Jamie's Birth - similar birth, different midwife

• I was on red alert!
• I was watching Big Brother when my waters broke
• I didn't feel completely happy with the midwife
• The contractions were coming thick and fast
• The witching hour
• I didn't want a hospital birth
• It felt like Picadilly Circus
• At the hospital we had a lovely surprise

Jamie is our 2nd child. I gave birth to his sister Kira in May 2002 at home as planned after a normal and uneventful pregnancy. After having such a wonderful experience giving birth at home with Kira, there was no question of where our second child would be born. Once the initial round of blood tests, scans etc were over I declined any further blood tests and just got on with being pregnant. Apart from a small scare at 25 weeks, when I had a stomach bug and went to the maternity unit just to check that I wasn't in premature labour, I had another straightforward pregnancy.

With Kira, I had worked until I was 37 weeks pregnant and then had her on my first day of maternity leave! This time I finished work at 36+5 weeks and was hoping to have a week or two at home, spending time with Kira before the baby arrived. I was still on 'red alert' for signs that something was happening from around 36 weeks, given my past history!

Kira had been ill with a high temperatures for three days and my partner was working a night shift the night I went into labour. I had jokingly said to someone that day that I was keeping my legs crossed as it wasn't the right time to go into labour! But at 8.30pm I was sitting down to watch Big Brother when I felt my waters starting to go. I thought I had better warn people in case my labour was quicker than last time - which was 8 hours from start to finish!

I phoned my partner at work. He wasn't sure how quickly he could get away as he had to arrange cover but said he would be home as soon as he could. I phoned my friend Georgina who was going to be there to look after Kira and support me. She immediately dropped everything, including her nine-month-old baby into her husband's lap, and got a taxi to our house. I phoned the hospital to ask them to contact the community midwife on call so I could warn her things might start happening.

My midwife turned up just before 9.00pm. She was one of the community midwives from my team but I had never met her before. She confirmed that my waters had gone and decided to stay to see if labour would start. Georgina arrived very soon after, followed by my partner. We spent the next hour or so getting everything set up.

It was at this point that I started feeling that I wasn't totally happy with the midwife's general attitude. I hadn't got around to printing off my birth plan so we sat down and discussed what I wanted. When I mentioned that we were not going to have a plastic clamp put on the baby's cord but that we were going to use sterile umbilical tape she immediately said she had never heard of it and that she wouldn't know how to do it! I did tell her that I had discussed it with my named midwife and that it was perfectly ok - my midwife actually carries some of the tape in her bag! Apart from that, there was nothing really I could put my finger on but talking it over afterwards with Georgina and DP they both said they had misgivings about her attitude too.

At 9.30pm, the first mild contractions started and I was still wandering around the house trying to get things organised. Around 45 minutes later the contractions started getting painful so the midwife suggested a vaginal examination to see how things were progressing. She said my cervix was very soft (floppy in fact!) and that she could feel the baby's head on my cervix, but there was no dilation. Soon, contractions started coming every five minutes.

The next hour and a half is rather a blur to me. The contractions were coming thick and fast and the vomiting started but it didn't seem to last as long as it did in my previous labour. I tried various positions, sitting on the birth ball, kneeling over the birth ball, kneeling upright … but my favourite position was kneeling in front of the sofa with my head buried in the sofa or my partner's lap.

At some point during this time I decided I needed to use the toilet and made my way upstairs with DP's help - having a couple of contractions on the stairs and a few while I was in the bathroom. During my last labour I had spent quite a bit of time sitting on the toilet but this time it didn't feel right, so back downstairs we went. I had warned the midwife and Georgina that at some point (probably at transition) I would start to talk about C-sections and not wanting to have another baby and sure enough I started to babble away about this!

At midnight, the contractions changed and I felt the urge to push. I told the midwife and asked her the time. She told me it was midnight, the witching hour, exactly the same time as I had gone into the second stage when I had Kira. I was expecting the midwife to want to do an internal to ensure I was fully dilated but I was pleasantly surprised when she said 'Go for it'. I must have spent around 15 minutes pushing with each contraction before feeling the urge to lie down.

