Canterbury Homebirth Association

By Louise Warren

Mark and I are UK-born but had been planning our immigration to NZ for many months. When we found that I was pregnant, we decided to make our journey before the baby (or “Podster” as it was then called) was born, rather than after. So we stepped off the plane on a cold but bright Winter’s morning on the 2nd of August 2007 with me rather heavily pregnant – a little over 34 weeks. Long haul with a large belly and crotch-length heavy duty support stockings was memorable! Having landed on a Thursday, we were into our first Homebirth antenatal class on the Saturday, which was just bizarre. But the people were great, the welcome warm and the classes an essential focus in those first couple of weeks of crazy disorientation.

The next four weeks passed in a flurry of practicalities. We took a place in Lyttelton only to find that we couldn’t get the temperature above 14 degrees at night, no matter how much we tried to heat it. My body was not going to give birth in that temperature! Reluctantly, we found an alternative rental on the Cashmere hill and moved in on 24th August. After unpacking a second time and getting the birth pool and birth box all ready, we sat down on Friday night (31st) on the veranda to watch a stunning Nor’Wester sunset over the alps. I uttered the fatal words: “Well, if worst comes to worst, at least we’ve got all the essentials ready”. It was our first pause in months of organising an international relocation. With 10 days to go before my due date, and with first babies so often being ‘late’, I was looking forward to putting my feet up, reading a few good books and chilling down. My Mum was due to visit and hopefully attend the birth, in a week’s time. The Gods, however, had other ideas. My waters broke at 6 o’clock the next morning.

At first I thought it was stress incontinence – I had a really irritating tickly cough - and I still wonder if my coughing overnight pushed Oscar’s foot through the membranes and broke my waters. In any case, we were off! So much for the trip we had planned to Lyttelton farmers’ market. Nope. No shopping. Today we were giving birth. The first thing that hit me was the irony that after all this time exchanging emails and then finally meeting and getting to know our midwife, this was the one weekend she had told me she was off duty. Fortunately her back-up colleague, who I’d met just two days before, was available to help.

Contractions had begun but as it was early I made a couple of calls to the UK to let close family and friends know that the action had started. I remember even then having to pause my conversations for each contraction, and looking back now I realise that already I was not really ‘with-it’, my consciousness shifting in state to accommodate the labour. We called our good local friends (the homebirth of whose son we had attended 9 months earlier) to warn them we would be needing them. Once they arrived, the boys went off to hire a hot water urn to help in the prep of hot towels. We’d found at my friend’s birth it was amazing how hot she needed the water and we just couldn’t keep the water hot enough for long enough. So we thought an urn would be a good plan. She stayed with me and I took the opportunity to focus and to light candles, honouring the spirits of place and the ancestors of this land here in NZ, as well as my own British ancestors and Gods, calling for strength, courage and inspiration.

For most of the morning, contractions were regular and about 5-6 minutes apart. They were intense enough that I had to move and certainly couldn’t talk though them! Around 12:30 I decided it would be good to get some rest and I lay down for about an hour and a half, during which time the contractions slowed right down to about 15 minutes apart. Our midwife came over for a first visit around 2:30pm and contractions increased as if by magic! She advised us to continue with just a hot water bottle for pain relief for as long as possible and then left us to it.

Around 3:30 in the afternoon I had a strong sense that it was time to get things moving. I knew that my hormones were naturally organised to facilitate birth at night, and I just suddenly felt that it was time to take advantage of that approaching window of opportunity. I remember the pain increasing and I found myself getting angry – not with anyone or anything, but just really contacting anger as a force for change and feeling my determination rise. I stomped and growled and it felt gooood! For the most part I had been in our bedroom, on my knees on our bed with a huge pile of cushions to lean my upper body on, swaying my hips side to side into each contraction. Then as things got more intense I was walking back and forth, sometimes stamping my feet as the pain washed through.

By 5pm, I called for hot towels and our midwife returned half an hour later by which point contractions were every 2-3 minutes, lasting for over a minute and from my point of view it was getting pretty intense. I was using a combination of long breaths and fire breathing. For me, all the pain was focussed in my low back. It felt like someone was driving a hard metal tray backwards into my sacral bone – sorry if that sounds a bit technical – hazard of being a chiropractor! It made me wonder if perhaps the baby had moved into the dreaded forwards facing position, but our midwife felt the positioning was still good, as it had been for weeks.

I don’t know if other birthing women have a similar experience, but I found the contractions felt most intense and like they were having most effect when I leaned forwards about thirty degrees from vertical. My beloved husband needed chiropractic services I couldn’t give him after the birth, as I found the best way to achieve this forwards leaning position was to hang my arms round his neck and let him take a good bit of my weight. Which I did. Again… and again…. and again. He was literally my rock, bless him, totally solid when most needed.

