Trusting My Body: The Story of My Empowering Home Birth

Nov 2023

Our Home Birth

They say every birth has a story, and our second son’s arrival was a beautiful reminder that babies write their own scripts! We had planned a calm, gentle home water birth, but our little prince had a faster, more intuitive journey in mind.

At 39 weeks, early sensations began one morning, similar to my first labour. Trusting my gut, I asked my husband, to stay home. By mid-morning, contractions started, but they were irregular. Our doula arrived, and we chatted calmly, all assuming we were in the early stages. We even planned to head to our scheduled doctor's appointment that afternoon.

But as we talked, the energy shifted. A few powerful, double-peak contractions sent me from the sofa to the bed, instinctively moving into an upright forward squat. Suddenly, the urge to push was undeniable and overwhelming. There was no time to fill the birth pool. No time to bring our first son home from school.

Within 15 minutes, guided by our incredible doula, my husband was instructed on how to catch our baby. I focused on breathing him down, feeling my body open. In a few powerful moments, I felt his head, and then his whole body, slide out into his father's waiting hands.

After catching my breath, I held my vernix-covered baby for the first time. It was pure magic. We enjoyed immediate skin-to-skin, he latched beautifully within the first half-hour, and I delivered the placenta naturally. My husband even used a small IKEA bag clip as an improvised cord clamp before cutting the cord!

While we didn't get the water birth we envisioned or have our firstborn present, everything was perfectly ours: smooth, calm, and peaceful. It was the ultimate lesson in surrendering to the process.

When my husband brought our first son home to meet his baby brother, the room filled with a new kind of love. We spent our first wonderful night as a family of four, grounded and grateful for the wild, beautiful ride.