In April 2025 Bethany Woodger and I attended a lovely healing homebirth for one of her clients. I usually like to write about my experiences of witnessing a birth so others can understand what we do and how amazing birthing women are. But this time Beth’s client published her own story online so we decided to share it with her consent to inspire others.
For context, Beth’s client G. had a traumatic first homebirth due to inexperienced midwives panicking at the last minute. So this healing homebirth became an amazing opportunity for her to make peace with the past. Also, I would like to point out that she went into labour at 41+6, not something the NHS is very keen on.
Here is her birth story, in her own words.
Birth Story
On Thursday 10th April I woke up from a contraction around 2am. I experienced a few of them. Strong enough to wake me up. Then managed to get back to sleep a couple of hours later. Woke up again about 6am to a few more. They started to come a bit more regularly around 7am. I found myself getting these ‘cramps’ all day and spent most of the day resting as much as I could, eating, drinking and watching funny TV with my husband as our 5 year old was at a Easter holiday kids club. They started to get a bit more intense and were consistent by about 3ish but I could still talk through them and they weren’t much to write home about. By about 7ish I was having to breathe through them and was using the yuka balls. Reached out to my midwife but was really concerned about how long this would go on for as I hadn’t had my plug/show and I had this over 2 days prior with my son. And I was in labour for 4 days with him. Carried on as I was and around 8ish I put my tens machine on as I was struggling with just the Yuka balls. My mum came over and my son went to bed. My husband put up the birth pool. I was adamant I didn’t want to do this too soon this time as I was convinced I had days to go.
Called our wonderful midwife, Beth and I burst into tears. Telling her how worried I was about being only at the very start and no plug or show. She said she would come over when we needed her. I finally asked for her to come over around 11ish and she got to us before midnight. By then the contractions were very intense. I was using the tens and the balls and getting quite vocal and really starting to struggle. My blood pressure was high and I wasn’t getting much of a break in between. I then started on gas and air which helped a lot. Around 2am I got into the pool. I immediately felt the pressure increase. It had already been there for a while but this got ridiculous. I started to panic as I had no VEs this birth and with the help and guidance of Beth and our second midwife Irene, I was told to listen to my body. It was the most surreal and incredible feeling. I described it as my bum or my noonie being sick. With each contraction I was pushing. But not even on purpose. It was so incredibly intense!! I was still a bit in denial as I still hadn’t had my plug, my show or my waters go!
After a few pushy contractions I felt down and I could feel my baby in her waters. It was the most amazing feeling. We had run out of gas and air by this point and I experienced the ring of fire. I found holding myself as I pushed her out helped a lot. That and singing to myself about how I was stretching 
Then with one big push her head and the rest of her slid out of me. It felt incredible!!! She was born into the water en caul and our midwife Beth caught her and got the sack off of her before helping me get her out of the pool and onto my chest.
It’s a feeling I’ll remember for the rest of my life and even more so as our second midwife very kindly filmed it for us!!
Because I was so worried about blood loss I got out the pool pretty soon after. I wanted to do the breast crawl but it wasn’t really happening but I did sit on the sofa and feed. I had absolutely no blood. Nada. After an hour or so we cut the cord to try and get the placenta to get a move on. I was really nervous about this as had the injection with my son so didn’t know if I could do it on my own. I was getting contractions again and put the tens machine back on. Tried a few things. Like standing up, weeing but nothing was happening. Then went and sat on the loo and it just fell out of me. Was such a weird sensation. Like a big clump of jelly. Didn’t hurt at all. Then did a wee. Placenta was all in tact and I didn’t start to bleed till after it was out. And the bleeding this time round has been so much less by comparison.
After our son was born (also at home) it left me with a lot of trauma and the whole experience was very dramatic and traumatic. This experience was so healing and beautiful and whilst I won’t be having any more babies I am so glad I got to experience birth this way. As an empowered and very powerful queen. Also my daughter was over a pound more than my son and with him I had a second degree tear which went up to my clitoris and needed a hospital transfer by ambulance to be stitched. This time I needed no stitches and spent our first day at home. Chilling. Eating and sleeping when I could. It’s been amazing.
One of the biggest things that made this experience what it was, our wonderful midwife. I made the decision to have an independent midwife after the awful experience with the NHS we had with our son in 2019. It was by far the best decision and it made our birth experience what it was.