The Arrival of Leo!

Huge CONGRATULATIONS to Caroline, Brett and Zachary on the arrival of baby boy Leo John on 14th July 2011. An excellent weight at 8lb 5.5oz. Many happy wishes and sleepless nights to you all!

The Arrival of Stuart!

A huge CONGRATULATIONS to Rachel, Craig and Scott on the arrival of Stuart Alastair! A magnificent weight - looking forward to hearing all about it once you have recuperated and settled as a family of four. Well done!

One Born Every Minute - Channel 4 and 4OD

I love this programme! I've just been catching up with the episodes I've missed as I don't find the time to sit and watch it when it is on TV. Every time I see the opening credits, I go all tingly and get butterflies in my stomach. I find it so intriguing seeing what choices all the women make, how they are supported by the staff and their family, the birthing positions, pain relief... the tears are brimming every time!

Does anybody else watch it? What sort of memories does it bring back for you? Or if you are an expectant first time mum, does it instill you with confidence or just plain scare you? Please leave comments below, I find it fascinating how people view labour and birth and their perceptions on it afterwards and hopefully you can lend your knowledge and experience to others.

You can watch One Born Every Minute on catch up on 4OD here.

Submit your story to marvellousmummies@live.co.uk - please state whether you would like your name and location published otherwise by default you will become 'Anon'.

Beth's story, Manchester - gas and air and the luxury of a birthing suite

"Well with Callum being on time, I expected Charley to be as well! However at 11 days late I felt ready to pop! Due to be induced at 9am on the 17th Nov and I woke about 5am with my first contraction! I decided to sleep and see when the next ones came and they were coming at every 9 minutes so I had a shower and got up and ready and woke DP and said we were going ealier to the hospital as in the shower they were becoming more frequent! Arrived at the hospital at 8am and was put on a monitor and when I was assessed about 10am I was shocked to be told I was already 3cm! It took 24 hours with Callum and a drip to get to 3cm! I had a TENS machine which really took the edge off all the way! I was all set for an epidural as I had one with Callum but he was a 34 hour labour but as I knew one of the midwives she mentioned I could go to the birthing suite and 2 other midwives recommended it! Not wanting to seem like a wimp I said I would consider it! They did my bloods to check my iron and I was secretly hoping I was high risk (i.e. low iron) so that I could head down for an epidural however I came back low risk and I knew I wanted it to be as pleasant as possible for DP as he wanted to go home for a sleep half way through labour with Callum! Went to the birthing suite, it was lovely as it was your own room with a bath and bed and you could use the kitchen for tea and coffee....I was nervous as hell!

Had a bath about 3pm as I wasn't progressing much then the lovely midwife came in and said if I wasn't progressing much in the next hour I could go down for an epidural!

"Yes" I thought, however I said " Could I not stay here?" (for the sake of DP as it was more comfortable! Hoping she said " no"). She then said yes... ooopssss! She said she would break my waters about 5pm and see what happened as the bath had stopped my contractions! 5pm came and I lay on the bed after another big show and she broke my waters, they gushed out like there was no tomorrow and I became scared again (you wouldn't have thought I have given birth before!).

Contractions started thick and fast, every 2 mins so I paced the room for an hour with my TENS machine on before the midwife came in and said I could then get in the birthing pool! (I was then 5cm!) God why didn't I have an epidural, wimp woman I was thinking!

Got in the pool at 6pm and I thought you could have Pethedine (but not in the pool) so in the pool I just had gas and air and the contractions were so bad I thought I was dying and towards the end I was crying (wimp woman again). The midwife said "I want you to have this baby by 9.30pm as I finish the shift". At 7pm I was like, "I want this baby now, not in another hour and a half!". She checked me, I was only 8cm! God I thought I was dying again! (Girls you will be so proud of yourselves for anyone just doing gas and air!) Midwife told me when I feel like I need a poo that's when I'm ready and to push, and to be honest I never got that feeling, the contractions got unbearable about 8pm so I pushed TWICE and he popped out! I stood up and unfortunately there was blood gushing out of me and the birth pool was red (I had ripped) so went to be stitched up after (that was actually worse than childbirth) but god, me!!!! I did it without an epidural I felt amazing afterwards!!!!"

Submit your story to marvellousmummies@live.co.uk - please state whether you would like your name and location published otherwise by default you will become 'Anon'.

