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Matilda’s birth story Our journey with Matilda started many years before she was conceived. In 2018, shortly after we were engaged, we laid in bed one night & definitively decided that our first daughter would be named Matilda. Over the years between that night & Matilda’s conception, I felt her spirit with us so strongly. Alongside this knowing that Matilda was waiting to join us, we had many conversations over the years about how we wanted to raise our family, including the pregnancy and birth experiences we both envisioned. Throughout these conversations, over time, we decided that we wanted a hands-off antenatal experience, and a homebirth, in which we both trusted the birth process. I spent months prior to Matilda’s conception working with a naturopath to prepare my body for pregnancy, after spending the previous 2 - 3 years learning about pregnancy and birth by listening to podcasts, following various social media accounts, and reading books. All of this work led to the conscious conception of our baby girl in May 2022. 

We discovered in early June 2022 that I was just 3 weeks pregnant with our little one. We were elated, excited, trepidatious and in a bit of shock. We knew instantly that we would have a Homebirth, so the very next day after getting a positive home pregnancy test, I contacted the group of private midwives in our area and we began the process of meeting with midwives to choose our care provider. This all felt very exciting and surreal, but we knew how quickly Homebirth midwives booked up so we knew we had to act fast to ensure we got the pregnancy and birth experience we wanted. We had engaged a midwife by the time I was 6 weeks pregnant. At just 5 weeks pregnant, I began to experience some morning sickness, which felt like an exciting confirmation of the changes that were happening in my body. This excitement was short- lived, as the symptoms began to worsen and we realised I was experiencing hyperemesis- gravidarum. This made for a bumpy & emotional few months as I was unable to do most of my previous daily activities. I was blessed with the most beautiful and supportive husband, who catered to my every need throughout those months, whilst also working to support our family. Thankfully, my HG symptoms began to subside in my second trimester, however the remainder of my pregnancy still included a variety of physical symptoms that left me feeling a bit worn down most days. Despite this, I was so grateful to be expecting our little one, however, pregnancy certainly wasn’t a walk in the park. For this reason, and many more, I was really excited to experience birth, both to meet our daughter, and so I could be done with pregnancy (at least for now!).

Once I emerged from the fog of my HG symptoms, we began preparing for our Homebirth. In my second trimester, we hired so many tools & resources for our birth, including a birth pool, cub stool, birth sling, and a TENS machine. I knew I wanted to have all of the options for support & different positions throughout my labour and birth, and after hearing many birth stories through podcasts, books and social media, I was sure having all of these options would be helpful to me in labour. Towards the end of my pregnancy, I set up a birth alter in our birth space including printed affirmations, a statue of a pregnant woman that I had purchased during our honeymoon in 2020, salt lamps to light the space, candles, oracle cards that I’d pulled for myself to guide the labour & birth, crystals, and a variety of other meaningful items. At the very end of January 2023, I had been experiencing a number of physical symptoms that suggested my body was preparing for labour.

I was roughly 37 weeks pregnant when I began having increased bowel movements over a number of days, a significant amount of pelvic floor tightness, I could feel my hip joints loosening & they felt somewhat unstable in some movements, and I had been having lots of belly tightenings, although these weren’t painful or even uncomfortable. I had been doing a lot of nesting, including tidying and cleaning the whole house repeatedly, and cooking everyday to ensure we had a large stash of healthy food to keep us going in the early weeks of our postpartum period. Part of this nesting had included insisting that Tom scrubbed the shower floor, as I wasn’t able to physically clean the shower by this stage. At the beginning of my pregnancy I had been so unwell one day that I had ended up on the floor of the shower, and when I opened my eyes & saw the state of the tiles, that was enough to tip my nausea over the edge & cause me to vomit. One of my biggest concerns was vomiting in labour (I hate vomiting, and had experienced more than enough of it throughout my pregnancy!), so I wanted to ensure that I didn’t repeat that early pregnancy experience in labour, if I ended up in the shower (which I was sure wasn’t going to happen) - this ended up being more of a premonition than a cautious preparation.

