Inspiring Birth Stories Of Big Babies Born At Home   



10lb 12oz Nicola Rose's VBAC Birth - By Angie (Angie is from Australia)

I went into strong contractions fairly quickly. I loved most of this part of labour. There apparently wasn’t much time between contractions (2-3 minutes) but I liked it that way. If there was too much time between a contraction I felt that everything was slowing down & would stop again.

For a while I just walked between contractions & stood & breathed through each contraction. I found rocking or moving in circular motions during the contractions uncomfortable as was leaning over the birth ball. I didn’t even
 try & sit on the birth ball as I couldn’t imagine it feeling comfortable with my sore hip. Simply walking was perfect.

At one point the contractions started to feel too intense but then I found that vocalising & moving through them helped. Once I got to the vocalising stage as each contraction ended I must have got a rush of hormones as I got a rush of a ‘this is fantastic!’ feeling & ended or felt like ending each contraction with an ‘Oh Yes!’. This part of labour was definitely ecstatic!

I was surprised at how ‘normal’ I felt between contractions too. Between contractions I could easily forget I was in labour. I felt like I could just run off & play soccer with Lily or do some housework or breezily wave to the guy next door who was mowing his lawn ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’re just having a baby’. Of course I couldn’t as the contractions were too close together but it was bliss compared to the seemingly constant pain that I could not get on top of whilst labouring at the hospital with Lily.

I just wandered up & down our hall & around the deck outside our bedroom/ birth room during the first stage of labour. I remember asking Dale to vacuum the lounge & wash the dishes as I suddenly didn’t want the house
messy when our support people came. haha He managed to do both, fill the pool AND look after Lily (who tried to get her teddy to swim in the then full birth pool at one stage). I had some washing that had been folded but was still sitting on the dining table so I put it away. I just had to make sure that I didn’t carry too much all at once so I could still hold it all when a contraction started half way down the hall. haha

I think it was about 6.30pm that the contractions got intense enough for me to just want to stay in our dark porch area & I started to think that the pool would be good. I still had fears that labour would stop so I didn’t want to get into the water too soon in case it slowed everything down. I think it took another half hour for Dale to convince me
to get into the pool.

In the pool

I got in the pool soon after my support person L arrived (about 7pm) & it was beeeaauutiful!!! I hadn’t allowed
myself to expect much from it as I had heard a few mums say that it did nothing for them. It was the perfect temperature (thanks Dale!) & made the contractions easier again.

Not long after this L called C to come. C was originally going to come to help look after Lily & leave Dale & L
freer to concentrate on me. But as it turned out Lily spent most of the night sleeping by the birth pool & C had
 a full time job helping L & Dale get me through 2nd & 3rd stage. C arrived at the beginning of the pushing stage.
 I think I greeted her with “This is aweful!” & didn’t say ‘Thank you for coming” until a couple of minutes after that.

Both C & L were fantastic throughout this time. L asked me if it was hurting when I pushed & it made me realize
that it wasn’t hurting. It was pressure that I was feeling, the pressure of bubs head descending. Someone told me
it was probably the pressure of the unruptured membranes too & L encouraged me to see if I could feel the membranes but I wasn’t ready to do that yet. (I was sure that I wasn’t as far along as I thought I was so if I felt then
I would just be discouraged. haha )

I’m not exactly sure when my membranes ruptured. I was expecting a sudden rush & the sudden feeling of bubs head dropping. Once I felt bub descending more & then felt her head with my hand I knew the membranes had ruptured. Then I remembered a feeling like a breeze blowing through my vagina a few contractions previously so
that was probably when they ruptured. Later Dale said that they had all seen bubs hand pushing through my stomach during one contraction so there obviously wasn’t a lot of fluid in there.

At one stage I asked L and C “You did this, right?”. C said she did it without a pool & L said she did it in stirrups
& that encouragement & understanding helped me get through quite a few contractions & made me so glad to be
at home. Not that I needed convincing, there wasn’t one time during the entire labour that I wanted to swap places
to be at hospital. The worse I felt the more glad I was to not be at a hospital.