I found myself in the bathroom for the biggest contractions, probably at least in part because the baby now felt noticeably lower, and I felt pressure low down in the pelvis like I needed to pee or poo (no subtleties here), so being near the toilet seemed like a good plan. It was about 7:30pm. The hot towels were no longer enough – we needed more of them and I wanted them hotter! Contractions were now totally consuming, lasting up to two minutes. We had been putting towels on my belly and low back once a contraction got going but now that they were lasting so long, the towels were cooling off by the peak, when I needed them most. It seems obvious in retrospect, but our midwife showed us how to save one really hot towel for the worst part of the contraction and that helped immensely. It’s funny how little things can make such a difference.

About this time the contractions started rolling into one another so that one wasn’t completely finished before the next one began. It would have been great to get into the birth pool but (unbeknown to me) it had got too hot and was taking time to cool down. I remember distinctly thinking that I had reached my limit and couldn’t do this much longer. I could manage 3 or 4 more contractions, but then I would quite simply have had enough. After one of these, I had a distinct urge to push but dismissed it as it couldn’t possibly be time yet. Our midwife however, suggested we do a first internal examination and I was literally amazed when she said I was fully dilated and would I like to get in the pool?

I will never forget the sensation of slipping into that water. It was like a deep, instinctual wave of relief. And an instantaneous and irresistible urge to push. So I pushed. And met a rather interesting sensation that made me stop pushing! It’s hard to describe the unique feeling that accompanies pushing a baby out through the birth canal. An intense burning is certainly part of it. Anyway, suffice to say it gave me pause for a couple of contractions… until I remembered that there was only one way forwards and dug deeper.

So I pushed. After being hot during a contraction and freezing cold between, I was now a little warm, so I munched on our pre-prepared ice cubes of frozen juice between contractions and hung out in the water, kneeling but still leaning forward with my hands resting on a ledge in the pool floor we’d made by putting a beanbag under one side of the pool before filling it. With the midwives’ encouragement I got the hang of focussing and making two long, quiet pushes down with each contraction. The baby made speedy progress, initially sliding back some, but then less so, and after a little over half and hour, its head came to the maximum stretch point while the midwife gently held it back to allow my tissues to accommodate the stretch. That was tough, having to be still and just ‘be’ with that intensity of sensation, as the seconds ticked past, waiting for the next contraction to come. But come it did, and with it I birthed the baby’s head. An amazing twisting/turning sensation accompanied the arrival of the shoulders and suddenly I was being asked to pick up my newborn baby from the bottom of the pool.

How can you ever describe that moment? What blessing. Here was our baby! I held him to my chest while he cried gently for a minute or so. Having been facing me whilst I was pushing, Mark came round to my side and together we welcomed this precious new soul into the world, talking to him gently and stroking his skin. Time stopped.

I will always be grateful for that space we were given to welcome Oscar quietly there in the pool, in peace. I remember the soft light, the faces of our friends who looked how we felt when we witnessed the birth of their son less than a year before, the candles still burning in the fireplace where I’d made my prayers and lit them at the start of the day, the lights of the city twinkling below, the breath of the ancestors gathered to welcome another member of the tribe.

After 40 or so timeless minutes, we left the pool in order to encourage the cord to stop pulsing. With help, we got the baby latched onto my breast and after taking a homeopathic, I birthed the placenta, an hour and a half after delivering the baby. Just wonderful that there was no rush. Mark tied the cord with string, and I cut it, then a few practicalities followed, some pleasant (examining our beautiful wee boy and the placenta), and some not so pleasant (local anaesthetic injections prior to some stitching). Of all the things I did that day, I truly had to dig deepest to find the courage for those four injections! It’s not so easy when the endorphins are wearing off.

Then it was off to bed. Mark blew out the candles that had burned faithfully all day long, and we tucked ourselves up in bed with this amazing little soul sound asleep on my chest and later, on Mark’s. I made sleepy thanks for the great blessing that was Oscar’s birth, for the honour of welcoming this precious new life, grateful that we had been able to do so consciously, in a calm environment, without the need for intervention and a little proud of having found courage and strength when needed.

We’re very grateful – firstly to the Homebirth midwife team for a great service, in particular to my main midwife Michelle, whose compassion, sensitivity and sheer good sense when I hit the wall at times in those first 6 weeks, I shall never forget. We’re also really grateful for the efforts of Margaux and the antenatal class folks – the quality of information and reading material in the classes were just awesome and Margaux did a wonderful job of helping us feel welcome at a very tender time when we had just arrived.

In some ways Mark and I are uniquely placed to appreciate the midwifery service here in NZ, as we spent the majority of my pregnancy in the UK, experiencing the UK system where there is scant interest, resource or support for homebirth. The commitment, expertise and quality of care that’s available here in NZ for families who are hoping for homebirth is very precious and sometimes we wonder whether Kiwi folk in general realise how lucky they are to have such options.

So that was Oscar’s birth. Personally, I’m still totally blown away by my close encounter with the unstoppable, primal force of opening that is birth. I have crossed the threshold into motherhood and, like all those who have gone before me, I am changed. I just feel so very fortunate that our experience was a gentle one.

Published in Birthplace Magazine - Summer Edition 2008/2009.

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Last updated 30 March 2009.