In HuffPost Birth Diaries we hear the extraordinary stories of the everyday miracle of birth. This week, Sophie Lucas shares her story. If you’d like to share yours, email amy.packham@huffpost.com.
I was 36 weeks pregnant when I decided I wanted a home birth, without any pain relief or intervention. I was very scared about giving birth and felt the place I would feel most confident would be at home – even though it was a two-bedroom flat. When I told people that, they looked at me like I was crazy.
But I’m also claustrophobic and it’s important for me to have control over my environment. I wanted a more active birth. I wanted to be able to stand up and move around. I was doing hypnobirthing anyway, and it made sense to be at home. I didn’t want any synthetic oxytocin or anything to force me to labour quicker. My birth plan was simple – “I want to be left alone, unless there’s something wrong.”
When I was 40 weeks and two days pregnant, I went for a sweep because I didn’t want to be induced. It worked. That evening, at about 8pm, I got up to make a cup of tea and heard a “pop”. It was really weird, because it was inside my body. It felt like my ears had popped. And I was calmly excited.
I called my parents and told them my waters had broken, and said we would let them know what happened. Then I called the midwife, who came out to check me – but I was only 1cm dilated. You have to be 4cm for them to stay with you.
“I got in the bath and didn't move – for eight hours!"”
She told me I should have a bath, so that’s exactly what I did. The bath we had at the time was small but very deep, almost like a tub. I got in it and didn’t move – for eight hours! In the meantime, my partner had called my parents who drove down from Coventry to Hove immediately. I didn’t want to be in the middle of labour and realise I wanted my mum – and for her to be so far away.
My baby was posterior – head down, but facing the abdomen – so I had the most intense contractions in my back. The only thing my partner could do to help was hold the shower head and aim warm water at my back. I was in a totally hypnotic state, on my side in the bath, humming ‘Three Blind Mice’. When you hum it helps you to breathe, with that long extended breath out at the end. I think I hummed it constantly for the full eight hours.
At 11am then next morning, my parents arrived but it was the start of December and the heating was broken in their car. My mum came running up the stairs, into the bathroom and put her freezing hands on me – and I just remember shouting: “Nooooo!” Then my dad came in and declared: “I’m just going to use the toilet.” We had to tell them to leave the bathroom, and sent my dad off to a public toilet, three streets away. When he got back, there was an Amazon delivery driver at the door, to whom he said: “You can’t come in – my daughter is upstairs giving birth!”
Cooper was born at 2pm in our bedroom. My parents were next door in the living room, trying to read books and magazines. I can’t imagine what they must’ve been thinking, because at that point I was quite vocal. Apparently I screamed: “Get it fucking out of me!”
My mum and dad said they heard everything, then they heard him crying.
In hindsight, and as a parent now, too, the fact that their ‘baby’ (me) was not in a good place – and they had to sit there, helplessly listening, without being able to comfort me – must’ve been really hard. But I’m so glad they were the first people to meet my son, when he was just minutes old.
It’s still weird picturing what happened when the midwife gave me stitches – Dad in the front room, my mum and my partner at one end of the bed holding this tiny baby, and me straddled horizontally across the bottom of the bed being stitched up. It was like a scene from Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
As told to Victoria Richards.