Oops! The midwife didn’t have time to get to Kirsty and Kynan’s birth! Here is their amazing story…

We had our baby girl, Amelia Jean, on 3rd Feb! I hardly knew I was “really” in labour until 2 hours before she was born. There had been definite signs that she was on her way for about 10 hours, but I was experiencing little more than mild discomfort during that time, and just continued with the days’ activities (hung the washing out, cooked some food in preparation for being house bound for a few days and watched episodes of Boardwalk Empire!) We had spoken to our midwife (we had planned a homebirth) a couple of times, and at about 2.30pm we told her to come to our place, but not to rush. She had planned on arriving at around 5pm. As soon as we hung up the phone, things got pretty intense ” I started vomiting, and experiencing pretty intense surges. I used my hot water bottle, and had a couple of showers then got into the birthing pool (luckily Kynan had it filled already). As soon as I got in there, I started freaking out, and no matter what Kynan said could not stay calm. I managed to relax a bit in between surges, but the interval between was pretty brief. I knew that there was no way I could stand that level of intensity for several more hours (which is how long I figured I had to go), and started telling him that there was no way I could continue. It was at that point that he saw my leg shaking, and realised that I was actually in transition and did not have long to go at all. I didn’t believe that though! About 5 minutes later, I could feel the baby’s head, and even as I said the words “she’s coming now” out loud, I didn’t believe them. I was panicking, telling Kynan to call our midwife, but she wasn’t answering as she was already on the way… Without even batting an eyelid, he reassured me that he would deliver the baby (he reckons he could do this because of all the birthing videos he’d watched in our class). By then, I had no other choice than to just surrender to what was happening, and 3 surges later, her head was out and Kynan was telling me that she had her eyes open, and was moving her head around. She was completely out about 2 minutes later, and Kynan handed her to me.

It was 4.20pm. 5 minutes later, a friend of ours arrived and took a few photos (the look of shock when she saw the 3 of us in the pool was priceless!), and our midwife arrived at 5pm as agreed to find us sitting around with a baby! Just in time to deliver the placenta.

The attached photos sum up our surprise!

Thanks again for filing us with the confidence to trust ourselves and the birthing process.

Kirsty, Kynan and Amelia, Ballina