Our Birth.
I
am writing to you firstly to formally thank you for all that you
did for us regarding the birth of our wonderful son. Secondly,
you will find an account below which you may find useful to add
to your already large collection of documentation, which describes
the process through the father's eyes.
Long
before my wife was pregnant, she decided that she, like her
mother and sister, wanted a home confinement water birth. As the
father I initially didn't care how the little one came into the
world as long as bothmy wife and the baby were healthy, but am now
a total home birth convert. Upon becoming pregnant and being allocated
an NHS community midwife,my wife and I stated at the earliest possible
opportunity that this is what we would like, and for the first
seven months of the pregnancy, the midwife appeared to agree,
although never committed beyond the comment " we'll cross
that bridge when we come to it".
At
approx. seven months we started to encounter opposition to the
water birth and were told on many occasion that our baby looked
too large to be delivered normally. This escalated over a couple
of weeks, with us having to attend a sizing scan and despite that
showing that the baby was on the large side of average our midwife
gave us an unarranged visit and booked us, without permission,
for a meeting with the Consultant, "for her to decide whether
we could have our baby at home", and to have a baby by Caesarean
section " the proper way".
We
objected strongly to this unauthorised intervention, and totally
lost all faith in our midwife and the NHS. At this stage we had
a meeting with Virginia Howes from the Kent Independent Midwifery
scheme,
Despite
feeling very cynical about midwives and protective of my wife,
I was very impressed with Virginia’s knowledge and professionalism
and felt as though were we receiving informed advice not the hard
sell.
We
decided to employ their services and although we did so at a late
stage in the pregnancy, Virginia gavemy wife as close to eight months
of care in three weeks as possible. We went into labour very
early one morning and despite all her effort, for which I will
eternally admire, was transferred to hospital forty-four hours
later. Throughout her labour at home, Virginia and Kay gave my wife
a service far in excess of what I could have possibly required
and at no times have I ever felt that we were "employing" them , but that we are all very close friends. Virginia came at
a very early stage in my wife's labour and stayed throughout. At all
times she remained upbeat, professional and positive and on a
number of occasions when my wife was not progressing, remained positive
when all of us around her, particularly me were starting to feel
the strain. Although Virginia and Kay were there exclusively formy wife, I was also given a high level of support as watching my wife
in pain and having to face such disappointments was far more physically
and emotionally taxing that I had first assumed.
My wife
was transferred to hospital and from my point of view this is
where Virginia and Kay excelled. I assumed that I would be the
big, strong husband and nobody was going to bully me into making
decisions we didn't want, but I had not considered how exhausted
I would be, and despite my profession exposing me to the hospital
environment regularly, how out of my depth I would feel.
Again my wife was faced with disappointments and medical terminology outside
of my knowledge, where Virginia and Kay, who were both present
at the hospital throughout, proved invaluable. Throughout the
whole labour the key principal was informed choice and at no time
were we anything but in total control of our immediate future.
At
0644 our lovely son was born, for which Virginia was present
and again proved invaluable, requesting and supporting my wife in
her decisions and giving her as close to her dream birth as possible
(the baby going straight to my wife not the resuscitaire, not saying
the gender of the baby, no vitamin K). Virginia was also very
helpful with me in a few off the cuff baby holding lessons!
Their
prices were higher than I initially expected, however in hindsight
I can categorically state that it was a bargain, and you would
not receive the exceptional level of attention and care given
by this company anywhere else. Although we are not made of money,
we will use Virginia or Kay for our next child, regardless of
cost and I would recommend their company without hesitation.
We
are currently two weeks into the month of care given by Virginia
and I am still impressed with their level of knowledge, commitment
and total satisfaction with their work.
