Steph - 2 Homebirths with SECM via HSE Scheme, Unstable Lie, Covid Pregnancy & Miscarriage
My first pregnancy sadly ended in miscarriage at 6 weeks but I knew when I first got my positive test then that I was interested in a homebirth. Getting the bad news in the Coombe that I was miscarrying sort of solidified my decision, I work in a hospital but I hate being a patient in them!
We started TTC two months after the miscarriage and were lucky to conceive again pretty quickly. I reached out to an SECM who actually was fully booked but she put me in touch with Áine Hennessy and I booked with her at 20 weeks. Pregnancy was strange for me because we conceived in December 2019. I actually got my first very verrry faint positive on new years eve and confirmed it on January 1st 2020 with a digital. Little did I know what that year would bring! My husband was able to attend the dating scan in early march but after that it was going to be an almost entirely solo journey, had I birthed in hospital! Having the checks done at home with Áine allowed my husband to be a part of my pregnancy in a way that other partners were being denied due to covid restrictions on maternity services.
Apart from first trimester fatigue I had a smooth journey until around 20 weeks when I started to experience pelvic girdle pain. I went to physio but it was very physically and mentally challenging to go from being a strong and agile person to finding even just walking difficult! My daughter also decided to stay breech and then do somersaults until I was almost 39 weeks pregnant so there was talk of a c section at that point. I'm glad I had done a lot of hypnobirthing prep as this helped me relax and deal with the possibility of a very different birth to what I had planned! Thankfully she finally went head down and stayed down!
I had a sweep that I requested at 40+5 but nothing happened. I requested another one at 40+8 but my daughter had her hand on her head so it couldn't be done! Early in the morning of day 40+9 I started to lose my mucus plug in chunks and that continued through the day until I started to feel some contractions in the evening. Around 9pm I was fairly sure labour was coming on so I rang Áine and my sister who was also coming with my niece (16 at the time and an aspiring midwife) to the birth. My husband began to get the birth pool ready and Áine came out to check on me. I was a few cm dilated with a good bit of time between contractions so Áine went home for a rest having come to me straight from another home birth! My sister and niece arrived shortly after and were so helpful with setting up the birth pool.
At about 3:30am Áine came back to us and my husband had the pool inflated and filled and I popped in around 4:30 and I was fully dilated by then. I tried pushing in the pool for a short while but the urge to push just wasn’t there. The second midwife Ali arrived but my daughter wasn’t in a good position so I spent the next while changing position to move her down in my pelvis, allowing the contractions to do their work. She was a bit stuck at my cervix so I experienced some swelling which slowed things down a bit. I was feeling the pressure of a possible hospital transfer so was happy to follow the midwives recommendations to help get her into place and used Entonox to help with the pain. I got quite upset during transition but the Entonox was a great relief.
I got back in the water around 10am and relaxed there for a bit before having another cervical exam, my waters still hadn’t broken and Ali had swapped out with another midwife Ruth as she had to go to her own client’s homebirth. Áine suggested breaking the waters and I was happy to do it and that made a world of difference. I immediately felt the sensation of the contractions was totally different, the instinctive urge to push was really kicking in and I got back in the pool. Definitely had a bit of the ring of fire but once the waters had broken I was pushing for maybe 20 minutes before she was born in the pool!
We chilled in the pool together for a while and my husband cut the cord once it was white. I had an injection of synthetic oxytocin to deliver the placenta because once she was born there just wasn’t a hint of another contraction despite breastfeeding. I got out of the pool and once they gave me the injection the placenta came very quickly and Áine then meticulously stitched up a second degree tear while my husband did skin to skin with our gorgeous girl! She did an excellent job and with one visit to a pelvic floor physio everything healed perfectly.
Overall it was a wonderful experience, I'm one of those lucky women who genuinely enjoyed giving birth! My niece was told what was going on through the process by the midwives and is now going into her 3rd of training and has the wonderful Katie guiding her during her placements in CUMH. I had a second homebirth in 2022 and had a similarly wonderful experience and I'm planning my 3rd one for December this year!
Steph & her husband admiring their new baby daughter in the pool at her home in Dublin
