After an uncomfortable day on Tuesday I knew something was going to happen so I rang my parents, who live in Te Puke, to come over to stay in Hamilton. They arrived Tuesday night and we all went to bed early in case tomorrow was the day.

Wednesday at 2.45am I had to go to the bathroom and then told my partner to start to fill up the Electra pool as I just had my show. He woke my mother up and then we set up the lounge ready for the homebirth I had waited so long for. Inflating and filling up the pool took about 20 minutes so we then just had to wait. And man did we wait. My contractions were coming and going so at about 1pm after nothing was happening we decided to ring my midwife who came over for a look. I was 5cm dilated and she then decided to ring the support midwife. They set up all their equipment and again we waited.

My midwife had to keep telling me to concentrate so I keep walking around waiting for the next contraction to come and breathe through it. My first child’s labour was sore but these felt like an itchy back so it was hard to believe that I was in labour, so concentrating was a little bit hard for me.

My midwives decided to break my waters to help bring on the REAL labour which it did. At 4.30pm I decided to hop into the pool and concentrated a bit more on the labour. My son was playing in the room with his koro while I was in the pool. It was great being in the pool, the warmth of the water and the comfort of the pool. We ran out of hot water but had pots on the stove just in case we needed them, which we did.

I remember when I had my fist child in a spa pool at the birthing centre. Every time I leant back and rested on the side of the spa I had a sore neck and head, but in this birthing pool it was like having a soft pillow behind your head. The edge was soft and comfortable. I liked being on my knees during the contractions and it was great not having sore knees as the bottom of the pool was soft. After two hard contractions the head popped out and of course no one was ready to catch the head, lucky they told me to stop pushing. I then pushed one more time and out popped my little girl into the hands of her daddy. Simone Kahurangi Williams was born 23 July at 5.15pm weighing 7lb 12oz.

It was an amazing birth and if anyone asked my advice about a homebirth I would say “definitely have one”. The birth of my little girl was so relaxing and comfortable, even my son was proud of his mummy as he thought it was Christmas.