On the 31st of January, at 37 weeks and 5 days, we had an appointment with our midwife, in which I told her I’d been having some significant pelvic floor tightness, and as I had been saying to everyone for a while, that I didn’t think our baby would be waiting another 2+ weeks to join us. As our midwife checked my belly & our baby’s position, she confirmed that she could no longer feel her head, meaning she was fully engaged & in my pelvis. After this appointment, I headed off to see my chiropractor who confirmed my suspicions & told me she could feel my hips & sacrum moving compared to an appointment just a few days prior. I knew in my body & in my heart already that our baby was ready to come, but this information solidified it for me even further.

On my way to my Chiro appointment, I’d began having some very mild contractions for the first time. As I drove home from the appointment and prepared food for lunch at home, these contractions intensified & I had to stop & breathe through them. However, I had planned to do some errands with my mum to continue prepping for our postpartum, and as soon as my mum arrived at our house and we got ready to go, all contractions stopped and they never began again. At 1:30am on Friday the 10th of February, I woke up to go to the bathroom, which was a nightly occurrence for me by this point. I returned to bed after a trip to the bathroom, and promptly went back to sleep, with no signs of labour. I woke suddenly at 2:15am to a ‘thunk’ in my pelvis and a wet sensation between my legs. I felt a significant discomfort & knew I couldn’t just lay in bed, and that I had to move my body so I immediately got out of bed and made my way to the bathroom. I found it difficult to sit on the toilet because I was experiencing a lot of pelvic floor tightness, so I moved around in the bathroom until I was able to comfortably sit again. This probably took around 10 minutes. What I realised in retrospect was that this was likely a contraction, however in my half asleep state I didn’t register this and just assumed it was another uncomfortable sensation of pregnancy & that it too would pass. As I sat in the bathroom, I needed to go to the toilet and few times, and knowing it was common for the body to have a bit of a clear out before labour started, and also noticing there was a pink tinge to the fluid that had leaked when got out of bed, I thought “oh yes, this is my water’s breaking and the start of labour”. I was totally calm, a bit excited, and also very mindful that this could very likely be a long labour, especially seeing as it was my first, so I was aware I needed to try & relax & rest as much as I could before things really got going. At this point I thought I should have a shower to try & relax, and then head back to bed to get some rest while I still could.

I had another contraction at 2:38am as I was preparing to leave the bathroom, and thought I best go & let Tom know what was going on before I got in the shower. When I woke him to tell him I was going to have a shower, he sleepily said “mhmm”. Knowing he took a while to wake up, I made a point of saying “Love, I need you to wake up” and he tried to open his eyes, so I told him “I think my water’s broke” which got his (sleepy) attention, and, in awe, he said “oh wow”. This was the same phrase he’d uttered, in the same tone, the day I told him I was pregnant, and the first time he’d felt a kick during my pregnancy. It felt very fitting for this to be his response to me waking him at the start of labour. I told him we likely had a long time to go still, but that it was probably a good idea for him to get up & start inflating the birth pool, but that he didn’t have to rush. I took myself back to the bathroom, and before I could turn the water on, I had another contraction, approximately 5 minutes from my last contraction.

I turned the water on & got ready to get into the shower. In this time (about another 5 minutes), I had 2 more contractions. I was having to breathe through these contractions but they felt manageable, although intense. As these contractions rolled through me, I reminded myself of one of my birth affirmations, soft body - strong mind. I knew I didn’t need to fight the experience, but rather needed to breathe & roll with it. I thought nothing of the speed at which the intensity had come on, and was just focused on getting into the shower to relax, including putting on a playlist from The Reconnected that I’d used numerous times for my personal breath work sessions, so it felt familiar and soothing to me. It wasn’t the playlist I had prepared for birth, but I thought, seeing it was such early stages, that I would get Tom to change the playlist when things really kicked into gear. The shower & water generally has always been a calming place for me, so it made sense to be in the shower at this time while we waited for the birth pool to be ready. 

