Birth Doesn't Go To Plan

Postpartum Diaries - Entry #3 - Our Birth Story

For the birth story only, skip down to the second heading “The birth of my second daughter.”

Preparing for birth

It is much more common to hear the stories of birth not going the way people have wanted than it is to hear of a birth going ‘to plan’.

I was well aware of this during my second pregnancy, having experienced a completely unexpected, but welcomed series of events in my first birth: an unplanned home birth.

So I decided that I wasn’t going to plan my second birth. I was going to make decisions and have some preferences, sure, but the overarching preparation for my birth was going to be based on intention.

Intention has become somewhat of a staple in my life, particularly since training in and practicing somatic therapy. Intention is all about where you place your energy, and I have come to see it as a pretty sure fire way to support the direction of life force or creation.

I experienced this profoundly this year whilst “planning” for our wedding. We decided in December 2025 to have a May 2026 wedding. 4-months to plan. Something that would make many people shudder. But the intentions were clear from the beginning:

• If we were presented with blockages, we would not move forward with the wedding this year.

• To feel ease in preparing for the wedding - we were not willing to continue rewriting the story of weddings having to be stressful to organise.

• For the whole event to be pleasurable, for us and our guests.

These three conditions / intentions acted as our north star and resulted in a wedding that was so us; so pleasurable, and genuinely pretty easy and enjoyable to plan. We were also never blocked, despite the quick turn around, and managed to have the most wonderful venue and suppliers to support us on this special day.

After the wedding we went away and it was then that it dawned on me that I was going to be giving birth within the following 2-months.

I remember feeling like I wanted to be as clear in my intentions for birth as I was for the wedding because the effect of the intention setting truly felt like magic in that experience. Setting intentions for my birth was something I initially struggled with because despite the work I’ve done, both within myself and with other women, and having given birth before I still carried fear around childbirth. Fears about it not going my way, and the potential for disappointment, plus the reasons why that might happen.

Exploring those fears actually helped me create my intentions, because it brought to the surface the most important truth: we cannot control our birth. It is a dance between a minimum of two humans, we are not the only one in the driver’s seat - and even if we were, it is not ‘us’ in terms of our consciousness, it is our body. Though the two are connected. Taking care of my conscious and sub-conscious beliefs around birth was as important as coming into trust of my body for birth to unfold with real surrender. Which is what I wanted.

I realised that while I'd probably be disappointed if some of the physical elements of my birth - giving birth at home, for instance - didn't happen, holding onto those material wants wasn't what really mattered to me.

What was really important was that throughout the remainder of my pregnancy and then my birth I remained in connection to and in attunement with myself - my body.

My sole intention for my birth was: to stay connected with and listening to my body.

I did not want to be so attached to any material plan that I ignored my body.

That said, I still took action toward the material things that mattered to me. I registered with a home birth team and was clear about my desire for a home birth. I hired a doula who regularly supports home births and shares my trust in birth physiology. My husband and I prepared for a home birth together, and I engaged as little as possible with the “what ifs” of other scenarios. I did take the responsible step of arranging back-up childcare in case we needed to transfer for some emergency reason - but beyond that, I never packed a hospital bag, and gave as little energy as possible to alternatives to what I wanted.

Controlling the controllable.

I was intentional and conscious in my choice of home birth team. I chose a team who I knew were better staffed than the other options available to me, and who had a reputation for trusting physiology as well. Living in London I had choices like this available to me.

I did the mindset work around my birth fears, using visualisation to focus on the outcome of my birth which, when I let it emerge organically from my body, was an image of myself, my husband, and my daughter sitting on the sofa with a just-born baby. I was never able to visualise the birth, only the outcome, so I worked with that. I didn’t force a visual that didn’t organically emerge from my body and feel authentic.

In short: I wasn’t shy about preparing for the material birth I wanted, while still holding it all as lightly as I could.

The birth of my second daughter.

For a little context: my first birth was quick, especially for a first birth. I felt my first contraction around 9pm, waking up at 11pm with regular contractions and giving birth just under 5-hours later (with a trip to triage in the middle).

I didn’t hold an expectation that my second would be quick, in fact I probably swung the other way and tried to hold as little expectation as possible in case this birth was completely different.

I woke up on the morning of the 5th July, I was 41-weeks pregnant, and my first thought was “another day we’re not having a baby”. I never imagined I would birth during the day so every night that went by was one without going into labour.

7am - I went to the loo and did a wee that felt uncomfortable because I thought the baby was moving further down into my pelvis. I got back into bed and again felt the baby move into an uncomfortable position, I moved myself over and snuggled with my 4-year old who had come in. I felt this uncomfortable ‘movement’ again and only then clocked that the discomfort was lasting longer than it normally would for a baby movement.

Could I be having contractions? Now at 7am? I watched my body and felt another two of these sensations before I said to my husband “I think I am having contractions, I’ll keep watching and see what happens”.

7.30am - My husband had planned to go to the sauna that morning and asked if that might still be possible, we decided we’d give in an hour to find out.

