"Amazing Homebirth with support of Community Midwives"

Thank you to the Village Midwifery Team at St Margaret's Hospital in Epping, Essex, for their caring support throughout my pregnancy and homebirth for my first baby.

I had wrongly assumed that home births weren't offers to first time mum's like myself and was pleasantly surprised about how supportive the midwives were of homebirths. They were also very knowledgeable about complementary therapies in the area such as yoga, hypnobirthing, reflexology and the correct dosage for Raspberry leaf tea.

It was great getting the know the team during my pregancy examinations and it was a nice thought to know that during the birth I would be assisted my somebody that I knew and trusted and not a random stranger. The continuity of care of having the community midwifery team was so important.

I was nearly two weeks late and determinded not to be induced. Luckily I went into labour naturally the day before the two week deadline and luckier the midwife who was on duty lives in my village because my labour only lasted 2 hours and 50 minutes (that was thanks to the hypnobirthing and yoga practise) and when we called her she came within half an hour which was handy because baby arrived 20 minutes later.

The midwife really listened to our wishes and followed our birth plan requests. She also prompted me to "Breath the Baby Out", didn't use the word "pain" at our request and baby was put straight onto my chest (and actually crawled to the breast which was amazing) and she let the cord empty so that all the blood went to the baby before it was cut.

My husband also felt very included, which was one of the reasons we opted for a home birth as sometimes Fathers are treated like a "spare part" and are not integral to the whole process. I had the best birth experience, it went like a dream and was beyond my hopes.

The other reason for having a home birth was the guarantee of having a second midwife present, although my quick labour and birth caught everybody out and the second midwife joined us shortly after the baby was born. They also complied with our wishes to have Vitamin K administered orally. Looking back I was quite a demanding patient and probably quite annoyingly knowledgeable about all the different options (six weeks of severe morning sickness meant the loss of one and a half stone in weight and lots of time reading up on birth and researching labour) but they dealt with all my weird requests and really tried hard and succeeded in making us all very happy.

Thank you, thank you to Isabel, Sue, Jemma and Pauline, you all do a fab job. Homebirths should be offered to all fit ladies with normal pregnancies and I bet it's cheaper for the NHS too.