I don’t usually write about my own births. Most of the time my job is to hold space for someone else’s story. But this one keeps coming up in conversations with the women I support, especially those preparing for a second or third birth, so I want to share it. Not as a model. Not as an “ideal.” Just as one woman’s experience.
This is the story of Nora, my third baby, born on the morning of June 23rd, 2022.
The pregnancy
Nora’s pregnancy was the first one that came on its own. My first two children were conceived through assisted reproduction, so this was a very different starting point. There were no transfer dates. The pregnancy just appeared, and I had nine months to get used to it.
It was a calm pregnancy. It was also a tired one. I was looking after a two-year-old and a four-year-old, and there were many days when I didn’t have much time or energy to pay attention to what was happening inside me. I trusted that my body knew what it was doing, and I focused on the other two when I needed to.
I prepared for the birth with hypnobirthing, just as I had done with my second. By that point the audios were familiar, almost automatic.
A week-34 false alarm
At week 34, I had irregular contractions for several hours. I went to be checked because I wasn’t sure. The contractions were there, but they weren’t effective. After a few hours, they stopped, and I went home. I mention this because it’s a useful reminder: contractions don’t always mean what we think they mean, and going in to be checked is not a failure. It’s information.
The first signs
At week 38 + 2 days, on a Monday, I started losing some of my mucus plug. There were a few threads of blood. Nothing dramatic, no contractions, no other signs. I carried on with my normal life.
Two nights later, around 1 a.m. on Thursday, I started feeling small contractions. They weren’t painful. They were more like a sensation that something was beginning. I put on my hypnobirthing audios and tried to keep sleeping, but I felt every contraction.
I texted my mother, who lives in Girona, about an hour away, asking her to come. I called the birth center to let them know. While I was on the phone with the midwife, I had a couple of contractions. She listened to how I was breathing through them. That was useful for her too: it gave her information about where I was in the process. She told me I had time, but to come if I felt I should. I said okay. She said she would start filling the birth pool for when I arrived.
I hadn’t told my partner yet. I went back to bed, woke him up, told him my mother was on her way and that I had called the birth center, and put the audios back on.
When the rhythm shifted
When my mother arrived, about an hour later, I got out of bed to get ready to leave. As soon as I was on my feet, the contractions became much more intense. I had to stop for each one, breathe through it, and let sounds come out. Not because I’d decided to. Because they needed to come out.
I walked to the car stopping at every contraction. The drive was about half an hour. I spent the whole journey on my knees on the seat, fully vertical. During the drive I noticed that the contractions had changed. They didn’t feel the same anymore. I could feel that Nora was getting closer.
I had a sense, hard to put into words, that I was holding her in. That I didn’t want her to be born in the car, and somehow my body was waiting.
By that point I couldn’t do anything between contractions. They came one after another, almost like one long contraction. The sounds coming out of me were guttural. There was a feeling of something unstoppable, and at the same time I knew I couldn’t fully let go yet, because I wasn’t in a safe place. I had a TENS machine on, and I was switching modes with every contraction, though by then I could barely tell when one began and the next one ended.
Arriving
We pulled up to the birth center. My partner started to look for parking. I told him that if he did that, Nora would be born in the car, and to please leave it at the door however he could. He did.
I don’t quite know how I got up the stairs and along the short corridor to the birth room. The room was warm and cozy, with a double bed on one side and a birth pool in the middle. It was summer, and I was still in my pyjamas. I hadn’t even thought about changing before leaving the house.
I got onto the floor on hands and knees, with my head resting on the bed.
The midwife came in. I took off the bottoms. She told me to try to breathe, that Nora was already coming. She placed warm gauze on my perineum. With the next contraction, Nora’s head came out. I breathed. With the contraction after that, the rest of her body came out. Slippery, easy. I felt a release, and then a happiness that’s hard to describe in words that don’t sound exaggerated.
The midwife passed Nora through under my legs so I could pick her up. I put her on my chest. It was 4:17 a.m. on June 23rd, 2022.
We had walked through the door of the birth center at 4 a.m.
After Nora was born
I sat on the floor for a moment, taking in what had just happened. Then I sat on the bed, no clothes, Nora on my chest, in a state I can only describe as complete elation.
The placenta was still inside, and Nora was still connected to me by the umbilical cord. After a while, I got up to go to the bathroom, hoping a vertical position would help the placenta come out. I sat on the toilet. The midwife placed a basin underneath, and sat next to me. In the dark, in that small, quiet space, I felt a soft contraction, and the placenta came out. I cried. It was an emotion I hadn’t expected.
We went back to the bed, Nora at my chest, placenta in the basin, the cord completely white but still attached to her. We did the first breastfeed. We rested. The midwives checked me later and told me I had a small tear that didn’t need stitches.
We ate something. We rested for a few hours. Six hours after Nora was born, we were back home, introducing her to her brother and sister.
What I take from this birth
I want to be careful here, because I know how easy it is, when you’ve had a smooth birth, to write a story that sounds like a recipe. This birth was beautiful, intense, and quick. Not because I did everything right. My other births had different rhythms and different challenges. There is no formula.
But there are a few things I do take from this one, and I think they’re worth saying clearly.
I prepared with hypnobirthing for the second time, and the preparation was there in the background even on the days when I didn’t have time to actively engage with it. Hypnobirthing isn’t about doing exercises. It’s about building a mental and physical familiarity with relaxation that becomes available when you need it.
I never pushed once. Not because anyone told me not to. Because my body did the work, and I could feel that very clearly. My role was to accompany it.
I trusted the team I had chosen. The midwife on the phone, the warm gauze on the perineum, the space in the room, the fact that no one rushed me or moved me from where I had landed on the floor. All of that mattered.
And I had real support around me. My mother arrived. My partner was there. The midwife was there. I wasn’t alone.
These four things, preparation, trust in my body, trust in my team, and real support around me, are the same four things I try to offer the women I now accompany as a doula. Not a guarantee that their birth will look anything like Nora’s. Just the conditions in which their birth, whatever shape it takes, has a chance to unfold with them at the center of it.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. The shape of a birth matters less than the experience of being the protagonist of it.