Saskia’s Birth Story

40+2

TOB: 3:39

W:4.17kg

L:52cm

HC:38cm

"I woke feeling very heavy, with a hunch things might kick off soon. By dinner surges had begun. Putting our boys to bed I let them know we might be meeting our baby before morning.Tonight was the night we met our birth photographer Sheridan for the first time. She arrived around 11pm. Her first photos are of me hanging washing. I had two massive loads I was determined to hang coz I knew once baby arrived the washing would sit in the basket and rot. Chores done, I had a midnight snack of toast & hot chocolate. It was only when I sat at the dining table I realised I had two hot chocolates; I had completely forgotten Ian had already made me one.I settled on the couch to listen to a birthing meditation. Feeling things were ramping up I called our midwife Nina around 1:20am. I later learnt her partner, very experienced in over-hearing labouring women making that call, asked "Is that the birthing woman? She sounds very cheerful." Nina replied "Oh yes, she'll be cheerful until almost the end."
Needing to toilet, I stood up, & felt a bulging sensation just before my waters broke with a spectacular gush. Thankfully Ian had put a giant tarp over the whole loungeroom floor.
There was breathing, massaging, hamstring cramps, laughing so hard I had tears pouring down my face (misunderstood story of a potato tattoo), swaying, moaning, the bliss of sinking in to the warm water of the birth pool.
Shortly before 3am our boys were woken as I was feeling "pushy" & being a third bub, they might have arrived very quickly. But our "off the chart" giant baby's head remained stubbornly high, despite my body's efforts.And so began the really hard work. At this point, in a hospital I would have simply been carted off to theatre for an "emergency caesarean" for "failure to progress". The only failure would have been that of the medical system.Instead I was blessed with midwives knowledgeable in normal, undisturbed, physiological birth, who knew me & my baby intimately. Who trusted in us & knew we could do it.
I was gently coached to try different positions to open my pelvis and shift bub's position... until suddenly, finally, there was the intense pressure of baby's head descending.
And then our baby was born, swished through my legs but untouched by our midwife, so that my hands reaching down to bring bub out of the water were the first to touch and hold.
Oh the relief and joy! And then the ecstatic excitement to learn our boys had a baby sister.
Saskia Willow, born 3:49am, all scrumptious 4.16kgs of you. You turned our world upside down. We were all immediately smitten and we have only fallen more in love with you every day that has passed since, if my heart were any more full it would burst. Every single day I am thankful you chose me to be your mother. You make my heart sing. You have completed my world; you have completed our family. I couldn't be happier." Nerida