50 story marathon!

A huge thank you to everyone who has submitted their birth story already - it's been fantastic reading them all and seeing what you have all been through to hold your little ones in your arms.

You'll notice the countdown clock below - I've set a challenge! Can we get to 50 birth stories by 1st May 2011? Invite all your friends and colleagues to submit theirs too. I know when I was pregnant the first, second and third time, it was always reassuring to read other people's birth stories - the good ones make you warm and gooey inside and the more difficult lend themselves to educating us about our choices - in all, enabling us to get ourselves emotionally ready for the birth.

I hope you'll join me soon! Submit yours to:

marvellousmummies@live.co.uk

Anon's story, UK - overdue home waterbirth

"I'd had to fight to keep my homebirth because I was past term + 14 by scan dates, although that was a week ahead of where I was by LMP & ovulation (so according to the scans I was already a week pregnant when I started my last period!) and I have a strong family history of "late" babies. Had to see the consultant at T+15 (Monday) and the one I saw basically bullied me into a hospital birth, which left me me very upset (mainly because I dreaded the thought of being strapped up to monitors the whole time, which he told me I'd have to be because I was now "high risk"), but then I went home and researched my position and the risks involved. Basically the NHS claim that the stillbirth rate trebles after 42 weeks is based on very dodgy - not to mention old - data, and more recent research shows that the risk only really begins to rise significantly after 43 completed weeks. (In fact at 42 weeks the risk is only about the same as at 38 weeks!) So I wrote a letter to the Supervisor of Midwives (based on the one on www.homebirth.org.uk but with some personal justification added) saying that I was continuing with my plans for a homebirth. Handed it in at the antenatal clinic when I went for monitoring on Tuesday, and also showed a copy to the nice mw who was doing my monitoring, and she took it upon herself to make a phone call and put a copy of the letter in my file to make sure that the message got through. I'd been booked in for induction on the 11th if he hadn't appeared by then; considered backtracking on that too, but decided to stick with it in the end.

On Tues night / Wed morning I got up for my customary 3am loo visit and things felt a bit wet, so I put in a pad and went back to bed. Contractions started at 4.10am, about 10 mins apart and lasting 45-60 seconds. I was feeling them in my back to begin with, and had had no back pain at all up to then, so that was how I knew they were the real thing starting. Around 5.40 I called the hospital (having been told to call early in labour since it was a homebirth) and at 6.30 the on-call mw came round. She established that I was 2-3cm and "nicely effaced" (I'd had 4 sweeps, the last one at T+13, and each time was 1-2 or 2cm but with cervix still long & posterior, so it was a relief to hear that I was actually progressing, especially as the trickling seemed to have petered out by then) and stayed for about an hour. I was coping fine by breathing through the contractions - using HypnoBirthing techniques - so after that she left me to wait for the community mws to come on duty. The lead mw arrived around 9.40 and was very impressed that I was on the Internet in between contractions right up until I got into the pool at 4cm! She told me that because I was beyond T+14 my case was outside their normal protocol and so they had to have a third, supervisory, midwife present for the birth, and they also needed to listen in to the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler every 15 minutes. That kind of monitoring was no problem at all! The second mw was my usual community mw, so it was nice to have someone there whom I already knew, and the supervisor (consultant midwife) was delighted to be asked to attend a home waterbirth because it's something she hardly ever gets to do in her current role.

At 11.40 I was starting to groan through the contractions (though I was still getting a decent break in between - I think the interval was about 7 minutes, and I don't think they were lasting more than a minute or so) so I was examined and told I was 3-4cm and could get into the pool when I wanted to. I pottered around online for a little bit longer then decided it was time to get into the water. Almost as soon as I got in, contractions started to pick up and I had two without a break in between - though apart from that they never really got to the stage of coming too thick & fast to give me a breather. Started using gas & air at 12.30 and was soon bellowing my way through the contractions (DH said I sounded like a moose!). The hardest thing was not being able to make a single out-breath last the whole contraction, and having to stop and inhale. I'm not sure how much the gas & air actually helped but I wasn't about to stop using it to find out! The mws were great, very encouraging but respecting my request to be left to get on with it as far as possible. I started to feel the urge to push at 12.48 (according to my notes) but it still took a while after that: my waters went with a big "pop" at 1.32, the mw had a quick feel at 2.12 and said the birth was imminent, and Xander was born at 2.19. I fished him out of the water myself and within a few minutes he latched on and started to feed. We noted that he still had loads of vernix on him - not post-mature by any means! 