I jumped in the shower and immediately felt soothed, as another contraction came over me. At this point, Tom had come from bed, been to the bathroom himself & was checking in with me in the shower. I told him to text our midwife, but not to call her, as I was sure we still had lots of time & didn’t want to wake her unnecessarily. Tom then left me to go & blow up the pool. By this point, it was about 3am. I thought perhaps washing my hair & having the water wash over my head would help to relax me, so I began doing that as Tom left to tend to the pool, telling him that I was just going to enjoy the peace & quiet, wash my hair & listen to a playlist. Throughout the process of shampooing my hair I had very regular and increasingly intense contractions. I was able to move, sway & breathe through these contractions as they came approximately 30 - 60 seconds apart. After I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, the contractions continued to intensify and were coming almost on top of one another. The intensity of this caused me to get onto my hands and knees on the floor of the shower, with the water flowing on my back. I was vocalising quite a lot by this point, and wondered how much longer Tom was going to be with the pool before he came back to check on me. I had been expecting to experience contractions in my belly and/or my back, however these contractions felt as if they were almost solely in my pelvic floor, and as they intensified, I was feeling so much pressure through my bum that I thought, surely, if it continued like that I would tear. The pressure and pain were making me clamp my legs together with every contraction, which felt almost constant at this point. I had been expecting to feel a slow build up with each contraction, and then a clear release after the peak of the contraction. This is what had occurred on January 31st when I’d felt some contractions, however the sensations I was having in the shower were completely different to this and took me by surprise. At the unexpected sensation and the unexpected intensity of it, so quickly after my waters releasing, I remember thinking “a Homebirth was a terrible idea. This is why people kept telling me I was ‘brave’ to have a Homebirth. Why would anybody do this & think it’s a good idea?!”. I thought of my friend who had had a planned c-section 3 weeks earlier and thought “she had the right idea!”. Despite all of this, and thoughts of understanding why women sought pain relief in hospital, it dawned on me that I had to stay there. The tightness in my pelvic floor was so intense that I couldn’t even sit back on my feet, I was stuck on all fours. There was no way I could get out of the shower. I was getting too hot with the water on me, but couldn’t sit back on my feet long enough to adjust the water to a better temperature, so instead I reached back and quickly turned the water off completely.

Almost immediately, the intensity of the contractions got exceptionally worse and I immediately regretted my decision to turn the water off. Despite this, with the increased pain, I definitely couldn’t sit back on my feet now to turn the water back on, so instead I waited for Tom to come back so I could ask him to turn the water on for me. I remember wanting to call out to him to come back, but not being able to form the words to do so. As soon as he came back into the bathroom, I said “I need the water on my back!” Which he did immediately, and detached the shower head to help put the water on my back. What I realised looking back, was that the intensity and the thoughts I was having was a clear sign I was in transition, but despite knowing all the signs to look for, I told myself I couldn’t have been that far into labour because it had been less than an hour! When Tom had returned from inflating the pool (but not filling it up), it was approximately 3:10am, less than an hour since I woke up to our little one’s head dropping & my waters breaking, I had began to feel as if my body was involuntarily pushing. At 3:14am, Tom phoned our midwife, and upon hearing me in the background, she began to make her way to our house. Tom then sat outside the shower door holding the shower head so the water flowed over my back. I remember looking out the shower door at him squatting on our bathmat, and thinking how uncomfortable it must be for him to be in that position for a long time. As had been the case for a while, my contractions were constant and coming right on top of one another, so much so, that I couldn’t tell where one finished and the next one began. At one point the pressure and pain had me clawing at the shower screen, but I knew I had to keep moving my body to help our baby move through the birth canal. I was conscious of this every time I clamped my legs together with the increase in pressure and pain, but it felt impossible to relax & have a ‘soft body’, as my affirmation had suggested!

