Ellena’s Birth Story – A wild and incredible birth experience

I would say that birth has shown me how incredibly strong and capable our bodies are and the importance of listening to them. I think learning to listen to our intuition is such an important practice to take into motherhood.

Our baby girl was born at home last Monday. I went into labour Sunday evening. We went to bed about 9.30 but contractions were too strong for me to stay lying down, so I walked around outside breathing in the night air. I don’t remember what I was feeling in that moment. Was I excited or anxious? I went back inside and moved in the birth sling. I started to feel the contractions a lot more and felt myself getting stressed. I was expecting that early labour would go on for a long time and I started to feel a lot of self-doubt because I felt like I hadn’t made it very far before stress had arrived. Around midnight I was becoming vocal and woke Tucu up to be with me. I had wanted to let him sleep as much as possible, but I no longer felt like I could be on my own.

I put the TENS machine on but at that stage what really helped was hip squeezes during contractions. Tucu prepared the space, moved furniture, set up the birth pool, set the fairy lights and the music I had prepared. In each contraction he squeezed my hips and I felt like I couldn’t get through without it.

I could feel I was still heading towards a state of stress and really doubting that I could do this. We turned off the music because I knew I needed to find my own rhythm. I got into the birth pool, and I remember moving from stress and realising that there was no way out and that I was going to have to confront the pain. I visualised diving into the water with each contraction and focused on getting through just one at a time.

In the state of stress I was slightly annoyed that I’d chosen such a great support team who I knew had so much confidence in birth and in me. I felt like they didn’t understand what I was going through! How could they be so calm!? Our doula arrived at 9am Monday and messaged the midwife who arrived one hour later and straight away messaged the second midwife. I don’t know how long I’d been in the pool, but I felt that I needed to move but didn’t have any strength to do it. I got out of the pool to go to the toilet with a lot of help from my team.

Then our baby girl was born at 12.30 with me kneeling on a cushion stretched over a ball. My waters hadn’t broken, and she was born all in one go still inside her sac. She caught everyone by surprise and landed on the cushion. What a wild and incredible experience. Definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I’ve already forgotten the intensity of the pain.

Thanks Karen and the Calmbirth course for setting me up so I could find the headspace I needed.

We’re going well. Taking it very easy and enjoying these slow days of rest and recovery and getting to know each other.