I have been sitting on this birth story for months and so glad I am finally able to create a space within the website to give it justice. I didn’t want to compress it in to an instagram post.
My labour started with a vague cramp around 3am. Nothing dramatic. It felt like period pain, it came and went. ‘Is this… something?’ I thought. There was a small thrill of excitement, apprehension, but mostly I was sleepy. I dozed back off.
At 6am, things started to intensify. I woke my husband, Cal. “I think I might be going into labour,” I said. “Oh hectic,” he replied. I was 39 weeks and four days.
My amazing doula Angela Duce and my birth education with Abby Sidery at Birth Circle had encouraged me to labour at home as long as possible, and I knew it could be hours, if not days, before our baby made his arrival, so we settled in.
At 9.17am, we recorded my first contraction. I sent a message to my brother Ruben, who I had been planning to meet for a coffee for his birthday. ‘Little buddy might be making his arrival to celebrate, so I might need to rain check our brunch.’
Cal made me some peanut butter toast. The playlist went on, the lights were low, and I bounced and swayed and paced as the contractions started to intensify. And intensify they did.
I’d been told the beginning of labour could be on and off – that I should relax. I thought perhaps I would watch a film, make some food, go for a walk.
For me, there was no walks or food or movies. I was just trying to breathe through each contraction as they came on far too often, trying to stay calm. I lay on a pile of pillows, trying to find a comfortable position. I sucked on a sour apple lollypop.
My mum came around, and she and Cal alternated squeezing my hips through each and every contraction, rubbing my shoulders, offering sips of water and re-heating my wheat pack. At one point, I got in the shower, which was beautiful for the precious few minutes our hot water lasted.
Sometime mid morning I began to vomit. Up came the lollipop, the sourness now like acid. Up came the toast. I started sweating, moaning, mooing like a cow.
At around midday, Cal phoned Angie, and she popped over with the tens machine and some incredibly calm energy. I stopped moaning and relaxed a little. The tens felt incredible. For the first time in hours, I felt slightly embarrassed at the state of me, in my undies and an old dressing gown, hair an utter mess. No chic little underwear set here. No matching pjs. Definitely no grooming in the downstairs department. Ah, well.
Angie left, expecting things to take a while longer. Instead, things ramped up. Classic.
Within a couple of hours, my waters had broken in a rather underwhelming fashion (Me: ‘I think my waters might have broken or maybe I have just wet myself a bit’). Angie was back, the contractions were coming thick and fast, and I was in a lot of pain.
‘Bella, I think you’re about to meet your baby,’ Angie said. ‘It’s time to go to the hospital.’
Well, let’s just say we did not get to the hospital too early.
The car ride was madness. Mum was driving, Cal in the back seat with me as I moaned and mooed. Angie followed us in her car, called the birthing suite and asked them to run the bath. Halfway down our block, we got stuck behind a closed road due to construction. I heard the panic in my mum’s voice as she said to the construction worker: ‘We NEED to get through, someone is having a baby in the back seat’.
At the next intersection, we sat at the lights for five light cycles. I tell you, don’t have your baby during school pickup, my friends.
‘I need to push,’ I kept saying. ‘Don’t push,’ Mum said. ‘You can hold it in.’ That was one of the toughest moments mentally. I remember seriously thinking I was going to give birth in the car.
Eventually, we got to the hospital at around 3pm, just 12 hours after that first gentle twinge. I tumbled out of the car with Cal and hobbled through the lobby, hair askew, in an old grey t-shirt and slightly damp underwear. I remember a vague awareness of people staring, but I didn’t have it in me to care.
When we arrived at the birth suite, the bath was full, and I was greeted by the lovely midwife. ‘I need to push,’ I told her. She wanted to do a cervical check, but I declined. I knew we were ready to rock and roll.
She said okay, let’s do an ‘external check’. As soon as I took my pants off there was no more conversation about checks.
The tens machine came off and into the bath I plunged. It was amazing. The warmth of the water, the weightlessness, was a beautiful sensational after a fatiguing day. The contractions were still extremely painful, but the rest of my body felt calmer, and much more relaxed.
I leant on the side of the bath, held onto Cal, and began pushing. I don’t remember too much.
I saw the fairy lights. Flashes of a torch. Cal’s face in front of me.
Then I saw Abby, who knelt down by the bath to say hello, she was there. I remember such a rush of gratitude and joy to see her, to know I had a midwife there I knew and trusted.
The dream team.
I heard encouraging words. Angie’s voice. Felt hands on my arms, my shoulders. I got hot, hot, hot. Someone gave me ice chips. Every now and again a midwife reached down and checked my baby’s heartbeat. All was well, all was well. Keep going. We can see hair. We can see the head. Slow down. You can do this.
I knew I could have what’s known as a crisis of confidence, a moment before the end when you think you can’t go on. I was waiting for it. I willed it to come closer. The point where I believed I actually couldn’t do it anymore.
Eventually, I said it out loud. ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ I think I thought that, by saying it, it would make it true. It would bring about that transitional point where the end was near. I just wanted it to be over.
And soon, it was.
There was a lot of pain and pressure.
His head came out. Then his shoulders.
Someone told me to reach down and grab him, to pull him up slowly out of the water. 
Our son was born at 4.21pm on Friday 27 June, 2025. He would share a birthday with his Uncle Ru.
Meeting my baby was one of the most transforming, profound, indescribable things I have ever experienced. It’s everything everyone says it is, and more. Holding him, seeing his tiny, perfect face, looking over at my husband who looked relieved, terrified and overjoyed all at once. Time stood still.
‘What’s his name?’ someone asked. It was Charles Felix Morgan. Our Charlie.
After Abby confirmed he was okay, I floated in the bath with baby Charlie for what felt like moments, but I found out later was half an hour. There was people buzzing around, but I had no idea what was happening outside the three of us, taking it all in.
Eventually they got me out of the bath, dried off, and onto the bed, Charlie on my chest. I wanted a physiological third stage, so we waited it out, and with a little, erm, manual encouragement from Abby, I delivered the placenta.
We tried for a breast crawl, but little mate was having trouble, but eventually we got him to latch on for a feed. I also got stitched up from a second degree tear, which was – not gonna lie – pretty icky, but I had the loveliest female doctor who was so gentle and kind.
My mum came in at some point, and I remember laying there feeling the most overwhelming sense of gratitude for this team of women around me – one stitching me, one bringing me a toastie and an apple juice, one helping my baby to feed.
It was the total opposite of the traumatic stories I’d heard about, and I felt so thankful that I was lucky enough to have this experience of birth.
I am so grateful to both Angie and Abby, who prepared me so beautifully for birth. I truly believe their guidance both during pregnancy and throughout my labour helped facilitate my positive experience. I felt confident, empowered and safe through the whole process, which is all I could have asked for.
And… dare I say it… I’m looking forward to doing it all again – if I get so lucky! 
What a story! What a place of privilege I am in to be able to provide information and then be lucky enough to be on shift when they came in and absolutely their birth!
Their little boy just turned one!!
Thank you Bella and Cal for sharing your story!
A.x
