British Birthing Stories

  Tash shares her second birth story, a precipitous NHS hospital birth that started with her waters breaking at midnight and ended just thirteen minutes after she walked through the doors. Tash is a mum of two. Her first birth with her daughter Betty was a positive NHS hospital birth with an epidural, though panic during her first contraction sent her hypnobirthing prep out the window. With...

Gabby is an American mum of three living near Cambridge who comes back to share her third birth, after an emergency C-section with her first and a successful VBAC with her second. Labour started fast, in the shower, and she nearly gave birth in the car on the way to the Rosie Hospital. Her daughter arrived within minutes of arriving, but minutes later Gabby began to haemorrhage, losing nearly two...

  Gabby is an American mum of three living near Cambridge. Her first daughter was born in Tampa, Florida after hours of pushing with no progress, ending in an unplanned C-section. After moving to the UK, she went through a miscarriage before falling pregnant again with her second daughter, throwing herself into hypnobirthing and Spinning Babies to prepare for a VBAC. When her waters broke in...

Rebecca is a first time mum to Harry, and she chose a planned C section for her first birth. She had lived with health anxiety for years before she even got pregnant, and a family history of shoulder dystocia made the idea of a natural labour feel frightening rather than exciting. By her twenty week scan, doctors kept telling her the baby was measuring big, and that fear only grew from there. At t...

  She had wanted a water birth from the beginning. She had worked with families around birth for 13 years. She thought she knew what to expect. And then labour actually started, and she learned what it really feels like to be in it. Jess is a mum of two boys from the Midlands who had two positive NHS hospital water births. Her first was a long one. She laboured through the night at home, got...

  Jo had been trying to conceive for years. She was told she had unexplained infertility. She decided not to do IVF. She decided to adopt. And then, completely out of nowhere, she got pregnant. Jo is a mum of two girls from the North of England who shares a story unlike any other on the podcast. Her family came to her in two completely different ways. Her eldest daughter was adopted at 11 mon...

 Monika is a mum of two from Bedfordshire who shares two very different birth stories. Her first was a hospital birth that left her diagnosed with PTSD. A midwife from out of area who had never been to the unit before, waters broken accidentally during an internal examination, hours of pain with no support, and a postnatal period full of flashbacks. She knew before she left the hospital that...

She had been told she would die if she tried to birth at home. She had been railroaded into a theatre she did not want to be in. She had lost 2.5 litres of blood. And she came back for a third time and did it completely on her own terms. April is a mum of three and a doula and antenatal teacher who shares the birth that changed everything. Her third pregnancy was unplanned and she spent months not...

She planned a home birth. She hypnobirthed. She did everything right. And after two days of induction at 42 weeks, her son was born by emergency C-section at 10 pounds. She never even got to hold him for the first four hours. April is a mum of three from the East Midlands who shares two very different but equally difficult emergency C-section births. Her first, at 22 years old, left her separated...

She had already been through a termination for medical reasons and a chemical pregnancy before she ever got to carry her twins. And when she finally did, she spotted them on the screen at six weeks before the sonographer did. Emma is a mum of identical twin boys, now three and a half, who shares an honest and wide-ranging story about what a high risk twin pregnancy actually looks and feels like fr...

  She found out she was pregnant at 15 weeks. She was 17. She had not packed a hospital bag, had not read a single book, and had no idea what was about to happen to her body.   Charlie is a mum of three from Sheffield who shares three births that could not be more different from each other. Her first, at 17, was a premature labour at 36 weeks with a low-lying placenta, a hormonal drip, a...

  She always wanted a C-section. From the time she was a teenager. And when her son turned out to be breech, she finally had the reason she felt she needed to say yes. Second time around, she asked for one with no hesitation at all. And she would do it again without question.   Annabel is a journalist, TikTok creator, and founder of The Moon Suit who shares two planned C-sections on the...

  Zoe always knew she wanted pain relief. But like a lot of women, she found herself surrounded by messaging that made her question that. Until a pregnant midwife said something that stuck with her. You don't get a certificate for how you have the baby.   Zoe is a mum of two boys from West Yorkshire who shares two positive NHS hospital vaginal births, both with epidurals, and an honest a...

