Home births are nothing new. Many mothers try this birthing technique to help make themselves more comfortable or to help themselves feel more at ease during labor.
Though, it should be noted that most home births are planned. It should also be noted that most mothers who have home births aren’t typically home alone! For 36-year-old Megan Whaley, that was the case.
Luckily, Whaley is no stranger to pregnancy or labour. In fact, for the past 11 years, she’s been a labour and delivery nurse.
Whaley, who at the time was over 40 weeks pregnant, said in an interview with Today.com that she, “went into labour mode and knew what had to be done.”
Deliver own baby at home
Before she rose the occasion, Megan recalls the day playing out like any other day. She had readied her son, Jakob (12), for school, helped her 3-year-old son Deegan eat his breakfast, and wished her husband a great day at work. Around 9AM, she began to experience contractions that led her to call her husband, David, and asked him to come home.
On his way home, however, Megan’s water broke! She immediately asked him to call for an ambulance as he hurried home. As David and the ambulance rushed to the scene, Megan couldn’t wait any longer. She used her many years of medical experience and delivered her own baby at home.
Megan knew that it was time, so she rushed to the bathroom and prepared a suitable sot to birth her baby girl. She grabbed as many towels as she could, balled them up into a nest, and placed them between her legs. The idea was to keep the baby from falling to the hard ceramic tiles of the bathroom.
During this time, Whaley’s youngest son, Deegan, came into the bathroom to check on his mom.”My son went and got a juice box and put a straw in it and asked if I wanted some juice,” Megan told Today.com. “Then he asked me if I wanted to watch ‘PAW Patrol’ with him.”
As Megan was pushing out her baby, she began to notice that the body was struggling to come out. She was afraid the baby was stuck. She recalls,”I remembered thinking, ‘I’ve got to get this baby out,so I pushed as hard as I could and used my hands and just held her as she came out.”
Source: Megan Whaley
Megan and David’s baby, Emery Patrice Whaley, was born at around 10:31AM on March 21st. Megan told Today.com, “We are very blessed that everything went as smooth as it did. I realise now all the things that could have gone wrong, so it’s amazing to me that things went as well as they did.”
Megan and her daughter Patrice certainly have one of the more unique birthing tories to date. While it wasn’t an ideal birth, the Whaleys are lucky that everything went as swimmingly as it did!
READ: Renowned OB/GYN creates ultimate “birthing playlist” on Spotify
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