A free birth is one without medical assistance. For us, that meant no scans, no doctors and 58 hours of labour in our lounge: just me, my husband, Flynn, and our friend Claire.
I’m 32 and a yoga teacher, so yoga and mindfulness have allowed me to understand and trust my body. I’m also practical. I looked at all the things that could go wrong, then all the things that could go right – and chose positivity. I fell pregnant with our little girl, Fox, in May 2016.
At the beginning, I went to the GP but it wasn’t empowering. She described pregnancy as a “conveyor belt”. We attended our first midwife appointment but found ourselves questioning a lot of protocol, like getting flu jabs and booking scans. We moved house towards the end of my first trimester and I met the new midwife at the hospital but, again, it felt flat: no joy, nothing to celebrate this extraordinary experience. I told her we didn’t want scans, and she told us all these scary things: you could die; your baby could die. But we asked for the stats and the chances were that wasn’t going to happen. I cried in the street – why would she want to make me question my own body? – and that’s when I made up my mind.
We never extricated ourselves from the system; we just didn’t go for check-ups or scans. I recognised that things could go wrong and I might have changed my mind. I wasn’t foolish.
During the pregnancy, I spent time connecting with my baby every day. From 16 weeks, I felt her moving and Flynn learned to find her heartbeat with his ear.
I didn’t have the mental space to be challenged so I talked only to four close friends about it. We told our parents. It was hard for my mum.
There was one midwife in the system who was OK with us; I think the rest were afraid. She would call when we were due an appointment and I’d say, “No thanks, we’re fine.” But my pregnancy wasn’t a cakewalk. At times I questioned what I’d done.
Labour started at 7pm on the Friday and Fox arrived at 1am on Monday 20 February 2017. That weekend was wild and exhausting. I used yoga, meditation, chanting and watched hypnobirthing tutorials on YouTube on the Saturday night. By Sunday, I was weak. That’s the only time we called the midwife. She came over twice, checked me, and both times said, “Keep going”, and left.
I chose never to use the word “pain” but “sensation”. If I had let my mind take me to a place of pain I think I’d have lost my shit.
My water broke at 10pm on Sunday. Flynn and Claire thought it was hilarious that I blow-dried my hair; I wanted to look good for my baby girl.
By now, I was making primal noises and I couldn’t get any respite from the pain. As the birth approached, I took myself and Flynn to the darkness of the bathroom. I crouched and entered this wave of sensation, and she came so quickly; just flipped out like a fish. I thought she would be calm but her cry was loud. She was so slippery – between four hands we could barely catch her but, together, we did and laid her on my thighs, then I fed her. It was both heart- and mind-blowing. I felt like a warrior woman.
We waited two hours until the cord stopped pulsing, then Flynn cut it with a scalpel. Afterwards, when I was confident enough to share, I put pictures of labour and the placenta on my Instagram page which I describe as radicalising motherhood; encouraging other women to own their journeys.
A midwife came the next day and weighed and measured her. I’m OK with that; it was fun. She’s already had eye drops, so I’m not against giving her medicine.
If we had the money, we might have hired a private midwife who could support us without being constrained by the system, but I’d do everything the same way again. My mum says what I accomplished was miraculous. To me, it felt like the only way; the way women always did it and many cultures still do. We call it free birth, but other women just call it birth.
• As told to Deborah Linton
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