A midwife and maternal child health nurse, Tushna told me she ‘had to do a lot of “unlearning and mindset rewiring” in pregnancy. ‘Your book Birth With Confidence was one of the best books I could have read when I was pregnant with my first-born son,’ she said.
After a four-day labour, Tushna went on to have ‘an absolutely incredible homebirth … with the support of my amazing private midwife’. Here, she shares the story of Eli’s birth.
When I was pregnant, I was already a registered midwife and maternal child health nurse. I’d worked for years in a tertiary high-risk hospital where I saw lots of intervention, high-risk pregnancies and very few spontaneous labourers. When we did see a spontaneous labourer, it was exciting but at times felt rare to me.
So, I came into pregnancy carrying a lot of knowledge but also carrying both the positive and negative birth stories of other women. Sometimes women would positively say, ‘That was the best experience I’ve ever had’. However, at times there were the more negative reflections. Both perspectives so true and valid. I carried both with me into my pregnancy.
Listening to the negative birth stories of women describing their experiences made me realise very early on that I had to separate my pregnancy journey from theirs and that was challenging. I had to ensure my mind was strong enough to filter out the negative stories.
Knowledge is power, but sometimes ignorance can be bliss. In pregnancy, I learned that both can coexist. If I have a midwife or doctor who attends my Hypnobirthing Australia™ class, I tell them how physiological birth is so different to what we see in a medicalised environment. Trusting your own or a woman’s body to birth is the first principle of it. Understanding the power of our hormones in labour. And being truly informed, truly involved in every decision, is essential.
Homebirth had always fascinated me, but I still found myself defaulting to what felt ‘normal’. I just thought to myself, ‘Oh I’ll just go to the hospital, I can advocate for myself’, even though my gut was telling me otherwise. Motherhood has made me realise that my gut feeling is my inner wisdom and I trust it more than ever now.
A close friend, who was a former midwife and had become a doula, sat with me over a long and honest coffee chat. She didn’t tell me what to do, she just said, ‘Just investigate it, chat to a few midwives and see how you feel’. So I did.
Through a wonderful friend and maternal child health colleague, who went through a private midwife experience for all her babies, I was connected to Lisa Wraith from Mimosa Midwifery.
I called Lisa and she was just phenomenal, immediately. She brings a lot of wisdom and is a golden nugget in the birthing world. She was just so gentle, grounded and mothering in her tone, and I immediately gravitated to her. I asked her all the questions, like, ‘Is it normal to see a first-time mum birth at home?’ Because it felt rare to hear those stories. And she said, ‘One hundred percent, I have many clients who have birthed at home for their first babies’. She also sent me evidence-based journal articles supporting homebirth in low-risk women with positive outcomes. She answered all my questions about safety, resuscitation equipment etc. with calm confidence. I felt so comfortable, and that was the moment I knew I’d love to have her as our midwife.
During my second trimester I read Birth With Confidence and it resonated deeply. The way Rhea took the principle of a growth mindset and described how it applies to labour and birth really spoke to me. I’ve always been focused on ‘doing the work’ or ‘breaking cycles’, adopting a growth and positive mindset to get through life’s challenges whether it be healing family stories, understanding what we carry into parenthood etc.
I loved how Rhea talked about how we have crises of confidences all the time in our life but what is most vital is how we power through that challenge. Whether our strength comes from within, or from those who hold us when we forget to believe in ourselves. Reading all the stories of the women in her book who went through their crises of confidences and how they overcame it was really inspiring.
My partner Warren was incredible and very, very supportive. After everything I had been telling him over the years of what I saw professionally, he understood why this mattered to me. He trusted the path I was choosing, and he walked it beside me with unwavering support.
Whilst my husband was very supportive, I had one family member voice fear that I was putting my baby in danger. Holding my own truth while carrying someone else’s anxiety was emotionally exhausting. I had to separate their projections from my own knowing. However, being pregnant and becoming a mother teaches you to stand in your own authority.
My entire pregnancy was low risk. Lisa came to us for all our antenatal appointments. We listened to my baby’s heartbeat in our own space. Everything felt aligned with birthing at home.
Labour began quietly on a Sunday night after we had come home from a 30th birthday. I’d been experiencing Braxton Hicks since 25 weeks but these contractions felt more powerful than Braxton Hicks. For three and a half days, I laboured.
Sleep disappeared. I could only micronap. That was very challenging. It’s amazing the limits our bodies can be pushed! I never fit the ‘four contractions in 10 minutes’ of established labour, I was always two or three in 10 minutes. Even as I birthed Eli I still had the two-to-three in 10, they were powerful, but they were not ‘4 in 10’.
I was extremely sensitive to daylight. At night (in my cave) my contractions progressed but sunlight slowed them down. And yet, I would never trade the 3.5 day labour and the lessons learned. That was how my body chose to walk me toward my son. That was my journey, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Upon reflection of my experience, I realise I was actually holding back. I had fear of losing control. It was still my first birth experience from which I learnt so much – but I wanted to be in control.