One mw estimated his weight at about 7 1/2 pounds but in fact he turned out to be a whopping 9lb 7oz when weighed! Not only that, but I realised later, when I looked at his charts in the red book, that he had an enormous head - just short of the 99.8th centile line for boys and would have been off the scale for girls - in other words, if you were to line up 300 newborns in order of head circumference then he'd probably be the biggest!

We were left skin-to-skin for nearly an hour and I could feel the uterus contracting, but after nearly an hour the placenta hadn't yet come out (I didn't realise I had to push it out!) so I was asked to get out of the pool so that it could be given a gentle helping hand (I had asked that the cord not be pulled). I managed to stand up but couldn't lift my leg over the side of the pool, but gravity, a bit of bearing down and some very gentle coaxing by the mw got the placenta out intact within a minute or two. Left the pool water rather red though!

Blood loss estimated at 350-400ml, and I had a 2nd-degree tear - with hindsight, it was no wonder given the size of his head! - but it was left unstitched as suturing would have required a trip to hospital. (It healed up OK.) The after-pains were a lot worse than they were with DD, but I gather that's normal for 2nd & subsequent babies - and they did seem do their job very effectively, according to the mw when she visited the next morning. Was told by the lead mw that I shouldn't take ibuprofen if breastfeeding, which was news to me (and to my normal mw!) but the paracetamol wasn't helping so I looked it up online and the NHS site said that small amounts get into breastmilk but it's unlikely to harm the baby, so I went ahead and took it anyway.

Incidentally, it turned out that both of my children were born at T+10 by my dates - if that's not consistent then I don't know what is!"

Click here for a link to comprehensive home birthing information

Submit your story to marvellousmummies@live.co.uk - please state whether you would like your name and location published otherwise by default you will become 'Anon'.

Kate and Ruben's story, Wiltshire - almost on the floor!

"The Birth of Ruben – Friday 13th November 2009

Ruben’s birth and labour couldn’t have been any more different to Freddie’s...

DH went to work at 7am Thursday morning and literally as he turned the key in the lock I had the first ‘Braxton Hick’ of the day (although soon proved to be proper contractions!). They came every hour until about 10am then started coming every 30 minutes. They weren’t painful at this point but were definitely noticeable although I just kept telling myself not to get excited. So I patiently observed them without actually getting my hopes up that this was it.

At midday I had the first mildly painful contraction and they carried on like this, every half hour right up until about 5pm. Sat watching Christmas DVDs with DS to pass the time, still not thinking anything would come of it – I knew I was in labour with Freddie as I was woken up by really painful contractions so had no idea what early labour felt like.

DH got home around 6pm and we had tea. Contractions still weren’t very painful so we all went to bed. Thankfully Freddie dropped off to sleep without too much hassle, DH and I passed the time watching TV until about 11pm when I was getting restless after having irregular, quite painful contractions (anywhere between 1 minute and 40 minutes apart!). We went downstairs to have a cup of tea and the contractions started causing quite a bit of pain and I had to breathe through them. They were 15 minutes apart, then went to 10 minutes, then eventually got to every 4-6 minutes at about 2am. Had a bath but stayed in for about 5 minutes maximum as I couldn’t sit due to pain on my cervix from the contractions – by now I was getting the bearing down feeling too.

Rang the hospital at about 2:15am and explained the contractions were irregular but I was starting to need some pain relief and they said I could go in to be checked but to be aware I would be sent home if I wasn’t in established labour – they were thinking that as the contractions were so irregular, I wasn’t in proper labour. How wrong could you be!

DH went and got the car and loaded the bags and car seat. I had a massive contraction while just getting in the car and I’m sure the neighbours must have thought something bad was happening out in the street – I was sounding like a distressed cow! The journey takes half an hour and I had strong painful contractions every 4 minutes all the way there but with no pain relief, I just mooed through them. Had another in the car park in front of a car of teenagers (!) and another in the corridor of the maternity ward. Got to the ward at 3am and thankfully the midwives now took me seriously – they thought I was about to give birth any second and wanted me in a delivery suite immediately. Had to give a wee sample first and the midwife asked me if I’d had any further contractions since coming in – yes, but only a mild one while on the loo. So she now wanted me in the side ward to be examined first. (Make up your mind!)

