Grace – Two births, midwifery care, induction, homebirth, physiological birth, fetal ejection reflex

Grace describes her approach to conception as almost scientific. “I sort of approached going into motherhood the same way [as planning a holiday],” she explains. “I was treating my body like a science experiment with the ovulation tests and following all the signs, the temperature, basal tracking. I found it fascinating. It’s obviously not the most romantic approach to conceiving, but it worked for us.”

Inspired by conversations with a doula friend, Grace began researching birth options long before conceiving. “It kind of seemed obvious to me that homebirth, if you were a well healthy woman and you didn’t have any risk factors, would be what I’d like to go with, that would feel like the safest option for me.” She hired a private midwife for around $6,000 and prepared thoroughly, completing the Calm Birth course and attending women’s circles for emotional support during Covid lockdowns.

Her pregnancy progressed smoothly until a routine post-dates scan at 41 weeks changed everything. “The waters, there wasn’t enough amniotic fluid,” Grace recalls being told. With her midwife unable to attend the hospital birth due to Covid restrictions, Grace felt she had no choice but to accept induction: “She just said, no, that’s it. And so I had to get induced the following day.”

The induction was intense. “The back labour with Frankie was really intense and painful,” Grace remembers. After hours of contractions and only four centimetres dilated, she nearly requested an epidural until repositioning onto her side with gas changed everything. “I just remember breathing in and I hadn’t planned that sort of mantra but all of a sudden in my mind I was saying like breathe in peace and then breathe out fear.”

Progress accelerated rapidly from there. “I started saying, I’m doing a wee, I’m doing a wee… and then all of a sudden I was like saying, I’m pushing, I’m pushing. And then they looked and I was 10 centimetres.” Despite a fetal heart rate dip prompting suggestions of vacuum assistance and an episiotomy, Grace’s body took over: “As they were trying to put the vacuum off, it kept falling off… it was like my body was saying like, no, we don’t need this.” She pushed Frankie out before the episiotomy discussion even concluded.

Reflecting on the experience, Grace credits midwife and author Dr Rachel Reed’s book Childbirth: A Rite of Passage for reframing her understanding: “Babies go through physiological distress to some degree in a healthy way because babies’ systems need to jumpstart into life, not in the womb.” She adds, “I think there needs to just be more trust in birth and bodies.”

Grace experienced a 750ml postpartum haemorrhage but recovered well. Breastfeeding proved challenging initially due to inverted nipples, though a nipple shield helped once home. She breastfed Frankie until she was two years and nine months old, deliberately spacing her children by three and a half years: “I saw how emotionally and physically challenging that was” for friends with children closer in age.

For her second pregnancy with William, Grace returned to homebirth planning with renewed clarity. Her new midwife, Louise, validated her earlier experience: “If it had been me, you could have had another scan the following day, or we could have gone to the hospital to get some monitoring and see how the baby’s going.” This conversation, Grace says, “made me feel really comfortable with her.”

This pregnancy brought its own challenges, including pelvic girdle pain that led Grace to seek internal pelvic floor release therapy. “It’s like how you do when you have a muscle knot in your shoulder and then she would press it and then it would release,” she explains of the treatment, which also revealed she had “a very cavernous pelvis,” plenty of room for baby.

Going past her due date tested Grace’s resolve despite her research into post-dates safety via podcasts like The Great Birth Rebellion. “It was still really hard emotionally to go overdue,” she admits, particularly fielding constant enquiries from acquaintances. Multiple stretch and sweeps brought gradual progress, with her midwife eventually declaring, “This is it, no more” after reaching six to seven centimetres dilation during a routine check.

Labour began properly at 11:26pm following a tender bedtime with Frankie. What followed was remarkably fast and instinctive. Feeling pressure on the toilet, Grace suddenly recognised “that unmistakable feeling of like, that’s a skull.” Her daughter Frankie, woken by the noise, wandered in mid-contraction: “She clings to my leg and Jake has to switch into happy dad mode.” Moving to the bed on all fours, Grace experienced what she describes as the fetal ejection reflex: “I don’t think I had a single thought. It was just like complete animal.” William was born at home just nine minutes after the couple first messaged their midwife, arriving before she could even reach the house.

“It’s this moment of like, birth can be so ordinary, but also like sacred,” Grace reflects, describing how Frankie watched Frozen 2 in the next room while she had her first breastfeed. Remarkably, despite the speed of the birth, Grace required no stitches.

Grace’s story beautifully illustrates how informed choice, continuity of trusted care, and the confidence gained from a previous birth can transform a woman’s experience, turning a loss of autonomy into a profound trust in her body’s innate wisdom.