In early labour my friend, the midwife-turned-doula, came and supported me, alongside my husband. My primary midwife had back-to-back births, as a lot of homebirth midwives do, so I was the last of, I think, three births in three days. So for all that early labour, I had my darling friend and my husband present, so I didn’t feel like I needed my midwife at that point. We were constantly texting and calling my midwife about my progress, but I didn’t feel like she needed to come. I remember my friend had brought clary sage oil. And I just thought – ‘Get that away from me, I do not want anything taking over’. I think to be honest, I was scared. Not of birth – but of losing control.
I would power and breathe through the contractions, smiling and thinking, ‘One surge closer to meeting my baby’. It wasn’t until Wednesday night that things started intensifying. The contractions started getting juicy and powerful, the exhaustion began to hit so we called Lisa my midwife to come.
I had the TENS machine for pain relief, adopted various birthing positions and the shower and birth pool. After three days of labour I was tiring, so Lisa suggested to bring a beautiful, colleague that she works out of her practice with, Rowena (Eluvi Natural Health), who specialises in shiatsu massage and acupressure. I said yes.
I’d gone to Rowena in pregnancy for one massage, and she had the most amazing energy, and was very, very comforting, very gentle. In labour she massaged me in all the beautiful points that she knew my body would need at that time. If hospitals hired people like Rowena, women would have more natural quicker births (in my opinion). My husband says that whilst she massaged me I was snoring away and finally got that rest I so desperately needed.
Whilst I did get some rest, I remember telling Lisa, my midwife, on the phone: ‘I can see why women would want the epidural. I can see why women cave at this point.’ I think it’s when I said that, she was like, ‘Okay, we need to try and get her to rest’.
Wednesday evening Rowena came to massage me, but at the same time whilst she was doing the acupressure, I started getting this huge urge to push and bear down. It was so intense. My hospital knowledge rose up inside me, worried if I was going to push too prematurely.
I tried to stop my body and I was so in my head.
When Lisa arrived, she held and cuddled me, looked at me, and said simply:
‘Tush, go with it. If you feel the urge, push. It’s okay, it means baby’s head is coming down. Your body knows.’
And, when she said that to me – I felt like I had been given permission. It wasn’t the permission to push, it was permission to let go of that medical knowledge and everything I wanted to control. I started bearing down and listened to my body. Pushing was actually his head descending down, and that’s what that intense sensation was for me.
Around midnight I entered my birth pool. I kept pushing with my surges as my body told me to. It was primal and an overwhelming force. Sometimes my mind would again try to think of all the medical complications that could occur. Persistently, I drove those thoughts away and prayed to women who have birthed, to send me that loving strength and energy to get me through. Also, that energy was already there with my secondary midwife Nikki Dougherty (from Acacia Birthing midwifery). She quietly monitored babe throughout my surges and was a calming force whilst I laboured. ‘It’s intense, the burning and stretching’, I said, and she replied, ‘Just surrender. Just surrender to the sensation, it’s your body protecting you.’
In that moment, those words, to me, were amazing to hear. Again it was wisdom to instinctively follow my body. And surrender I sure did!
I gave birth to my son at 5am Thursday morning after 3.5 days of labour. He had a 98th percentile head haha! I felt every inch of his journey into the world.
I was the first person to touch my son, when he was crowning, and I think when I pushed his whole body out, I was in both shock and amazement that I’d done it.
It was the most INCREDIBLE experience, my photos, show the endorphins and the glow in my face with the look of joy… ‘I did this!’
I even remember during the crowning stage saying to Lisa, my midwife, ‘That was not that bad’. This whole “ring of fire” thing, it’s intense – but it’s not that bad’. I had nothing to fear anymore. It was not painful, it was just so incredibly intense.
As Rhea says, you can prepare but there may potentially be a crisis of confidence, importantly what matters most is how you get through that. My mindset, surrendering to my body and an incredible birth team helped me. My biggest challenge was my medical knowledge and wanting control. You learn so much from your first experience.
Dearest Lisa once said to me: ‘You’ll see the glamorous homebirth videos on social media with the piano music playing in the background, and all the fairy lights. But you don’t actually know the intensity that that woman is feeling. You have no idea what’s going on in her mind.’ Amen to that.
I am constantly in reflection of my labour and birth, because it was a very powerful experience and time of my life. I’ve achieved a lot in my time, but the two main achievements I am most proud of is becoming a mother and breastfeeding. I feel very honoured to have gone down this journey. I hope my story brings light to facing and overcoming fears, increased awareness to normalise homebirth as a first-time mother and the extraordinary power of women’s bodies to grow and birth life.
Were Rhea’s books or workshop part of your birth preparation? Share your story here. We would love to hear from you!
