Foto: Esmee Bartelink Fotografie
18th of April, I'm exactly 39 weeks pregnant. I wake up at a regular time, my husband starts doing yoga on the upper floor and I go for a run. Three kilometres pass by slowly, but I can enjoy being outside and moving. After having breakfast we go shopping to buy some groceries for the postpartum time.
In the afternoon I start worrying because I haven't felt the movements of the baby for the whole day, although they are usually very active. I call the midwife, who comes to our house for a checkup. She detects the heartbeat immediately. What a relief! Despite that, she refers me to the hospital for a cardiotocography which monitors the heartbeat and detects the contractions of the uterus. It's all good, says the midwife at the hospital. But the monitor also shows that I'm having frequent bur irregular Braxton-Hix contractions, therefore they add that we might meet each other soon, but then at the delivery room.
At 16:30 I'm back at home. After an hour I feel that my waters have broken. I don't want to tell my husband immediately because I know that he has a virtual meeting planned with his brothers and friends. I know that our child might be even born in a couple of days.
I call the midwife again and she gives me instructions to keep an eye on the situation and call when I have regular labour, otherwise, she will call again the next morning. After that, I call my mom and the next thing I know, my jeans are covered with a puddle. Oh, so my waters weren't actually completely broken.
Now I call my husband from downstairs - it's time. He cancels his meeting immediately and starts pacing around the house. "What else needs to be done? The hospital bag?" he asks. I direct him to the baby's room where he can find the packed hospital bag. He puts this and the car chair next to the door, waiting. After some pacing, he lays on the bed with me. We call his parents who - because of an unexpected call - have an idea of what must be happening. After talking, my husband puts on the documentary Tiger King to keep us distracted. I also take my open needlework to keep me company.
In about three hours, I start to feel more pain, in another three hours I have regular contractions about 4 to 5 minutes apart. We call the midwife who sends a colleague because she is already by someone giving birth (later it turned out that it was someone from my pregnancy group!). At 3:30 she arrives and does a check-up. I don't have almost any dilation. I feel disappointed.
The midwife recommends me to take a warm shower for at least 30 minutes, as this can help the birth to progress or show that it is halted. She also recommends us to get some rest, and if possible, sleep for a couple of hours. The latter is what my husband sets out to do.
When I'm under the shower, the pain gets more intense. After coming out of the shower, I'm trying to work on the blog posts, as I know that I won't have any time soon enough, but I can't do that for long. In 2 hours, my husband enters the room, who sees me - on my hands and knees, having strong contractions - and says that the labour must not have halted. Indeed. We try to watch the documentary but don't have much luck with that.
Around 7 AM we call the midwife again, who comes and says that I have 2 cm dilatation. I can't believe that I have several painful hours ahead of me. The midwife offers that I could take a warm bath after which we can head to the hospital. She adds that she could either stay downstairs or head home and come back. I think that she could go home (after all, she must not have had breakfast yet!) but my husband asks her to stay.
Laying in the bath, I start to feel better, but the contractions intensify quickly. Soon I feel as of there are no breaks between contractions. Then I sense that I must press and ask the husband to call the midwife. It takes them 30 minutes to get me on the bed to do the examination. It appears that with this hour in the bath the dilation has gone from 2 to 9 cm!
The midwife suggests that it might be better to stay home than go to the hospital now. I start crying only thinking about this. I'm scared of delivering at home! I had never planned for that! I explain that I'm terrified of the child's life if they were to need a very fast intervention, such as hospitalization at intensive care. Although the midwife tries to calm me down, I still don't agree. Then she starts making phone calls to let the hospital know we are coming. At the same time, my husband tries to help me get dressed. When I'm dressed and standing next to the bed, the midwife sees strong movements of my belly and says that there is no time to go tho the hospital. She asks for permission from my husband and receives it.
The midwife starts to get her things ordered in our bedroom. I'm standing and sitting for the last phase of the delivery. It takes about 20-30 minutes when my husband calls the midwife who was putting her gloves on in the bathroom: "The baby is coming!". Then the head is born. The body follows quickly and I'm asked to pick up the baby myself. A little girl is born at 10:01 AM.
Soon enough, the placenta is born and I get an oxytocin injection to stop the bleeding, some stitches and then we can hold our child and spend our first hours together on our bed. The child is put on skin-to-skin contact, on the breast and then examined. She is completely healthy. We still need to adjust to the idea that our child was born at our own house, but as all went ideally, we are very happy with how she arrived.