  She had two miscarriages, a traumatic first birth, and a husband who said he could never put her through it again. And then she came back, did everything differently, and pushed her son out standing in a doorway on her own terms.   Charlotte is a mum of two from Leeds who shares her second birth story at an NHS birth centre on Christmas Day weekend. After a first birth that left her wi...

She was in the birth centre for the first time, on the beanbag, breathing through her contractions with her mum and her husband by her side. And honestly, she was doing it. And then her waters broke properly, and in the space of a few minutes, everything she had prepared for changed.   Charlotte is a first time mum from Leeds who spent her entire pregnancy doing everything right. She hypnobir...

  She never wanted a vaginal birth. Not once. She knew exactly how she wanted her baby born. And after a small battle with her midwives, she got it. A calm, planned C-section. Baby on her chest at 3.15pm. And she would do it exactly the same way again.   Lauren is a first time mum from Kent who shares a warm and honest account of planning and delivering a positive NHS planned C-section w...

They told her she would bleed out. They told her her baby would get stuck and die. They told her she would traumatise the entire home birth team. Shannon had three C-sections, an NHS system fighting her at every turn, and a fourth baby tracking on the 97th centile. She went ahead anyway.   Shannon is a mum of four and a doula from the UK who shares four birth stories shaped by hypermobility s...

  She woke up at 4.30am to contractions that were a minute on and a minute off from the very start. Polly had two fast, positive births. Her first at the NHS midwife led unit in Bristol, where she arrived fully dilated and had her daughter within the hour. Her second at home, where within two hours of the midwives arriving she was back in her own clean bed with her baby. Polly is a mum of two...

Jade went into her first pregnancy thinking birth was something medical that happened in hospital. But after hypnobirthing opened her mind to a different way of seeing birth, she went on to have three very different but positive birth experiences.   Jade is a mum of three and a sonographer from near Manchester. In this episode, she shares her unique perspective as someone who works in women’s...

  Frankie had a really tough first pregnancy. She had already been through obstetric cholestasis, a long induction, and an emergency ventouse delivery with her first. Second time around she was carrying twins. She knew she could not go through that again.   Frankie is a mum of three boys from Sheffield who shares two very different birth stories shaped by PCOS, endometriosis, multiple mi...

SUMMARY: At 3am Kat was in hospital being told by a doctor she was not even in early labour. She went home. Within 30 minutes she was screaming. When her husband rang the hospital back they said the unit had closed. Twenty four minutes after arriving at a different hospital, her son was born. Kat is a first time mum from Harrogate who shares one of the most dramatic birth stories you will ever hea...

  What does it feel like to go back into labour knowing everything that went wrong the first time — and come out the other side feeling like you got your birth back? In this episode of British Birthing Stories, Mil returns to share the birth of her son Billy: an NHS birth centre water birth, a shoulder dystocia, and the most healing experience of her life.   After her first birth left he...

  What happens when you've done the NCT course, made the birth plan, and gone into hospital as prepared as you possibly can and it still falls apart? In this episode of British Birthing Stories, I sit down with Mil, a stay-at-home mum, content creator, and freelance copywriter, who shares her honest account of her first NHS birth: induction, forceps, episiotomy, a postpartum haemorrhage, and...

She always knew she wanted a home birth. From the moment she decided she wanted children, there was never any question. Hospital was not even in her mind.   Dani is a first time mum from Devon who shares a deeply beautiful first birth story after two years of trying to conceive with PCOS. She conceived the day before moving across the country from Hertfordshire to Devon — a moment she describ...

She pushed for five hours. Her baby kept getting stuck. And when she finally made the call for a C section, the medical team tried to talk her out of it before admitting it was probably the right idea all along. Chloe is a veterinary neurologist from West Berkshire and a first time mum who went into birth as prepared as anyone could be. Hypnobirthing, research, a birth pool, a TENS machine, and a...