"Water birth in midwife-led unit"

I am based in Highland, but went over to Grampian trust to have my baby because I wanted to go to a midwife led unit rather than OB led unit of Raigmore. My community midwives were Rae, Kirsty, Kerry and Annabelle.

We decided on a home birth at around 35 weeks pregnancy. All equipment was dropped off at our house and we paid to hire a birth pool. There was a midwife rota setup with midwives from Nairn to cover from 39 weeks.

At 39 weeks + 2 days ,I started experiencing contractions. 27 hours later we rang the community midwives to ask if they could come over as contractions were close together. Unfortunately we were told that there was no coverage that weekend so we had no option but to go to Plan B which was Elgin midwife led unit. I was very disappointed and stressed as this news caught me off guard. We were told that if we were still in labour at 9am Monday morning then they could come and assess me. 

We then made the 50-minute drive over to Elgin arriving at 10pm. Rachel greeted us and did an assessment. Unfortunately due to stress and light levels, the contractions had slowed down. We were hopeful after a while contractions would kick off again. There was some progress but not a lot. Contractions slowed to every 30 minutes with the daylight. I hadn't had any sleep for two nights now.

By the Sunday afternoon we were encouraged to take a walk round the hospital and make a plan. We decided to go to a hotel rather than go home as I was convinced it would kick off again when the light faded. We stayed in the hotel for 6 hours and then rang Ward 3 to tell them we were coming back as things kicked off again about 10pm on the Sunday night.

Rachel met us again and took us into the birthing suite immediately. She gave me pain relief which really helped. I was still only 4cm dilated which was disappointing. Rachel explained my waters hadn't broken and this was most likely slowing things down. We agreed to have them broken. I used the birth ball for a few hours then got into the pool which really helped with pain relief too. We had our playlist on, the room was very dark and I had the gas and air.

Finally my daughter was born at 6.40am on the Monday morning. It was 65 hours of labour in total. We are so grateful that Rachel was able to be with us throughout and saw her birth. We are so grateful for an amazing water birth and everyone on Ward 3 who helped us including Rachel, Yvonne, Kayleigh, Donna and Tracey. The atmosphere on the ward was great, very relaxed and friendly. I've never been in hospital before so I was nervous but we couldn't have had a better experience. We got help with breastfeeding and were able to leave the hospital the same day as the birth.