Sirin's Home Birth 

Baby Mika Doğa born at home via water birth, on 23rd September 2021 at 4:17am… to Şirin and Max (mum and dad) and older brother Kai.

After quite a traumatic hospital birth with my first baby - which sadly involved the all too common interventions and the complete opposite outcome to my birth plan - I was adamant to have a very different experience with my second. I had always been in awe of those that birthed at home, but I never had the confidence to even consider it for myself! With a wonderful doula’s suggestion I read a brilliant book called ‘Why Homebirth Matters’ by Natalie Meddings, and joined a fantastic home birth support group on Facebook. Both of these things gave us the knowledge, education, inspiration and confidence to decide that a home birth was definitely what we wanted! So we hired a pool and planned for our home birth in South Bristol.

From week 36 of my pregnancy, I started having prodromal labour and slowly losing small amounts of my mucus plug. This all lasted on and off for 2 weeks and was quite confusing as I had several episodes where surges were quite intense and 2-3 minutes apart for up to 3 hours. So I was becoming nervous about not knowing when I would actually be in labour… and when to call my husband home from work, the midwives and to fill up the pool!

At week 39 (22nd Sept) I started having surges again at 1pm (which varied between every 4-12 minutes throughout the rest of the day and evening). I went to bed around 8:30pm (while they were coming every 10 minutes or so) thinking it’s probably more prodromal labour and trying not to get my hopes up!

On 23rd Sept at 12am I woke up with intense surges, and although I was still sceptical, I decided to ask my husband to fill the pool while I called the midwives. A community midwife called me back at 12:36am and said she’d call the 2nd midwife and that they’d both be on their way. They arrived around 45 minutes later and were absolutely amazing and very respectful of my birth plan and requests not to have any vaginal examinations. My surges at this point were about 2-3 minutes apart and getting more intense, but I was still able to just about breathe through them; with the help of the tens machine (which was a great distraction!) and my hypnobirthing.

At some point, not too long after, I felt the need to get in the pool… and it really did feel as amazing as everyone describes! I was concerned that the pool would slow things down, but they actually suddenly ramped up! The surges became very intense and I think I was transitioning (recorded time in labour was 42 minutes!). At this point I asked for the gas and air and was getting quite vocal (which sadly led to my older son feeling quite stressed and screaming his head off in the other room - which meant that my husband had to attend to him and actually missed our boy coming out! So we were really glad that we filmed it!).

I then heard/felt a pop and my waters burst in the pool at 4:12am. I started feeling an immense pressure where his head was pushing down. I breathed him out and felt an intense urge to ‘push’ with quite a few more contractions (yet the pushing was nothing like the managed pushing with my first!) and he was born into the pool at 4:17am.

He gave us a bit of a scare as it took him a while to breathe and he was a bit floppy (although his heart rate was perfect)… at which point the midwives asked if they could cut the cord so that they could take him to resuscitate him. I was gutted about this as our plan was to leave the cord in tact for as long as possible, but I felt that it was the right thing to do at the time so agreed. Not long after they took him he let out a cry (so they thankfully didn’t end up needing to resuscitate him after all) and they immediately brought him back for skin to skin. I felt the need to get out of the pool and move to the sofa quite quickly as I was getting really uncomfortable and could feel the placenta was ready to come out. I birthed the placenta naturally after 16 minutes from the time that he was born, and then he had his first feed on the breast. The midwives then checked me for tears and I was very relieved (after having quite a bit of stitches with my first) that I only had a 1st degree tear, which they left to heal naturally. Blood loss was also only 200mls as opposed to a lot lost with my first. The midwives then checked and weighed the baby, helped us tidy up and ran me a much needed and amazing bath!

The midwives left while I had my bath and by 6am the 4 of us were all snuggled up in bed with tea and toast (and more milk for Mika)! It was such bliss being in the comfort of our own home… to bathe in my own bath, climb into my own bed and not have to go anywhere! The whole experience was incredible and I’m so thankful to the community midwives team in South Bristol. They have been nothing but supportive and encouraging with our choice to home birth, and were absolutely amazing during the labour.

Having a home birth was an incredibly empowering experience and despite the discomfort and pains postpartum, I feel incredible - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually! Which is a completely different experience to my first.

If you are considering a home birth, or you like the idea of it but are unsure if it is right for you, then I would strongly encourage you to read the book I mentioned and surround yourself with others who have had one and who can share their experience. There is sadly a lot of fear mongering and misinformation in our society surrounding home births… but I’m pleased that more and more people are starting to become open to the idea and are doing their own research around the subject… and I’m so thankful that we were one of those people and now have a positive story to share!