Birth Story Series: My third birth - 2026, part 3
As time passed, with one contraction after another, I started to feel like I should be seeing more results for the amount of effort I was putting in! The pushing phase with my first labour had been under 1.5 hours, and less than 30 minutes with my second, so I had kind of expected not more than half an hour or so this time. After a while Haylie suggested I could try moving into a lunge position…
Birth Story Series: My third birth - 2026, part 2
As Haylie was leaving home at 2:40 she messaged me to ask if contractions had started getting closer together, as she was trying to decide whether to call the second midwife yet or not. At that stage I told her they were mostly 3.5-4 minutes apart and lasting 50-70 seconds, although I had just had a spacing of 5 minutes, so there was still definitely some variation and irregularity. Dilation is rarely a perfectly linear process!
Birth Story Series: My third birth - 2026, part 1
At the end of pregnancy you just take one day at a time. Always knowing the birth could be any time, but also that you may still have a while to wait. That was how it was this time, in my longest pregnancy to date. But the day always comes in the end!
Birth Story Series: My first birth - 2022, part 1
Setting the scene: My husband Simone and I live in the Italian countryside. I had support from a private midwife, Marianna, through my pregnancy with the goal of having a homebirth.
I was nearly 40 weeks pregnant, and one night I woke up at 1:30am to pee. I have no idea if I’d been dreaming, but I just had the clear thought in my head for no apparent reason “I’m going to go into labour today” (only I thought it in Italian, not English). I went back to bed and back to sleep.
23 Weeks Pregnant - birth reflexes, aka, your body knows when to push!
I listen to The Great Birth Rebellion podcast regularly, and this week I listened to an episode I’d missed on birth reflexes. That was really fascinating, hearing the explanations and comparing with my experiences with my first two births.