I have an amazing home waterbirth story I’d love to share as I always loved to read them on here as well, I’m not sure I can keep it short though😜! I had a great pregnancy, bloated a bit at the end but surprised I had nothing to complain about during the whole 9 months, I thought I would have been a nightmare once I would get pregnant but lucky for my fiance it wasn’t that bad😄

I knew from the start I wanted to use the water to relax during labor because water has always relaxed me so I tried to make relaxation my focus, but never imagined it would actually work as pain relief, it was great! I would say being on the bed to check my progress made the pain a good 20-25% worse, plus contractions would last longer and they were much more difficult to manage.. I hated it! Anyways, I was due on 10-October and it started on 9-October during the day with some mild cramps that gradually got worse during the day, but didn’t think much of it because it was very mild and I was warned it would be like hell and you would just ‘know’ it started, well I didn’t lol.. In the evening with dinner, which I still happily prepared for me and my fiance, around 7:30 I noticed the cramping was quite regular and figured hmm that’s weird for just cramps or braxton hicks so my fiancé and I agreed we should start timing my contractions. Here in the netherlands the midwife won’t come to your home unless you’ve had regular contractions around 5 minutes apart for 2 hours. So, after 2 hours of timing them they went from every 8 minutes to every 2 minutes so I was like holy crap that picked up quickly we need to call the midwife, even though I still wasn’t fully convinced this was the real deal 😂 it just wasn’t all that bad! when they came (she had an intern with her which was agreed and completely fine) and they checked me and I was already at 4cm so I was finally convinced my labor started, like holy moly this is really happening!! Anyway not sure what they do in the US but in The Netherlands its normal that they then leave and come back every 2 hours to check until they think you are close to delivery or they come back sooner if you really feel you need them to come, so they promised to come back at 00:00 as it was 22:00 at that point. They also told me I could get in my birth-bath once I felt like it so I held off for a bit because I didn’t want to get in too soon and slow things down but still ended up getting in there pretty soon after they left😆 It was amazing! It helped me relax so much, it was as if I was on some sort of high, I kept my eyes closed most of the time because I was so incredibly relaxed and just floated in the water in between contractions and when a contraction would come it was so easy to stay in control of the pain! I was like, this is ok, it’s managable! At midnight the midwife returned to check again and I was only at 5cm, which scared me because I thought it was only 1 cm progress in 2 hours time so I figured maybe I got in the water too quickly and slowed down my labor.. At that point we agreed to break my water so things would continue to progress and boy did it! Contractions picked up quite a bit again, so I couldn’t wait to get back in the water. They got worse and worse untill the whole thought of “I can do this, trust my body, blabla” just got lost on me and shouted to my fiancé and mother that I wanted to get up, get out and go to the hospital for that epidural 😂 My mom knew delivery was close at this point, here they call it the phase of desperation and know it only shows you are getting close to that 10cm and to pushing, even though I learned that several classes the thought never even occured to me at that point lol! So my mom called the midwife and told her she suspected I had progressed quite a bit and it would be good if they came and checked again. As it turned out my mom was right and I suddenly was at 9cm, at that point they needed to rushhhh and prepare lol since nobody expected it to progress thát fast not even the midwives! they tried to hide it from me but rather quickly needed to set things up for the birth of my baby girl. Meanwhile they told me I could do some ‘practice’ pushes if I felt the urge to push as they were preparing my room. Once they said that to me my whole body just switched to focus-mode and I felt a slight urge to push, which was a relief because the contractions were getting harder and harder to manage. I figured to just give a tiny practice push to see what would happen, as if I tried to push out a small fart or something lol if that makes sense, but boy what happened next really surprised me because my body had other plans then just that tiny push. That force of nature is no joke, this urge was so strong I was thinking this is crazy I might poop out my spine with this amount of force and I grunted like a bear it was insane 😅 Mind you, this was only at 02:00, only 6,5 hours later from when I first started timing contractions! With some instructions from the midwife knew I needed to quit the bear-grunting and focus all my strength on pushing (even though I was scared I would poop in the tub with these crazy pushes and ruin the clean water and still have to deliver in bed, luckily I didn’t) and with only 3 more pushes my babygirl was born from the water at 02:20 on her due date 10 October 2018! Her birth was short and sweet, I can really say I look back at my birth with a smile. It was nothing what I expected it to be like and it was really intense at some points but also really amazing!! I can recommend a waterbirth to anyone, it can truly be wonderful 🤗 though I respect any and all women who gave birth, no matter the method, place, or way of pain relief!! It something to be freaking proud of no matter what👏🏼