Amelia’s birth story: Planned homebirth after caesarean 

I knew after my first birth that I was never going to repeat that experience. It wasn’t so much the hospital or that I had fully dilated, pushed for an hour and ended up with a very much unwanted caesarean, but that along the whole journey I remember being undermined and not listened to. In response to my protests at what was happening to me I was told ‘you aren’t coping’, ‘you need pain relief’ and ‘you’re too exhausted’. I was in love with my new baby but the birth left me feeling broken and like I hadn’t birthed my baby at all. 

Before setting out on a second pregnancy I began researching and reading the forward of Birth with Confidence made me realise for the first time that I wasn’t to blame. I had handed over my power to a system that I expected to care for me and I had been gloriously let down, not by my body, but by the system. No longer a people-pleasing good girl, I gathered my birth team, engaging private midwives and a beautiful doula to support me in planning a healing homebirth. Within a month I was pregnant. 

Reading Beyond the Birth Plan made me realise that even calling in the most amazing supportive birth team could only take me so far, unless I dealt with the ‘wild cards’ that Rhea mentions. I sought out listening, debriefed my first birth and learned deeply about my imprints and how I show up when the going gets tough. I felt, I cried and I released the need for this second birth to heal me and trusted that I was already healed by taking back my power and planning for this baby to arrive at home.

I was aware the threshold for transfer to hospital was very low, any sign that things were not straightforward with this birth would mean birthing in hospital again. Even with a private midwife to stand between us and the system I wanted to be out of reach of the hospital’s influence so I could concentrate on birthing rather than trying to navigate other agendas. So, embracing the words of Fiona Hallinan, I left nothing to chance. I got regular body work, engaged in optimal maternal positioning, practised breathing calmly through one-minute cold showers and attended prenatal yoga sessions that were essentially a birth class. I immersed myself in the world of birth for over a year.

And when the day arrived, I was ready. I laboured at home surrounded by wise women who were not only experienced in physiological birth but knew me and I trusted them. Not naively, like the trust I’d placed in the hospital system, but truly and deeply in my soul. My beautiful doula guided me through contractions and so deep was my connection and trust with her that I didn‘t doubt myself once through the labour. I birthed my healthy baby boy in the birth pool and pulled him onto my chest myself. My first words were ‘I did it’ and the next line I uttered was ‘that wasn’t that hard.’ 

My previous experience had built birth into an impossible mountain in my mind and I needed the lived experience of this birth to embody what I knew intellectually – that birth is a natural physiological event and while intense, the body is more than capable of undertaking and completing on its own, given the right surroundings that ensure trust and safety. Post birth, I felt calm, relief and the most excellent sense of accomplishment. And accomplishment not from doing the ‘right’ thing, or trying to please anyone else but by listening deeply to my intuition, trusting my body and surrendering to the primal part of myself. I wish that all birthing people could know that this is how birth can be and not need to experience debilitating trauma before seeking out an empowered path for birth.