tea and updated our families on the new arrival. The service we received from one-to-one was second to none, Kelly was brilliant. She was allocated to me right at the end of my pregnancy when my previous midwife left and built a rapport with us straight away. The birth was everything we had hoped it would be, calm, empowering and even romantic! The hypnobirthing techniques helped us to achieve this and we couldn’t thank Maureen Collins enough, so thank you to one-to-one, Kelly Silk and Maureen Collins, and MaMa Kat for all of your support after the birth.