Imogen's Birth Story

Imogen's Birth Story (in her own words)

Soon after I became pregnant with my second child, my husband Alex accepted a new teaching job at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, which meant we would have to leave our home in London. I had been lucky to have a great, and very quick, home birth with my son a few years earlier but we then lived a 10-minute drive from the hospital and very close to both sets of parents and various siblings. At Stowe, we were living in a house 45-minutes drive from Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury where we were registered and knew nobody locally so I was expecting it to be more challenging second time around.

I had imagined that my second pregnancy would be such a wonderfully relaxed time, having been through it all before. Although I felt much less of the anxiety that inevitably one feels as a first-time mother, the move from London had been a wrench and our new life in the country was taking a lot of getting used to. My first son was 2 weeks late and I was extremely anxious about the prospect of having to be induced in hospital. My husband is extremely kind and supportive but hates confrontation and I didn’t want to have to worry about negotiating with medical staff myself whilst in labour! I also didn’t want him to be busy endlessly explaining our birth plan to the various midwives and doctors we would potentially meet in hospital. I found the uncertainty around the birth and the prospect of life with a toddler and a newborn very unsettling and I was also nervous about how my son would respond to his new sister.

We needed help!

Alex and I both felt that we needed to be supported by someone we knew at the birth; someone we had met and who understood our desire for a normal birth. We decided to hire a doula who could help out if we had a home birth and who could liaise with the hospital staff if we were transferred, leaving Alex free to support me. We found the lovely Eleanor Fowler through a friend and as soon as we met her, we felt absolutely comfortable and reassured. Eleanor was very warm and extremely friendly but not overly familiar, too much of a hippy or bossy. It was a prefect balance for us. We went through our birth plan with her and explained that we hoped for a water birth at home and that we planned to use Hypnobirthing to help with the contractions, rather than any pain relief. After our first meeting we felt confident that Eleanor would be able to make people feel welcome and cared for in our home when we were busy with the important business of birthing our baby but also to support our choices and fight our corner if needed. I found it particularly reassuring that she was clearly very well-informed and experienced and would therefore be a true partner to us and not just there to make tea! What I hadn’t anticipated at this point was that there was so much more that Eleanor could do…

For example, Eleanor can magically disappear. When I was 10 days overdue, I started getting gentle but regular contractions very early in the morning. By 6am, I called Eleanor and then the hospital to find out where the midwife on call was. Eleanor and the midwife drove to us, through the snow, to check on me. I was a few centimeters dilated and the midwife told me to call again when the labour was more established. My sleep-deprived husband went to work and my son drove off happily with my mother to spend a few days with my parents-in-law. Eleanor stayed on and, whilst I was very keen to have somebody in the house, I was desperate to slob about a bit. With a two-year old son you don’t get many duvet days and I was nervous that I would have to “entertain” Eleanor. However, Eleanor went off to bed for a bit in the spare room and then disappeared off downstairs without disturbing me once to ask where something was or how the TV worked or even just for a chat. She was so low-key - it was perfect! When I got hungry she popped up again and we went and had lunch together. I then spent a wonderful afternoon watching box sets in bed. Awesome!

By about 6.30pm my contractions were strong and I went downstairs where Eleanor and I called the hospital. Eleanor went upstairs to wake up my husband who was catching up on some sleep. The midwives at the hospital kept putting me on hold to check things until I couldn’t continue the call myself because the contractions were very strong. Eleanor did this amazing thing of pushing on my lower back, which was such a welcome relief, and she showed my husband how to do it too. Eleanor took over the call and was still on the phone when my waters broke. The hospital said they would send a midwife but that we should call an ambulance. Alex called the ambulance and I decided to get into the birth pool.

Alex supported me in the pool, while Eleanor stood in front of me checking for the baby’s head. I remember feeling so calm in the lovely, warm water in our kitchen, although when I look back it strikes me as a bizarre place to have a bath with your husband and another woman watching. I felt completely relaxed and excited and remember seeing my daughter appear with a head full of brown hair. In fact, I felt totally present throughout the whole experience, which was wonderful because my son’s birth passed in a sort of endorphin-fuelled haze. At about 7.15pm, our new daughter Vivienne floated up to the surface of the pool and I tried to cuddle her carefully without dropping her, she was so slippery. I felt completely oblivious to the fact that we were still on our own, although Alex and Eleanor later admitted to feeling pretty on edge the whole way through. They both did an amazing job of hiding their feelings from me!

About 20 minutes after Vivienne was born, the ambulance crew arrived and was relieved to find us chatting happily. At about 8pm the midwives arrived and, with Eleanor, helped me to deliver the placenta, which was carefully put in the fridge in a plastic bag to make into capsules! I had a few stitches lying on the sofa and then Eleanor bid farewell to the paramedics and the midwives before quietly heading off herself after checking we were all happy and had everything we needed. Alex, Vivienne and I went off to bed. What an extraordinary evening!

Of course, throughout all of this, Eleanor had, by her very presence, stopped my husband from having a heart attack, answered the door, made endless cups of tea and small-talk, held a torch for the midwife who stitched me up on the sofa, fetched, carried, cleaned up, made jokes. How does anybody give birth without a doula?! Eleanor was completely indispensable and, in my husband’s case, life saving. We cannot recommend her highly enough.