"Water birth of our son at RAH CMU"

Our son was born in the birthing pool at RAH CMU just 10 days ago.

Being a first time mother, I was nervous about the birth and this led me to transfer my birth to RAH CMU instead of another hospital where I was booked in originally.

I dreamt of a calm natural water birth, knowing fine well that unexpected happens so was trying to not get fixed on this scenario.

8 days after my due date and some chat about inductions with my community midwives, I went into labour naturally. I kept in touch with midwives at RAH CMU over the phone, where they were calmly assessing my progress over the phone from my breathing/ information on contraction timings. When there was finally time to go in, we were greeted by our wonderful midwife Stephanie who assessed me, made me and my partner feel calm and relaxed and respected out birth preferences. After assessment I got moved to the birthing pool room that was luckily free.

We were encouraged to put on our own music, the blids were shut and candle lights were on, I was offered Lucozade for energy and my partner was offered tea and coffee.

Stephanie and her colleague Nicola looked after us exceptionally, always asking before any monitoring, speaking calmly, and allowing the process to happen. Once they needed to step in a bit more in the last phase, they did so with calm encouragement and our wee boy was born just 5 hours after arriving to RAH.

We will cherish this experience forever, and I would call it a dream first birth. Once they Stephanie and Nicola finished their shift, we were looked after by Karen and Rachel (I think!) before I got moved to the operating theatre for some stitches and later on in recovery.

I can't thank Stephanie and the rest of the midwives, as well as operating theatre team for the care I was given. Many heartfelt thanks to them all.