I did think at one stage (I thought about heaps of random things during labour) that there were drugs at hospital but
I realized that I had no desire for drugs at all. The very thought of drugs made me feel light headed & nauseous (I
had tried gas briefly with Lily’s labour). I had back pain but it was more annoying than anything & right towards the end I got a leg cramp for a few contractions & my stomach muscles got that ‘tired’ feeling for a couple of contractions but it certainly wasn’t something I wanted to be ‘saved’ from. The biggest ‘problem’ for me during
labour was tiredness or worry about getting tired, I really wouldn’t have called labour painful. It certainly didn’t come anywhere near the pain I’ve had in my pelvis & hip.

I asked everyone a few times if I could push & they just kept telling me to listen to my body. I wasn’t really listening to my body so kept trying to fight all those ‘annoying’ urges to push. I got frustrated at one staged & said ‘Why can’t someone just tell me whether I can push or not!!’. So C shone the torch on the next contraction so she & Dale could have a look & see if my cervix was still in the way but they could Nikki’s head was already descending. So then I actually let myself push with the explosions.

Sometime during labour bub flipped into a posterior position & her head had moved into a high brow presentation/ deflexed position. This is what Lily had done too & we now, know this is very likely due to me having a crooked sacrum. This plus Nikki being 10lbs 12oz caused the pushing stage to take 4 hours. (In hospital I would only have been ‘allowed’ to push for 2 hours as I was a VBAC & they wouldn’t have even vontoused bub because of her head position so I would have had another C-Section.)

I was never worried about my Caesarean scar during labour. I thought about it at one stage & I could feel that my body was working just fine. It didn’t feel like I was pushing for 4 hours. I felt like the labour was going quickly but at the same time I was a bit worried about getting too tired once the 2nd stage had gone on for a while.

At one stage I know I turned to Lily, who had woken up, & said ‘A Casear wasn’t that bad was it?’. (Fortunately she wasn’t even aware that I was talking.) But I really had no desire to be at hospital. My feelings & thoughts were more ‘I’m getting sick of this’ ‘This is getting repetitive’ “I can’t believe I can push this hard & it still takes this long’ ‘I really hope bub comes before I get too tired & have to transfer’.

I could feel Nikki descending with each push. After each push I had trouble holding Nikki there between contractions as I was tired so she did recede some between contractions but I could feel progress with each push although I did still ask everyone for confirmation of that after every contraction. Someone held the mirror for Dale to see so he was able to tell me that my pushes were working. L kept encouraging me to feel bubs head with my hand which I eventually did & then I could feel my progress with my hand as well. I tried different positions & got in & out of the pool a few times to help bub move down.

L & C kept giving me drinks of water & Electrolytes. (Apparently I called it Electrolux during labour & L had a
giggle over the image of me wanting to vacuum the floor during labour). During this stage of labour Dale had to hold my hand constantly. If he left to get something for Lily (or me) I said ‘Where are you going?!..... Well, be quick!”. During each contraction I had to have L or C holding my other hand. Once Dale was in the pool I sat leaning against him & L & C held my feet for me while I pushed against them. I’m afraid I was very demanding & would say ‘Here’s another one. Hurry!’ as each contraction started if L or C weren’t there. As I found out later poor L & C weren’t ‘deserting’ me, they were trying to keep the pool at the right temperature, keep the room warm, keep my water bottles filled, give me rescue remedy, get snacks for Lily, set up props so I could try different positions, hold the torch & mirror during contractions, take photos, have blankets for Nikki ready, heat soup up for us etc etc Whew! Makes me dizzy just thinking about it!! Thank you SO much L & C!!

I knew Nikki was fine, I could feel her shifting positions & doing dolphin wriggles that seemed to start some contractions off but I knew that the pushing stage had gone for a while & we needed to try & get bub out soon. (I didn’t actually know how long I had been pushing at the time as I looked at no clocks during labour.) So just before 2am I got out of the pool again & sat on the toilet for a few contractions to try a different position. I sat backwards on the toilet leaning on a pillow for about 3 contractions. I said I could feel the stretching sensation. Then I could feel Nikki crowning which was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be, something in my head told me to relax so I relaxed my hands & tried to let everything go & just panted, then bubs head was out. I think I just kept panting though as C reminded me to breath slower so I didn’t get too much oxygen to my head. Of course no one else knew that bubs head was out as I was sitting on the toilet. Someone asked if I wanted help to get off the toilet to push bubs head out & I thought ‘It’s out. Don’t they know that?’.  I checked with my hand & felt Nikki’s head & told them the head was out. So we got me off the toilet & on all fours on the carpet. I asked if I should get back in the pool (I was a bit out of it)  L said I couldn’t (as bubs head was born) & apologized that I didn’t get a water birth but I wasn’t bothered. I’d wanted a pool if I needed it during labour but I knew some mums didn’t want to use it once they were in labour so I had been ready for that.

