by Karen Cornish
Martha Jean Cornish was born in water, in a fairy-lit room
at home just three days before Christmas 2008. She was eight days early, which
was a shock, as I thought first babies were supposed to be late!
My NHS midwife wasn’t as enthusiastic as my husband Simon
and I about home birth, despite a problem-free pregnancy, and we didn’t feel we
were getting the support and encouragement we needed. There was also a chance
that no midwife would be available to come out to us and I thought it would be
a great shame to miss out on a straightforward home birth just because the
midwives were all busy.
A friend recommended an independent midwife called Nicky
Garrett and after meeting Nicky we knew we wanted her to deliver our baby.
I woke up on Sunday 21st December bleeding and I
panicked. I’d been waiting for a show but from what I had read I expected just a
slight tinge of blood, not a full blown period. We rang Nicky who came over to
the house to check everything was ok. It was, but she said we could still be a
long way off.
The bleeding stopped and as the day went on I started to
notice twinges every now and again. By late afternoon the twinges turned to
cramps and it suddenly dawned on me that they were following a regular pattern.
We started timing them and they were around every 10 minutes. At this point I realised that this was it!
At 10pm, Simon rang Nicky and, as she had over an hour’s
drive to get to us, she said she would come straight away in case contractions
suddenly sped up. She arrived about 11.30pm and by this time the contractions
were between six and ten minutes apart lasting around 30 seconds. Nicky did
some checks and an internal, which revealed I was around 1.5cm dilated. She
said we had a long way to go and made herself a bed on the sofa while we went
upstairs to try to get some sleep.
The contractions became stronger throughout the night but I
managed to sleep and got up about 8am. I found I was most comfortable kneeling
up against the back of the sofa and I think I must have stayed in this position
for quite some time.
In the run up to the birth I’d been listening to
hypnotherapy CDs every day and I was amazed how completely calm I was. I coped
with contractions by breathing in as they started and blowing out as they
intensified. This wasn’t something I consciously did, it was instinctive, and
this breathing pattern really helped.
At about midday Nicky said she thought I had progressed
enough to get into the pool so I did and the warmth of the water was a
wonderful relief. I did notice that the contractions became immediately
stronger.
After a while I remember noticing a change in the depth of
the contractions and I heard myself making a low groaning noise instead of the
blowing out I had been doing previously. I also felt really spaced out. Nicky
made a note at this point that I was in transition. A little while later I got
out of the water to go to the toilet and Nicky offered to examine me. She was
surprised to feel the head! I was fully dilated and Nicky said to start pushing
when I got the urge.
At this point everything seemed to pause. Suddenly I felt
more like myself, chatted and even ate some toast. I got back in the pool and
waited for the urge to push; it didn’t come but I tried pushing anyway.
After quite some time. the urge to push came and I had no
idea how hard I would actually have to push to get my baby out. Nicky and Simon
could both see the top of the baby’s head and were giving me great
encouragement and with a really big push her head came out. I remember saying
“ouch!” a couple of times at this point but with the next contraction the rest
of her was out. My eyes had been shut tight in concentration but when I felt a
weight hit my chest I looked down to see two of the biggest eyes I’d ever seen.
After some skin to skin and cord
clamping, baby Martha was wrapped in a towel and given to Daddy while I stood
up in the pool and pushed out the placenta.
While Nicky checked Martha over I
went upstairs for a bath and it was only at that point I realised I’d given
birth without any pain relief. I remember Simon giving Martha a tour of the
house and showing her the spotty curtains in the bedroom. Nicky stayed with us
for another couple of hours and then left us to snuggle into bed together as a
family.
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