The Unplanned Home Birth of Nora
First time families can typically look forward to a longer labour experience, 14- 24 hours isn’t out of the ordinary. So when Shanna woke me in the morning saying she thought her waters had broken, I definitely didn’t jump out of bed. She made plans to have the fluid checked by her midwife and would give me an update to let me know where things were at later in the day. It wasn’t even 15 min later that her husband texted that I should come to the house, since she was too uncomfortable for a car ride, and that midwife Lauren from Roundhouse was going to come over. I arrived 35 min later to the midwife setting up for a home birth, and this momma clearly in the end stages of labour! They decided to changed their plans to have their baby at the hospital, and delivered at home, in their master bedroom instead. It was a fast and beautiful day time birth!
Here is the birth story as described by this momma.
"Shortly after waking up on August 8th, my water broke and within 30 minutes the cramps turned into uncomfortable contractions about 2 minutes apart. We sent texts and calls out to our midwife Lauren and birth photographer Shea that things were starting, but little did we know how quick they would progress. When our midwife arrived at our house I was 9cm dilated, in transition, and hunched over an exercise ball in my bedroom trying to remember all the breathing techniques I had practiced during those weeks of prenatal yoga. At this point, my labour had pretty much gone from 0-60 in the period of 45 minutes and nothing was going to the timeline we learnt about in prenatal class or I had even expected for a first time mom. Anxious and confused I just tried to go with it as much as I could- inside I was screaming what happened to early labour and contractions 15+ minutes apart! We decided on changing our hospital birth plan to a home birth when we realized how quick the baby would be here. Transferring to the hospital at this point would have to be in an ambulance in order to get there in time and was not something we were keen on in the moment. Our midwife reassured us that everything was going well- baby and I were healthy, so Rob started getting things set up for an impromptu home birth. At this point I was really anxious about giving birth at home as there were so many not so positive birth stories I’ve heard and in the back of my head I felt like I needed to be at a hospital in case something went wrong. In reality though, everything was going well, and our incredible midwife made me feel well looked after. “
“ A short while later, the assisting midwives and Shea arrived. Once we had the extra support I felt a lot calmer and like we were good to get on with the birth- it was go time. The last 45 minutes before our daughter was born were intense and fast-paced. I don’t remember many details at this point as everything was happening so fast, I do remember asking Rob to keep reading off my list of birth affirmations I had written down and trying to keep breathing (both of those I found to be some of the key things I used to get through the pain).”
“ I also remember asking Lauren if she happened to carry nitrous gas in her midwife bag- which apparently they don’t. But I didn’t have much time to think of the pain for much longer as after a few changes in positions, and about 20 minutes of pushing our healthy baby girl Nora was born at 11:32am weighing 7lbs 12oz.”
“In total our birth lasted two hours, everything happened so fast that I hardly remembered many details of that time until we received photos of the birth from Shea. I’m so happy we hired her- we were able to focus on our birth and have Rob support me and stay in the moment, he didn’t have to worry about taking photos or watching the labour and birth of our daughter from behind a screen. Looking at the photos for the first time brought back a flood of emotions, I will forever cherish these memories of the day our daughter was born.” "