Hi Stina. Of course I wanted to let you know how it all went. In one word – “wonderful”. It was so wonderful to have the confidence to labour at home.
I had had niggles and tightening all through the Monday, but nothing too bad – I still had people over for dinner that night and felt quite on top of things. I went to bed at 11, woke up at 1.15am and knew it was “on”. Phil and I did breathing through the surges, but I was holding off using the deepening techniques till things got more intense. About 4.30 am I felt nauseous and had loose bowels (which, with hindsight I think was me going into transition, although I didn’t recognise it at the time), so we moved from bed to the couch so I could have the music and do some deepening. At 6.30 I suggested he call the midwife, who said she would come round in an hour or so. All my surges were short – about 15 seconds, so I had trouble believing much was happening, bit it obviously was.
Otis woke up so around 7 am I moved back to the bedroom because I was mooing like a cow and that kind of threw him a bit. As soon as I got to bed the waters released and I wanted to breathe down. So we rang the midwife back and said we were going in. Jed was born half an hour after we got to hospital – I was breathing him down along Ryrie St already. We got there at 7.55 and he was born at 8.25. I’m attaching two photos. One is literally seconds after the birth – I got from my knees into a chair and I still have the placenta inside me. Can you see the triumph in my face – I think it’s my favourite photo of me ever, even though I look pretty ragged.
The other photo is Jed’s wide open eyes, so you can see what an alert baby he was!
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