The rest of Nikki came out in 2 contractions straight into Dale’s arms. She was born in an anterior position so must have done a 180 on my perineum somewhere between the pool & the toilet during those last few contractions before her head came out.

She cried pretty quickly & Dale rested her on the mat as he held her as she was slippery. Lily woke up once she heard her sister crying. Dale passed her to me through my legs & I felt too spent to pick her up so I bent down to cuddle her until I was ready to pick her up.

Soon after Nikki was born I lay down with her as I was bleeding. We just enjoyed being able to look at our bub & let some of it sink in so it was about 6 minutes after she was born that we decided to see if we had a girl or boy. So peaceful, so relaxed. Our support people gave us space so it was just Dale, Lily, Nikki & I. Perfect! Dale fed me some soup that someone had heated up.

Nikki was born at 2.03am & the placenta was birthed at 5.35am. I had lost about 1.2 litres of blood. So after a very quick first stage I still ended up with over a 12 hour labour. After the blood loss I was feeling faint so I asked C to dress Nikki for me. L got knickers, a pad & a pj top on me. I wanted to sleep in my own bed so once I was ready I crawled in stages to bed, stopping to put my head down whenever I felt faint. It was amazing to be in my own bed holding our new baby myself with Dale right there & Lily sleeping peacefully next to us.

So after 43 weeks & 4 days Nikki Rose was born deflexed posterior at home on 04.08.08.

Funnily enough my body which ‘failed’ to birth an 8lb 3oz baby in a deflexed posterior position was now able to birth a 10lb 12oz baby in the same position. I guess it just shows what can be done when you are surrounded by people with faith in birth.

Welcome to our home Nicola Rose. You picked a beautiful date my darling!

10lb 6oz Isaac's Birth By Kedi Simpson

I was 40 plus 1 – more pregnant than I’d ever been, and was fluctuating between feeling ‘this baby will come when it’s ready’ and thinking ‘I want this baby out’. I was slightly anxious on one level that the longer he stayed in, the bigger he was going to get, and I knew I grew big babies anyway. Although Lynn had said she thought he wasn’t going to be as big as I was predicting, I felt that we were expecting more than 10lb of little boy – and although I knew I could do it, at some level I would have been delighted to birth 7lb rather than 10!

I had on-and-off contractions on the Sunday morning, and again on the Monday morning, including one painful catch-your-breath type at 10.30am. Then nothing much until the kids’ bedtime, when they were irregular but making their presence felt. Three times over those two days I tried to time them and write them down, but it was almost as if the mere act of writing down the times sent them haywire again. Instead, at around 8.30pm Jo decided to go to bed; we both felt that this could well be it tonight, and thought it would be sensible to go to sleep. At 9, I followed him, and again on lying down and relaxing, the contractions stopped.

At 9.50 I was woken by a strong one, though, and lay awake, breathing through just three or four more contractions, until I woke Jo at 10.45pm and told him I thought we were in business – still far from regular, but consistently strong. And at 11.15 I called Lynn – feeling calm and not too worried about what was to come. Her reaction was absolutely positive: no numbers, no ‘are they five minutes apart’, no pigeon-holing. No element of mistrust or an attempt to assess me on the phone to make sure I was genuine. Just ‘excellent, that’s great news, I’ll see you as soon as I can’.

Suddenly I felt shaky, and by the time I’d finished the short walk into the kitchen, my whole body was quivering, my teeth chattering. We weren’t planning any vaginal examinations or intervention in this labour at all so I didn’t feel the need to do things by the book either. I knew that you’re not ‘supposed’ to get into the pool until you’re 4-5cm dilated, or if you’re not using dilation as a guide, when you’re in established labour. But I got in anyway because my instinct told me that’s where I’d feel most comfortable, and I knew these pains were not going to go away. This was the real thing.

Instantly I stopped shaking and felt relaxed; the pains, though still coming, became far gentler and I leant forwards in the pool with my head on the side and tried to relax. Jo had lit some candles – about six, around the kitchen – but that was far too bright and slowly he extinguished them until we were left with just one: a level of brightness that I could just about tolerate.