8am - I messaged my doula that I was having very manageable contractions 6-10 mins apart.

8.30am - I confirmed with my husband that the sauna wasn’t happening - intensity was increasing - and got to work changing the sheets and rearranging our whole living room the way I wanted it for the birth. The pre-birth eustress, or adrenalised nesting instinct, had kicked in hard. As it turned out, I wouldn’t spend another moment labouring or birthing in that room I’d just hoovered and mopped.

9am - I tried to rest, lying on the bed and breathing through contractions. Feeling unsure, I called my doula asking when I should ask her to come. She reassured me that I would know when and asked me how it would feel if she came now, to which I said “weird”.

My daughter (4yr old) was desperate to fill up the pool. I said let’s wait until things feel more certain, still having no expectation that this labour would be quick.

Every contraction that came, I connected with. I imagined my body opening. They weren’t pleasurable, but I didn’t try to disconnect from them - instead, I leaned in and stayed with the felt experience of my body working and opening.

10.20am - My husband offered to take my daughter to the local shops to buy some fruit (as per my birth plan). I agreed. They were out of the house for about 1-minute before I had a very intense contraction which made me realise I needed support in the house. I phoned my husband and told him to turn around and come home.

10.25am - They arrived home. I told my daughter she could fill the pool. Every time a contraction came, I called my husband into the bedroom for counter-pressure and support, then he’d pop to the living room next door to help with the pool.

I started reading the labour letters I had asked friends and family to write to me to encourage me in the throes of labour. I really needed them and they helped greatly - in fact they were really the only ‘tool’ I used during my labour. They reminded me that I could do it, and my body knew what I was doing. They showered me with the love I needed. I read them slowly, spacing them out so as to have them support me for as long as possible. I only ever got to read 4 out of 10, I was in such denial of the speed of this birth.

10.50am - I called my doula. “I feel sick, I need you here now”, “I’m on my way” - that was the entire conversation. It turns out I did know exactly when to call.

11.10am ish - Things were ramping up in intensity and my husband and I gave each other a knowing look. We knew we would be meeting our baby soon. I was also making a lot of noise and honestly, feeling a little self conscious. Our bedroom window was wide open because it was warm and we live in a maisonnette, closely connected to the other houses around us. Later my neighbour told me she hadn’t heard a thing, which I was quite surprised about.

11.15am ish - My doula arrived. I had a little cry. She asked me if I had a tens machine, I gave her a puzzled look - I didn’t have one and nor did I think it would help at this stage - of course she had no idea how close I was to giving birth. On the next contraction, she invited me to take my dungarees off. I told her I was having a pushing sensation. “Okay,” she said, “listen to that.”

She asked my husband if the midwives had been informed - no, I had chosen not to call them as I didn’t necessarily want them to come before the birth. He called them to update them on what was happening.

11.20am - My doula invited me to get closer to the floor as I noised my way through intense contractions. I got on one knee with one knee up, which felt like a total relief and a change from the standing position I had established to ride the intensity of my contractions. I had a moment of pause and clarity as my doula worked to make me comfortable with a yoga mat, pillow, and towels around me.

11.25am - The next contraction came, and I could feel my body opening, I wondered how long this downward phase would be. However, it never stopped. In one contraction my body kept on opening, as my baby moved down and out of my body; born into my pants before finding her way through the leg hole and down onto the floor.

11.26am - My doula called my husband in from the next room where he was busy with his pool / parenting duties - we had a baby! I asked everyone to leave her where she was for a moment while I caught my breath, relieved she was here, delighted by her slightly shocked cries from landing on the yoga mat.

I knelt with her on the floor for a while before needing more comfort, then moved onto the bed with her in my arms, feeding her when she was ready. Our older daughter, meanwhile, kept filling the nowhere-near-full pool so she could have her play.

The midwives arrived about an hour later and later supported me to birth my placenta when I was ready.

Much of the rest of the afternoon unfolded exactly as I’d visualised - the four of us on the sofa. Our midwives and doula tidied around us, made me food, and checked in periodically. After hearing the news, my parents also came and sat with us for a short while that afternoon.

It was genuinely a blissful start to this new chapter of our lives and the smoothest integration into life as a family of four. My intentions had served me - I stayed connected to and trusting of my body’s sensations and knowing, and everyone arrived exactly when I needed them, fulfilling their roles perfectly.

If I were asked whether birth went to plan, my honest answer would be: I didn’t have a plan - but if I had, this would have been it. It wasn’t perfect. There are small things I’d rewrite with a magic pen if I could. And maybe that’s the truest thing about life. In every experience, there’s something to learn - and birth is no different.

The whole experience showed me the potency and power in being attuned to myself, and that I really will know what I need when the moments come.

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When I am not in the throes of post-partum, I am supporting women and mothers come into greater attunement and trust of their felt sense and inner knowing. Subscribe for regular writing about living in alignment with ourselves, through all that motherhood and life brings.