About
My daughter, Evie Lilia Heron, was born at home in water on Friday 4 May 2007 at 5.14am in a straight forward normal birth. At 9lbs 5.5oz she was a hec of a whopper (I'm only 5' 4") & although I found it tough, thanks to skilled midwifery & one-to-one continuity of care, I didn't even tear.
I can not thank my midwives enough & I was very lucky to be under their care - Cassy McNamara& Natasha McDonald are a midwifery dream team. I'll write up my birth story at some point & post it up, but in the meantime I shall be preoccupied with the euphoria of a newborn, sleep deprivation & sore nipples.
See you soon, Jayne Heron
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Hi. My name is Jayne & I am a television producer currently living in Glasgow with my husband, son & daughter. When I became pregnant with first child, I wanted to know every fact & detail about pregnancy & birth so that I could plan for the best outcome for myself & my child. So, I began my research - I've worked in TV for over 10 years, so thoroughly researching a topic is second nature. I put together this website in an attempt to share alot of the info I have learned over the past couple of years - friends had been amazed by things I've told them & one even said she wished I was the first one in the group to have a baby, so I could have given them all this info before they went ahead & had their nasty experiences.
The information is out there, but it's scattered & sometimes hard to find, so I hope I've done the legwork for people & collated most of the topics that women need/want to know about.
Through my research, I soon discovered that routine interventions were going to have more harmful than beneficial effects to myself & baby & that the best way to avoid them was to choose midwifery-led care & to learn techniques to cope with the pain, as opposed to trying to eliminate it.
At my 12 week booking-in appointment at the hospital, I was asked if I was wanting 'anything weird like a home birth'. As it happened, I was planning a home water birth, so 'weird' was my middle name. I was then handed over to the community midwives who worked out of the hospital & assigned a lovely midwife called Alison. Alison was fully supportive of home & water birth & came to my house for all my antenatal care - so far so good.
However, at 38 weeks, I was told by the hospital that they 'did not support water birth' - pardon? I made them write it down in a letter, so that I had 'evidence', then promptly contacted AIMS (the Association for Improvements in Maternity Services) to ask advice about what to do next. They were absolutely amazing - completely supportive & full of brilliant advice, which led me to speaking directly with a big cheese at the Nursing & Midwifery Council - the professional body that governs Midwives & their code of practice. She then promptly got on the case, which, within 2 days resulted in all 30 community midwives at my hospital being given training in how to conduct a water birth.
As it happens, I had a mammouth epic of a labour, which resulted in me completely exhausting myself - for 24 hours after my waters broke I had huge contractions every 5 minutes & the only way I could cope with them was to walk through them. For the last 6 hours at home, I couldn't even sit down because of the pressure & it felt like I'd run more marathons than Ranulph Fiennes. I eventually made the decision to transfer because I was utterly exhausted & all I wanted was some sleep - and that would only happen if I had an epidural.
In terms of coping wth the pain, I was doing a pretty good job. I took each contraction as it came, rode the wave, and came out smiling the other side. As long as I was concentrating, breathing & relaxing my body, I was getting through them fine. However, when the second midwife examined me after 15 hours of labour & told me I was still only 2 cm, I lost the plot & began crying - and in doing so my contractions became unbearably painful. But I regained control by sitting on my bean bag, listening to my hypnotherapy CD & relaxing my body - absolutely amazing.
I knew what I was doing when I made the decision to go to hospital, however, I made a huge mistake in accepting syntocin - mind you, after only 3 hours sleep in 48, we can all have errors of judgment. Big long story (aren't they always?) but it resulted in me sobbing, pleading with a Registrar not to give me a caesarean, a dangerous attempt at pushing, my baby's heart rate shooting up, a huge episitomy & because of that, a 1.5 litre blood loss. NOT the way I intended to greet my newborn. BUT, despite the drama, I actually didn't have a 'bad experience'.
Why? Because it was MY decision to transfer, MY decision to have an epidural & MY decision to accept syntocin (stupid, stupid girl). I blame myself for entering into a cascade of intervention - I knew the risks I was putting myself in, so I accepted the consequences.
With hindsight, however, I do believe I was failed by midwifery.
In the 24 hours I laboured hard at home, I was visited 3 times by midwives who gave me painful vaginal examinations & told me to take paracetemol & get on with it. With looks of pity & dismay, I was informed they couldn't do anything for me - I was dilating slowly & was in for the longhaul. My baby was lying OT (Occiput Transverse) - he'd dropped down into my pelvis nicely, but wasn't turning the 45 degrees that he needed to in order to make his exit.
But, they could have done so much more as midwives - had the system been different. I was labouring alone, apart from a lovely husband with his back rubs, but if I had had an experienced community midwife by my side throughout, I could have tried a variety of positions to get my baby turned. After each brief visit, the midwives returned to the hospital, saying they weren't allowed to stay with me until I was officially in labour - deemed by the Drs to be 3cm in dilation. Idiots (the Drs & their ridiculous rules about what is & is not labour that is, not the midwives).
From my experience & research, I strongly believe that it's only when midwifery-led care - carried out away from hospitals - becomes the norm & when you only see an Obstetrician if there are problems, that midwives will become more experienced & women will start to have better births.
We have also got to stop the universal negative attitude that birth is bad, painful & a hideous experience to undertake. It is not - It is what your body was designed to do & with the right support, techniques & help, the majority of women can get through it without a problem.
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Next time (and I hope there will be a next time) I shall be booking exactly the same again - a home water birth. But THIS time, I'll either hire a very experienced doula or an Independent Midwife, if I can afford it.
I am a member of AIMS & currently act as their Home Birth contact for Glasgow, helping women who are having trouble booking a home birth - unfortunately there are loads (please contact me via the email below if you need help in this area). Under this banner, I am also attempting to tackle the dire state of maternity services in Glasgow - they're in the dark ages up here & need a couple of rockets up their jacksies before anything is likely to change.
I really hope you find the info on this site extremely useful & I also hope you have a good birth.
Best wishes,
Jayne Heron
(or Howells if you know me professionally)
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MARCH 2006