Involuntarily, I was rocking my body & began to hum a random tune to manage the sensations. My body knew what to do even when my mind didn’t. As the pressure kept growing, I began to straighten my upper body & kneel upright, cupping my vagina with my hand. After a few times doing this, I said to Tom “You need to call the midwife, I can feel her head!”, as I felt it push into my hand with a contraction. Tom said “where?” And I responded “right there!” And I was able to feel her head just 1 knuckle inside my vagina between contractions. It was at this point, 3:44am, that Tom phoned our midwife to tell her our baby was so close to being born, and she said she was just pulling onto our street. Luckily for us, she only lived 6kms away! At this point I felt so much relief. After wondering to myself how I was possibly going to keep going throughout labour for what potentially could be hours, or even days, with the intensity I was feeling, I felt a flood of relief knowing it was so intense because our baby was nearly here, and that knowing helped me feel so calm & in control. I knew then that it was nearly over, we were about to meet our baby and that I could definitely keep going. Perhaps it was being so close to birth already, or perhaps it was this new sense of calm that came over me, but I began to have breaks between contractions & could catch my breath a bit. However, I became aware that I was starting to feel the stretching as her head came & went with each contraction. I thought “oh, this is the ring of fire people talk about. Huh, it’s not that bad!”. 

Tom had stepped out of the bathroom shortly after our midwife arrived to sort our dogs out, who were barking like crazy at an unexpected middle of the night visitor! Our midwife told me that when our baby’s head came out, I needed to tell her so she could turn the water off, so our baby didn’t aspirate any of it. After my earlier experience of the significant increase in pain when I’d turned the water off, I responded with “that’s bullshit!”. Shortly after this, Tom came back & our midwife stepped out to try & call the second midwife. Mere seconds after she’d stepped out of the bathroom, I said “the heads out” as I felt our baby’s head make its way into my hand. I remember thinking that I knew once her head was out, I’d probably get a short break between contractions & that her body would probably be born on the next contraction. With that thought, I took my hand away from her head to steady myself before her body came out, but with that, I felt her body twist so her shoulder’s could come out and she was born in a single contraction, onto our shower floor. She cried immediately, and I picked her up off the shower floor and held her to my chest, with her cord wrapped around my leg. I said to her as she cried “I know baby, that’s how I feel too!”. It was such a relief that she was in my arms, but I think both Tom & I were in a bit of shock at how quickly everything had transpired.

Tom helped me up off the shower floor, and we headed to bed, where Tom had placed a soft waterproof blanket earlier in my labour, in case I’d wanted to labour in our room. This allowed us to crawl into bed as a family so easily while we waited for the placenta to come. We had skin to skin while our midwife took some photos for us. The placenta took over an hour to detach and move down, which gave us time to support our daughter to do a breast crawl and attach for her first feed. During this time, I said to Tom and our midwife “we keep saying ‘she’ but we better actually check that it’s a girl!”. We had found out the sex during the pregnancy, but in all the excitement, we hadn’t actually confirmed she really was a girl! Once I’d birthed the placenta, I went to have a shower while Tom had skin to skin with our daughter, and then we all climbed back into bed for more skin to skin time. Our midwife left a few hours after the birth, returning later in the day to weigh & measure our baby and check in on us. This meant we had about 9 hours of uninterrupted skin to skin time together as a family after our birth, which was absolutely beautiful and so connecting for all of us.

We had planned a really intentional postpartum period, with Tom being home for 8 weeks, we had a freezer packed with food I had pre-cooked, we had weekly visits from our midwife as well as a postpartum doula, and we had support from family. This allowed us to have a wonderfully slow first few weeks together, to focus on bonding, learning to feed, and just having space for the changing dynamics in our family. It also gave us time to seek out support from professionals such as our chiropractor, naturopath, remedial massage therapist, and women’s health physio, to focus on healing and recovering from the birth and not putting too much strain on my body as it adapted to no longer being pregnant. Overall, our birth was exactly the birth we all needed, and we couldn’t be more grateful for the love and kindness of our midwife throughout pregnancy, labour and postpartum. Our slow and intentional postpartum has been such a beautiful foundation to start this next chapter of our life as a trio, and we’re starting to re-emerge into the world feeling ready and excited to keep growing together.