Steph and Stuart's birth story
Co-parents to Juno born Oct ‘10
We started seeing Carole and the team of midwives at 20 weeks pregnant and they provided us with ante-natal visits at home, assisted us with the birth of our baby and gave us excellent post natal follow up after the birth.
The ante natal visits at home gave us the invaluable experience of being able to build up a dialogue and relationship with our midwives. We had visited several hospital birth centres with the view of giving birth at St Mary’s in Paddington. During the process of the visits with the midwives we talked in detail about our birth preferences and became increasingly confident about our ability to have a natural birth for our baby and to avoid any unnecessary medical intervention.
Over the process of this dialogue we developed a great rapport with our midwives and built a strong sense of trust, which lead us to the decision to opt for a home birth with only the midwives and ourselves present. We had begun to realise that even birth centres supporting active natural birth had guidelines and protocols that could mean choices were taken away from us. We came to the conclusion that the way to maximise our independence and ability to freely make informed choices was to opt for a home birth. This decision also gave us the advantage of having midwives with us in labour that we had known throughout the pregnancy. Even if we needed to transfer into hospital, our midwives would stay with us and give us continuity of care.
As it happened, we couldn’t have hoped for a better and more relaxed birth experience. Steph had an exhilarating four hour labour with no pain relief needed and a beautiful calm water birth, with Juno being delivered into her father’s hands. We found our midwife generously gave us the space to experience our birth and not to dictate it, whilst simultaneously being very much present and reassuring us when needed.
The post-natal follow up to our baby’s birth was amazing, with many regular visits and opportunities to ask as many questions as we needed about caring for our new-born baby.
Each stage of the pregnancy, birth and post natal was sensitively and expertly conducted by our midwives and we would have absolutely no hesitation in giving our strongest recommendation. Carole and her team were able to offer incredible consistency of care, a genuine peace of mind, and an atmosphere that was so relaxed and assured we have no doubt that the conditions established by our midwives led us to have the most positive birth experience we could ever have imagined.
We started seeing Carole and the team of midwives at 20 weeks pregnant and they provided us with ante-natal visits at home, assisted us with the birth of our baby and gave us excellent post natal follow up after the birth.
The ante natal visits at home gave us the invaluable experience of being able to build up a dialogue and relationship with our midwives. We had visited several hospital birth centres with the view of giving birth at St Mary’s in Paddington. During the process of the visits with the midwives we talked in detail about our birth preferences and became increasingly confident about our ability to have a natural birth for our baby and to avoid any unnecessary medical intervention.
Over the process of this dialogue we developed a great rapport with our midwives and built a strong sense of trust, which lead us to the decision to opt for a home birth with only the midwives and ourselves present. We had begun to realise that even birth centres supporting active natural birth had guidelines and protocols that could mean choices were taken away from us. We came to the conclusion that the way to maximise our independence and ability to freely make informed choices was to opt for a home birth. This decision also gave us the advantage of having midwives with us in labour that we had known throughout the pregnancy. Even if we needed to transfer into hospital, our midwives would stay with us and give us continuity of care.
As it happened, we couldn’t have hoped for a better and more relaxed birth experience. Steph had an exhilarating four hour labour with no pain relief needed and a beautiful calm water birth, with Juno being delivered into her father’s hands. We found our midwife generously gave us the space to experience our birth and not to dictate it, whilst simultaneously being very much present and reassuring us when needed.
The post-natal follow up to our baby’s birth was amazing, with many regular visits and opportunities to ask as many questions as we needed about caring for our new-born baby.
Each stage of the pregnancy, birth and post natal was sensitively and expertly conducted by our midwives and we would have absolutely no hesitation in giving our strongest recommendation. Carole and her team were able to offer incredible consistency of care, a genuine peace of mind, and an atmosphere that was so relaxed and assured we have no doubt that the conditions established by our midwives led us to have the most positive birth experience we could ever have imagined.
