The Birth Story Of Elke Anne

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As I look through our birth photos, I feel an abundance of emotions bubble through me... 

I feel proud for bringing our second baby into our world in an empowered home birth, with no intervention or pain relief. 

I feel a level of relief that everything played out as we wished & manifested. Particularly with having our 3.5 year old present.

I am grateful for the wonderful support around me during & post birth and in awe of the way our baby entered our world (on the powerful date of 22 01 22).

Of course, I also have a heart bursting with love for our little angel & how I am now a Mumma of 2 beautiful girls.

Yes, we had a baby GIRL, who we named Elke Anne (Anne being me & my Mums middle name). Elke was born into the water at 8.55am on 22 01 22, weighing 8 pound 9 oz.

After receiving many questions across on my @glowingMumma.thrivingbubba insta, here is the birth story of Elke Anne...

My Wishes

I was really clear with my midwives well in advance to labour and in my birth preferences) that I wanted a hands off labour, quiet, dark environment and particularly didn’t want any “pushing” coaching.

I really wanted to use hypnobirthing breathing techniques, listen to my body and allow me to breathe my baby down with each surge. This was something I didn’t get to experience with my first birth (instead I was pushing on and off for 2 hours). So this time I wanted this opportunity with the help of the water.

How it all unfolded..

The day of the 21st Jan (Friday) we both really had a feeling that it was all going to unfold that night. I was 41 weeks and had just seen my midwife that morning & bubs had moved further down from last appointment. I’d also had a slight loss of a mucous plug a few days before, which continued over the days leading up to labour.

I’d deliberately wanted to push out our daughters bedtime as she does now tend to sleep in if she goes to bed later. As we were playing our pre-bed game of Bluey Bingo, I began getting some light surges around 8.30pm. So I was confident tonight was the night. While reading to Amelia, I continued to experience slight surges every 10 minutes. 

Once Amelia was asleep, I massaged all the acupressure points to help bring on labour and rubbed diluted clary sage all over, read for a bit to unwind (as naturally I was really excited) and drifted off to sleep around 10.30pm.

I woke around 11.50pm to a slightly stronger surge and they continued every 10-15 minutes. I gave my midwives a call to let them know things had started, began recording the surges properly on my contractions app and hooked myself up to the TENS machine while laying over my exercise ball for some rest inbetween. I also started massaging on my pain relief oils blend to my belly, which I did a few times while out of the birth pool. Note: this recipe is available in Path To Glowing Mumma. 

I left hubby asleep as there was nothing he needed to do at this stage & I know how important rest is before the real action begins.

Around 2am surges had regularly been 4 minutes apart so I called the midwives back, they decided it was time to come around and I woke up Tom to get the birth pool ready (he’d already pumped it up a couple of days before & had everything ready with the hose to fill it up straight from the tap). 

Our main midwife Belinda arrived first at 3am and I first had to perform a COVID RAT test, which come up negative. Technically if I was to test positive, we still would have had the same suppprt at home but it was a check incase I needed to be transferred to hospital. 

Belinda mentioned the pool was a bit hot, so I continued to use the TENS machine for maybe another 30 minutes and then I was very ready to get into the pool. It was so soothing and initially I noticed a real decrease in the intensity of surges but they did drop off again too - this could have been the water or the fact the second midwife arrived in this time and I could hear them as they got everything set up (oxygen etc). 

Surges continued to remain around 3-4 mins apart so the second midwife Heather (who only needs to be there for the actual birth) went home to wait for Belinda to call her back when she thought it was time. 

Listen In To The Full Birth Story Journey

Tune into the full episode above or search 'Glowing Mumma Thriving Bubba' on your fav podcast app. 

Plus you can catch all the birth images and bubba spam across on my @glowingmumma.thrivingbubba insta feed.