Lynn arrived at around midnight and I remember smiling at Jo, feeling that I knew our baby’s birthday then: it was going to be the 17th August. Lynn unpacked her bits and pieces and joined Jo next to the pool, on the floor, while I rode the contractions with my breath. Long exhalations helped immensely but I was acutely aware that the parts of the contractions where I had to breathe in was painful: it was a pay-off between the painful inhalations and the relief of the exhalations. Like in the last two labours I tried counting my breaths, and like in the last two labours I found that most of the contractions lasted around ten breaths, with the most painful bit around breath four.

The rest is already hazy. Time passed neither quickly nor slowly, and between the contractions I sometimes tried to doze, and other times felt really quite bored. I would have a batch of contractions that were regular, then some more time off, although gradually I could feel the strength of each one building in comparison to the last.

Eventually I asked Lynn where she thought I might be. I’d had a few double-peaked contractions by then – or were they simply one on top of the other – and I was disgusted to hear that she thought I might just about be in established labour! I wanted her to offer me a VE to give me a guage; I wanted to know whether I was in this for another hour or two or whether I was going to be at it all night. I wanted her to tell me it was all going to be over soon.

My noises changed. I had been blowing my breath out and then I began to make throaty noises within the contractions: I had to. The contractions were also feeling ever-so-slightly pushy. Within a few I was roaring hard and clutching Jo’s hand tightly as he sat opposite me. Around this stage I had a good length of time off, as well – no idea how much but it felt like at least five minutes – and the intellectual part of me that was still functioning wondered whether this was ‘rest and be thankful’. I certainly enjoyed the short lack of contractions. I also had a few that began to build and lasted a single breath, then went away. I think I was mentally fighting them; controlling their absence for a while.

I had this strange feeling that I can only describe as a ‘passage’ and asked Lynn whether the baby’s head was crowning. This wasn’t because I wanted a marker for the labour, but because I just didn’t recognise the feeling at all – there was no classic urge to poo that I’d experienced with the other two but a definite feeling of hardness inside, and several times I put my hand down to see what I could feel. Actually it was a precursor to the crowning, because then I could feel that immense pressure of the baby’s head just inside me, and the urge to push. It was about this time that I felt I did have a marker from Lynn – we’d discussed during the pregnancy how to do second stage, what her role would be and whether she would coach me, and she had said she was usually behind the woman with a torch watching the progress. I was dimly aware of the torchlight shining into the water, and knew I was nearly there.

Still, the urge to push was overwhelming but I felt I had to control it – it felt like I would pop otherwise. I really could control this stage; I let the baby come so far – as far as I dared – and then stopped it again. I bit on the side of the pool and it felt good to do that; I squeezed Jo’s hand (he said later that he thought I was going to break his fingers) and that felt good too. There was no ‘splitting in two’ sensation but finally a time where I knew I was going to open up further than I ever had done before, and with a huge push the baby’s head was born.

I felt like it was nearly over, but I knew I had one more hard bit to do. I waited – I wasn’t in any hurry to do the last hard bit! And then my body overcame my mind and out came Isaac’s body. ‘Pick your baby up. Pick your baby up,’ I heard, and saw this enormous pink body at the bottom of the pool, that I scooped up. It was no surprise that he was a boy.

 He was weighed: I think that was the first time Lynn had felt him – even just looking at him she thought he was going to be 9lb something, but as she lifted him up in the stork-scales she began to laugh. ‘Old money or new?’ she asked – Jo said old, but when Lynn got out her conversion table and said ‘new’ because I didn’t want to wait another 30 seconds to hear how big her was. 4.7kg… 10lb 6oz.

9lb 15oz Samuel's Birth By Natalie Cooper

Rosie (5) and Edie (2) were both born at home (8lb 15.5oz and 8lb 10oz) so I never expected to be anywhere but at home with baby number 3. I had a hard pregnancy and felt incredibly tired all the way through and at 36 weeks the baby was still breech. Thankfully a session with a Hypnotherapist had my baby turned round within 12 hours and we were ready to go, so much so that I expected him to arrive within the day.

