Jess's Home Birth with Akari
Posted by Jessica on 26th Jan 2023
Akari's Birth was Jessica’s second home birth.
Jessica birthed her first baby Elias at home in 2020 due to Covid restrictions and the possibility of not having her support partner and a waterbirth at hospital. After a successful, beautiful and intervention-free birth (despite being classified high risk due to Gestational Diabetes and Graves’ disease) Jessica realised and decided she couldn’t birth any other way moving forward.
"This time around I was classified anemic but still chose to homebirth as I trusted my body and support team to “make the call” early if something were to go astray. We opted to do a hypnobirthing course rather than prenatal classes which is what convinced my partner to homebirth the first time. I had his full support the second time as he witnessed first hand a successful, intervention-free birth.
I used a tens machine which I found extremely helpful in early labour, a birth comb during active labour and the cub stool to change positions during surges. All very helpful. Elias was at his aunties so didn’t see the birth.
On the 14/01/23 I woke to irregular and mild cramping. I continued about my day with cooking, cleaning and entertaining our two year old.
After dinner around 7pm, I noticed they were getting closer together and decided to start preparing our birth space. We dropped my son off at his Aunties, I popped on the tens machine, my earphones and affirmations while my husband inflated the cub stool and birth pool.
Around 9pm, the surges intensified and it became a little harder to breathe through, I decided to call our midwife. My husband and I slow danced/swayed which was amazing for relief. He also applied some acupressure and light touch whilst I used the cub stool in different positions.
The midwives arrived at 10pm and I asked for a cervix check, to our surprise I was already at 8cm and baby’s head was very low! I was feeling great! 45 minutes later I felt the need to bear down and decided to finish labouring in the birth pool.
The warmth of the water felt incredible and instantly took some pressure off, I felt empowered and ready to welcome our baby. As my husband continued to repeat affirmations to me while cooling me down with cold towels, I felt my breathing change to deep low groans. Before we knew it, our baby girl joined us shortly after and arrived at 11:21pm!
It was a beautiful and emotional surprise as we opted not to find out the gender but did not expect a little girl (my husband has 6 brothers!). This is our second home birth and I will always be amazed at how capable the body and mind is. Such an empowering and magical experience. We are doing well in our baby bubble and big brother Elias is over the moon with his new little sister, Akari!"