The midwife had been trying to monitor the baby's heart rate after each contraction with a hand-held doppler and, to be honest, I was finding it intrusive. I tried lying on my left side to push and, at this point, the midwife suggested an internal to see what was happening. She found I had a cervical lip again, as I had with Kira. She offered to hold it down as I pushed but this time it didn't work. Then she listened in to the baby's heart rate and even I could tell that it was slower than it should be.

There was an air of panic. The midwife said she thought I needed to be transferred into hospital to have an assisted delivery and was straight on the phone to the hospital, asking for an ambulance. I couldn't think straight - I wanted this baby out as soon as possible but the thought of going into hospital and having an instrumental delivery was freaking me out. Another contraction came along and I pushed because I couldn't do anything else. Lo and behold, the baby started to move down. The midwife brought out the gas and air and told me to take a deep breath but I just used the mouthpiece to bite down on and breathe out through.

My partner suggested I change position, so I got up and went back kneeling down. Once in this position, the baby's heart rate was back up to normal after each contraction but I wasn't sure if I could feel the baby moving down or not. We then tried the supported squat position we used with Kira. That seemed to do the trick - each time I pushed I could feel the baby moving down and it wasn't long before he was crowning. It took a few pushes to actually get his head out and during that time I could feel him wriggling inside me. It was a very strange feeling but I wasn't worried as I had heard of this.

Once the head was out, the midwife said the cord was around his neck quite tightly and, because the cord was really short, she couldn't loop it over his head like they usually do. Instead, she had to cut the cord before his body was fully out. I looked down and saw this pale grey body lying on my tummy. I wanted to pick him up and cuddle him, but the second midwife had to get him breathing. Then he was whisked away to the other end of the room while I tried to deliver the placenta.

By this time the ambulance had turned up. It felt rather like being in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. One of the ambulance men helped the second midwife with Jamie, while the other one helped the main midwife with me. She was getting impatient at waiting for my placenta to arrive and I felt she bullied me into having the syntometrine injection. Once she had given me it she started to press down on the top of my uterus and pull the cord. It was a bit frightening at this point but the placenta came away intact.

Once the placenta was out, the midwife wanted to get us in the ambulance so Jamie could be checked out at the hospital. He was breathing on his own but he was grunting as he breathed - his Apgar scores were 5,7, and 9. Georgina and my partner managed to pack a bag for Jamie and me and get me changed into some clean pyjamas. I was in a state of shock, very wobbly and couldn't think straight, but I managed to see Kira and introduce her to her baby brother before we were bundled off into the ambulance.

Once in the ambulance the midwife said to me that Jamie's breathing had really improved and he had virtually stopped grunting. She said we would probably be discharged from hospital as soon as we got there. By this time I was feeling really sick (side effect from the syntometrine) and didn't have the presence of mind to query why we were bothering to go to the hospital in that case!

When we got to the hospital we had a lovely surprise - the midwife assigned to us was the one who delivered Kira! Once we were settled in a room on the labour ward Sally checked Jamie over and pronounced him fit and well and that we could be discharged. She encouraged us to have some skin-to-skin contact and to try breastfeeding. It was only later that we realised that neither my partner or I had actually properly held Jamie until then. They had offered him to me in the ambulance but I was feeling so sick and weak that I thought I would drop him and so refused!

I was checked over and found to have an intact perineum with just a slight graze and Jamie started to feed. Once he'd finished feeding we made our way home and introduced Jamie to his big sister properly.

I am grateful that I've had two homebirths, both very short labours. It's just a shame that this birth was not as calm and relaxed as the first one. It just goes to show how important it is to have a good midwife with you and the difference it can make to the whole experience.

Where to next?

• Read the full birth story
• Read accounts of different types of birth
• Read accounts of other home births