Katie, Phil and baby Elliott

Katie chose to have an independent midwife because she had a really positive homebirth with her first little boy, with one-to-one midwives and wanted to make sure that she would be able to have a homebirth with her second child also. 

 

 

Katie had a lovely straightforward pregnancy until she reached 33 weeks . Katie had a small amount of pink discharge in the morning and messaged to check that it wasn't anything to be worried about.

We decided to keep a close eye on it and see if it settled as the day progressed. By the afternoon Katie felt concerned that the baby wasn't moving as much as usual, so headed to the hospital to check that he was ok.

At the hospital everything seemed to be fine, but the ultrasound scan showed that her cervix had become a little thinner than it should be, so the doctors asked Katie to spend the night in hospital.

 

At 11:40pm Katie's membranes released and she started to feel strong surges. The baby was breech (bottom coming first)  and Katie thought that she would be having a caesarean section. However, baby Elliott had other plans and quickly made an appearance the old fashioned way at around 2am. Elliott was the first baby born with My Independent Midwife and unfortunately the insurance was not in place to allow us to be at his birth (it was established just 1 week later). Katie and Phil report that the hypnobirthing was really helpful in enabling them to make decisions and stay calm during Elliott's birth.  

Jenny continued to support Katie with expressing and establishing breastfeeding both at the hospital and once Katie was discharged. Katie found that the hypnobirthing techniques also helped a lot when she was expressing milk for Elliott. Elliott made fantastic progress and was discharged, breastfeeding, at two and a half weeks old. 

 

A message from Katie .......

 
 

Really wonderful support in the run up to birth. Tailored to our needs given we already had one child. Jenny is clearly incredibly knowledgeable and was able to share this with us through home visits at times to suit us. Unfortunately we couldn't use Jenny and Sarah to support the home birth we had wanted due to our baby being premature but Jenny's support with breastfeeding in the early days was invaluable.