Discharged

Jane, my midwife came today to discharge me. I'm going to miss her actually, as she has cared for me quite a bit over the last few years. I first met her in late Spring 2006 when I first fell pregnant, unfortunately that pregnancy ended in miscarriage, so I didn't really get to know her.

Then, when I fell pregnant with Jacob at the end of that year, she was extremely caring and sensitive when I went through lots of wobbles and worries about potentially having another miscarriage. Fortunately everything progressing normally and the pregnancy was relatively easy and we have Jacob.

This time I got to know her quite a bit better, probably because of our choice to have a home birth, I had a couple of extra appointments with her and we chatted about more than just my pregnancy over the last nine months. In fact the only time I didn't see her was during the birth, as she was on holiday! To have such a supportive midwife makes pregnancy and all its decisions much easier to deal with. Jane definitely helped me to remain cool, calm and collected all the way through. I felt much more in control of my pregnancy this time.

The team of community midwives in Chester are an extremely special group of women, they are completely on board with home birth as an option (assuming all is well in pregnancy and there were no complications in previous pregnancies). Even though I had not met any of the women who came to deliver Daniel, they made me feel like they'd been involved in my care personally all the way through my pregnancy.

So, now we are under the care of the Health Visitor. We met her at Jacob's one year check, she had just taken over from the previous health visitor and I was worried that she was a bit keen. However, she came to visit this week and I really like her. I found her really supportive and constructive, she also had some good suggestions with the feeding issues that I have had (Daniel is extremely hungry all the time).