No such luck. As I tell all my friends, babies come when they’re ready! On the day of his due date I finally had a show. Both the girls had been early so I couldn’t believe I was still carrying round this giant-sized bump. My husband was up in London, and the girls were off school, so not surprisingly nothing happened during the day. But, by the afternoon I’d had enough of waiting around, and called my sister to look after the girls so my husband could walk me round the village and try to get things moving. That turned out to be somewhat more effective than I expected with my waters gushing all over the local pub – I’d decided a pub crawl would be the ideal solution! – and we went back home to phone the midwife.

With the girls, my waters breaking was the signal that everything was about to kick off, but clearly this baby knew exactly what he wanted to do and when, so after eating tea, treating myself to a glass of wine – the heartburn having finally subsided - and mooching about for a bit, I gave up and went to bed, hoping I wouldn’t have too long to wait.

I woke up at about midnight to find the surges/contractions were finally getting going, so I went downstairs to walk about, put on my HypnoBirthing cd, text the midwife, and then hop in the pool. At that point I remembered that actually giving birth is hard work and not entirely comfortable!! But I focused on the HypnoBirthing cd and started to really concentrate on breathing through the surges and relax. I felt that with my previous baby, Edie, I’d been quite laid back and the birth had been pretty easy, I wasn’t really convinced that I needed HypnoBirthing. This time though, it was totally different. The breathing techniques that I’d learnt with the HypnoBirthing were amazing and really helped me to focus my breath effectively. When I had my first baby I’d used all my energy yelling, this time I was more or less silent and visibly thrilled to see how effective the breathing was. I actually felt excited as I felt the baby moving down and was really looking forward to meeting him.

My midwives were incredible. Totally hands off and respectful of the calm and relaxed atmosphere. They offered monitoring, but did not demand it, watched closely but not intrusively, and allowed me to labour quietly in the pool. When they became aware that the baby’s arrival wasn’t far off they sent my husband to wake up the girls, and for the last 15 minutes or so I had two little enthusiastic cheerleaders keeping an eye on proceedings. I’d been a little concerned that they might be frightened by what was going on, but in fact they picked up on the calm atmosphere, talking quietly and from time to time giving me some encouragement. Edie was particularly excited and her spontaneous “you’re doing fantastic Mummy” made me laugh out loud.

Sam’s head was clearly visible for quite a while - Edie rather unhelpfully pronounced it to be a foot! - I’m guessing 5 or 10 minutes, I was certainly very aware that he was there, but for the first time did not experience the stinging pain of crowning. The midwives looked a little shocked at this point, but said nothing. I felt that he was taking his time to ensure everything was nicely stretched. I’d read a book by Ina May Gaskin and remembered a story of a woman birthing a breech baby. I don’t remember the exact wording but essentially she was encouraged to visualise opening up very wide. This had stuck in my mind, so I did a similar visualisation, a gaping, cavernous hole, and laid back in the pool, kept focused on my breathing and waited for more to happen. I was so excited to be aware of my baby’s movements, I had not tuned in very successfully with previous my births, and once his head was out, I felt him turn, and after more waiting, rush out.

I watched as he came out into the water, it all felt to be in slow motion, and then scooped him up. I was shocked at how long he was, he seemed absolutely enormous, and when I eventually lifted him out of the water, staggered by his weight. He did a fairly spectacular meconium poo in the water, and so although his official birth weight was 9lb 15oz, my midwives very sweetly suggested that he would have probably been 10lb. He was measured to be 57cm long, the same length as Edie was at her 8 week check.

All in all it had only been a 3 hour labour, just half an hour off the three and a half hours I had decided on – something that I attribute to the HypnoBirthing. And much to my surprise, and the midwives, the placenta more or less fell out just a few minutes later – it had taken about 30 minutes with Edie and more than an hour with Rosie. I had planned to try for a Lotus Birth, but after holding the placenta and Sam for an hour, I had pins and needles in my arms and legs and decided that it was just going to be too much weight to carry!! The cord was completely white once it was finally cut and it seemed like a good compromise.

A magical birth experience. I had no tearing and my recovery was considerably quicker than with the girls – given the size of Sam, I can only assume that the HypnoBirthing made all the difference. Unbeknown to me, my husband videoed the last 20 minutes and I hardly recognised myself when I watched it back. I’m smiling and quiet, and clearly very comfortable and relaxed. The other thing I forgot to mention is that Sam was born on the 26th. I’m hopeless at remembering birthdays, but my birthday is the 26th as is Rosie’s and I wonder if subconsciously that was another part of his birth that I had decided on.