Got ushered into the ward, with all the other ladies breathing and moaning through contractions and was shown to the same bed I had when in labour with Freddie. Midwife came after a very short wait and examined me – 7cm dilated! DH and I couldn’t believe it. Got moved immediately to a delivery suite at 3:45am and got stuck into the gas and air... heaven!

Contractions started getting really strong at about 4:30am and by 5:30am I was breaking poor DH’s hand! The midwife was feeling my stomach as I was contracting and getting DH to do the same to feel the strength of them – it was lovely as she really involved DH in the labour and the birth whereas last time he was pretty much ignored through the whole thing. Midwife kept asking if I wanted any more pain relief and I kept declining – biting on the gas and air mouthpiece was giving me something to focus on through the pain!

I agreed to be examined again at 5:55am but I was still only 7cm although the head had come right down. I had my waters broken at 6:05am to move things along but the head was so far down, hardly anything came out. Contractions got stronger though and midwife wanted me to try and go for a wee and keep upright. DH left to get a ticket for the car parking (which thankfully was only 30 seconds from the ward) and then midwife left the room. I managed to get off the bed, intending on going to the loo as requested but a powerful contraction took over and all I could do was hang onto the bed for dear life – my body pushed, taking me by surprise, and my bladder and bowels opened for themselves while I dropped the gas and air and fell backwards to the floor. It was dark as I had the lights low, midwife and DH had just left and I was on my own with baby coming and no stomach muscles to be able to scream for help – to say I was petrified is an understatement. After three attempts to call for help I managed somehow to literally scream ‘help me, help me’ and midwife and DH came rushing back in with another midwife to help with the delivery. I was pulled onto the bed and within about 4 more pushes at 6:19am Ruben’s head was out. DH was watching, telling me he could see his head while midwife was telling me to push to get the rest of him out. Well, what a great time for my contractions to seem to disappear! Felt like forever (but was actually only 1 minute) before I got a hint of one and forced his body out on it, along with the rest of the waters. Ruben pooed just as he came out and his head and face was all swollen and grazed from my pubic bone and his super fast dive through my birth canal!

7cm to 10cm dilated in 15 minutes.

The placenta was delivered three minutes later and I ended up with a 1st degree tear which only needed stitches as I had torn into a blood vessel which wouldn’t stop bleeding. Only lost 400ml of blood this time as opposed to 800ml with Freddie, so felt much better after the delivery and could breathe.

So all in all, I couldn’t have wished for a better labour and birth.

1st stage: 2 hrs 45 mins

2nd stage: 5 mins

3rd stage: 3 mins

Total labour: 2 hrs 53 mins

Onset of established labour (since admission): 03:30

Fully dilated: 06:15

Pushing commenced: 06:15

Head delivered: 06:19

Baby delivered: 06:20

End of third stage: 06:23

Ruben was born weighing 7lb 12 oz, 55cm long and head circumference 33cm. Apgar scores of 8, 9 and then 9."

Hello and an introduction

My name is Kate, I'm 27 years old, married and I have 3 little boys. I have been pregnant almost constantly since June 2007 and I am now on a break for a while before trying to conceive baby number 4.

I'll be frank, I don't enjoy pregnancy all that much. I don't do the whole 'glowing' thing - I'm more of a sufferer unfortunately. What with all day and night sickness, sacroiliac joint dysfunction, water retention, heart burn, constipation and a myriad of other delights, I waddle through, focussing on the little bundle I'll get at the end of it all. Birth is a double whammy of intense pain and sheer elation... labour and birth, especially the minutes straight after your small human has arrived into the world in a squelchy, bloody puddle is amazing.

I've started this blog to collect birth and labour stories from everyone who wishes to share their experience. I love reading about other women's labours and hearing about home births, arguments with doctors, which drugs you went for (or didn't), after care, baby name choices... I'll start off with the birth story of my second little boy (simply because it's the only one I've managed to write up so far) and I hope you'll join me soon.

Use the email address above to submit your story. Please say whether you would like names and locations printed. If you don't tell me, by default you'll become an 'Anon'.