I'd been having light, regular contractions every evening for about a week before she actually arrived. Every night after I climbed into bed, they stopped. Christmas Eve morning, I woke up and had lost my mucous plug. We had a busy day planned, full of lots of Christmas activities, however I felt strange / weak whilst trying to decorate the gingerbread house with the boys and had to lay down on the sofa for a while.
After about an hour, I felt fine and carried on with the rest of the day. Organising gifts and delivering presents to family. After putting the boys to bed, we sorted out the presents and put on our favourite Christmas film - it's a wonderful life!
Once again, the contractions started but I assumed they would stop again once we went to bed. We stopped the film halfway as I couldn't concentrate and climbed into bed around 10pm. I could not get comfortable. The contractions continued mildly but only once every 20 minutes or so. I tossed and turned for hours, telling myself that I was just excited for Christmas morning with the boys. Around 2 am, Nova woke asking for a drink of water. I got him back to sleep and went for a wee. I was bored of laying in bed not sleeping so went downstairs and got a drink of water for myself. While standing in the kitchen, the contractions had started to come between 5 and 10 minutes apart, although they were only slightly uncomfortable and not painful.
I had left Luke asleep in bed, learning my lesson from my first labour that it was best if one of us was well rested. I text him from downstairs around 4.30am saying 'it's starting to hurt now'. I stayed moved back upstairs around 5.30am, knowing the boys would be awake soon and not wanting to ruin the Christmas surprise. They woke about 15 minutes later and we all went downstairs to see that Santa had been and delivered lots of gifts!
For the next couple of hours, my contractions were coming around 10 minutes apart - I was completely fine for the ten minutes between each one. This meant I got to watch the boys open their gifts - only occasionally walking to focus on my breathing.
Around 7.45am, the pains ramped up and I could feel my hips and pelvis widening. I ran myself a bath and that really helped. Whilst in the bath, the contractions got much more intense but I only had a couple the whole 45 minutes I was in there. I stayed in until about 8.30. Whilst in the bath, I was texting Olivia - she was meant to be coming to photograph my birth and luckily still wanted to come despite it being Christmas morning. I also FaceTimed my mum to let her know that we wouldn't be visiting this morning as the baby was coming.
I got out of the bath because I needed the toilet, and after about 10 minutes of walking around the upstairs of our house (literally a corridor) everything intensified. I tried to have some toast but it made me feel sick. I spent the last park of my labour sat on the toilet. It was the only place where the pain felt manageable thanks to the position of my hips. I can see why some women opt for a birthing stool and maybe next time would get one.
Luke and Olivia were trying to coax me out of the tiny bathroom and into our bedroom where they'd set it up all lovely with candles and birth affirmations. Looking back, I was obviously in transition at this point. I was panicking that I was going to poo myself and while I know that it's completely fine and a normal thing, at the time it was all I could think about. Along with the ought that I was going to split in half! Eventually I'd had enough of Luke and Olivia trying to get me off of the toilet and shouted at them (with a few expletives) to get out. They left and I got up to slam the door behind them.
As the door slammed, my waters broke and I shouted them both "I'm sorry, come back I need you - the baby is coming!" I knelt down on the floor and asked Luke to put a towel down between my legs.
I felt her head enter the birth canal, move down and come out all in one involuntary push from my body. I reached down and felt her head. It felt huge. I said to Olivia "this head is huge, it must be attached to a giant".
About 30 seconds passed, I felt her wiggle inside me and then the rest of her body was born onto the towel underneath me. Luke was sat behind me on the toilet, but our bathroom is so small that he couldn't get a grip of her to pass to me, especially as she was so slippy. Olivia helped in the end, scooping her up with the towel she had been born onto and passing her through to me. After some slight shuffling and rearranging, I sat back and placed her onto my chest. She cried straight away and was perfect. I had 'known' from the start that we were having a daughter but we checked to make sure.
With a lot of help getting up onto my feet from Luke, we moved into the bedroom. My afterbirth pains started straight away and they were so much more painful that I was expecting. I changed positions a few times to try and get more comfortable for the first feed with Raya but couldn't find any relief. We waited for about 45 minutes until her cord had gone white and limp and tied and cut the cord. I had been planning on waiting to after the placenta had been birthed before cutting the cord but was in too much pain to wait. After I'd cut the cord, I handed her to Luke to took over skin to skin while I focused on getting the placenta out. I went and sat over a bowl in the toilet and it came out with a small push after about 5 minutes. It came out whole and perfectly neat in it's sac.
I went back to bed, and settled into my first feed with my sweet daughter.
Luke called the midwives after a couple of hours as we wanted someone to come out to visit us, weigh Raya and complete a notification of live birth for us.
This was the part I was feeling the most anxious about, expecting some judgement and hostility from whoever turned up about free birthing. However the midwife that arrived was lovely. She wasn't judgemental at all and was very friendly while filling out the forms.
Raya weighed 8lb exactly.