Birth Sequel: The Main Event

On Sunday June 4th, Ted woke me up pre-6am (thankfully a rarity these days) as Maddy groggily told me she was experiencing period pain-like aches. I left her to it and took Ted downstairs for breakfast, eventually checking in with Maddy who was now requesting her birthing ball and low lighting. I gave her a brief back massage and some words of encouragement, then texted my mum to see how soon she could be with us.

I filled an hour playing in the garden with Ted, trying to be present in the moment as we constructed an elaborate drainpipe-based tunnel system for toy cars, but my mind was constantly on Maddy and whatever she was experiencing back indoors.

An hour later at 10.30am, my parents arrived to collect Ted and take him to the park. Then, several things happened at once:

As I was helping Ted get his shoes on, my mum said “I think Maddy’s calling you”. I headed upstairs to find her in the bathroom, breathing heavily. “Call the midwife team – I want to push”, she told me.

I came back downstairs in a hurry, and my mum came over all concerned. “Are you alright? What do you want us to do?”

“Just get Ted out of here, honestly – I can’t keep dividing my time between them both. We’ll be fine!” I told her. They hustled Ted out of the house and I began frantically trying to find the blue book with all the midwife numbers.

Book located, I dialled quickly. When they picked up, my voice echoed weirdly, but I ignored it.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is that the midwife team? I think my—”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you? Can you—”

“IS THIS THE MIDWIFE TEAM? MY PARTNER—”

“I’m really sorry, I can’t—”

I hung up. It turned out I’d got a single digit wrong in the phone number (and would later discover I was talking to a hair salon in Sutton Coldfield).

Number correctly dialled, I got through to… an answering machine. I hung up and dialled the mobile number of our assigned midwife. Got her voicemail.

Cursing aloud, I called another switchboard number listed on the blue book. At this point my mum had been gone for about two minutes. As I put the phone to my ear, though, I suddenly heard Maddy screaming my name with absolute urgency. I dropped the phone and ran for the stairs.

I’d expected to find her doubled over in pain or something, needing me to support her and talk her through the contraction like we’d practiced for hypnobirthing. As I took the stairs two at a time I began to mentally rehearse the script, the soothing hand stroking gestures, whether I should put some music on etc.

None of this was enough to prepare me, though, for jogging into the bathroom to find Maddy standing upright shouting “GET A TOWEL! CATCH HER!” as I made eye contact with our literally-being-born daughter, head upside down as Maddy laboured.

I grabbed the nearest towel and suddenly there I was on my knees, delivering my own daughter. I held her head as gently as I could and had a brief moment to wonder if I was supposed to be pulling/assisting, but almost as soon as I was in position, her warm, wet body slipped free of Maddy’s, and she was in my arms, crying and wriggling as I scrambled to unwrap the umbilical cord from around her, and lay her down on the towel I’d grabbed. I’d only put my phone down 30 seconds ago.

I couldn’t quite believe this was happening as I saw my baby daughter, right there in front of me in our bathroom. While I goggled at the sight of her now yelling and shivering on the towel, Maddy leaned across lucidly for her phone to pause the hypnobirthing podcast she’d been listening to, and passed me her phone. “Call an ambulance”.

I ran to the bath and washed my hands so I could pick up the phone – in my only previous experience of childbirth, the baby was towelled down before I got to see him. I dialled 999, pausing to wonder at the new “emergency information” screen my phone was showing me which I’d never seen before, then suddenly I was dry-throated, describing the scene to the operator who calmly talked me through the next steps.

I can’t recommend trying to estimate how much blood your partner has lost over the phone while trying to warm a just-born baby and support a probably-in-shock mother, but we got through it. The operator stayed with me until the ambulance arrived, probably within seven minutes of my call. Later, I’d learn that the ambulance sped past my parents and Ted on their way to the park, who wondered half-jokingly if it was for us.

Once the crew arrived they were businesslike and reassuring: they checked everyone’s vital signs, bundled up the baby for checks and got me moving again so I could find the baby clothes and nappies we’d stashed in various hospital bags which I could now no longer remember the location of. I remember handing a medic a babygrow and she patiently said “can you find a nappy first, too?”. I was in shock, running on autopilot. The baby was here – I’d seen her arrive, I’d lifted her down. I thought we’d have a few hours (and a bit more help)! I eventually managed to fire off a quick text to my mum to tell her the baby had just arrived, five minutes after she left.

Maddy was doing well – incredibly well. She was calm, somehow, and very aware of her surroundings and needs. Last time around she was dazed and woozy from gas and air, only vaguely aware of the new baby placed on her chest. She helped me find all the different baby things we needed as the four paramedics bustled around probably the tightest space of our home (the corridors around the bathroom and bedroom) until they managed to get hold of the midwife team, who arrived about 30 minutes later.

After this, things calmed down somewhat – the midwives praised Maddy for her calm and confident work, and did their checks and scans to ensure all was well (it was). They supported Maddy while I had some skin-to-skin time with the baby, and after an hour or two they left and we were on our own with the baby. None of the three of us were expecting our homebirth to pan out like it just had, but we were all incredibly grateful.

Maddy was, and is, awe-inspiring. Afterward she described it as “mind over matter” when it came to managing the pain. She’d been so galvanised by the negative experience hinted at by the doctors that she wanted to give birth at home, without interference (and chemicals), and when the right moment came – eg. our other child was safely out of the way, and the two of us could be there to get through the next phase together, uninterrupted.

Everything espoused in the hypnobirthing philosophy was observed here – the body knowing what to do, the manageability of pain, the harnessing of your emotional response and mental wellbeing to provide the optimum circumstances for quick, safe labour. I’d been reading these scripts and homilies for months to Maddy but it was something else to see it all come true, just like the affirmations said.

And here was this incredible woman – saw herself through labour, without pain relief or assistance, and I’m positive that if I hadn’t been there, she would have easily delivered the baby herself and phoned the ambulance while she waited. Even while I was fretting on the phone, she was soothing the baby, holding her and stroking her while waiting for the midwives to arrive. People kept congratulating me for being calm and “being the midwife” but I went to pieces really—could barely speak coherently to the 999 operator, was hanging around like a spare part when the midwives came—the hero of this story is Maddy, who proved definitively that if you believe you can do something, you can do it.

And the baby? We’ve called her Robin – she’s beautiful and we love her. More to come on that subject in the near future…