My Freebirth Story: How My Third Son Was Born at Home Before the Midwife Arrived

Kian Levi, born 26th January 2021, 7am

Two days before my due date, my five-year-old Aaron flew through a glass door.

Not metaphorically. He ran, lost his footing, and went through it. An ambulance came. I stood there, heavily pregnant, watching, shaken in a way that went deeper than the shock of the moment. Fear moved through me: fear that Kian would arrive before things were calm, fear that something might go wrong, fear of the pain still waiting somewhere ahead.

And then, underneath all of that, something steadier. A quiet knowing that kept surfacing no matter how loud the fear got. There is nothing to worry about.

I didn’t quite trust it yet. But it was there.

The Night He Came

#

I went to bed around 2am on the 25th of January, which was normal for me then. I fell asleep and was woken not by a sound, not by a contraction, but by a bright, radiant light above me. I wasn’t fully awake. It lasted only a moment. And then I drifted back.

At 3:45am I woke again, this time with a strong downward pressure that pulled me out of sleep completely. I got up, went to the living room, woke Mirco, and asked him to bring the birthing pool upstairs and start filling it.

The pressure was intense enough that I went straight to the bathtub. I put my hypnobirthing headphones in, and the moment the music started and the hypnosis settled over me, my body let go. I breathed into each surge with long upward breaths, imagining my diaphragm releasing downward, Kian’s head resting gently against my cervix, the cervix opening like it knew exactly what to do. I connected with my ancestors. With every woman who had ever birth with trust instead of fear.

The water held me. I felt the pressure completely, and I was completely in my body, but there was no pain. Not the way I had feared it.

The Moment Everything Went Quiet

#

I got out of the tub a few times. The midwife had suggested I walk around to help Kian’s head descend further. Each time a surge came while I was standing, it was harder, the relaxation impossible. So I returned to the water.

The surges changed. Grew stronger. I felt his head beginning to move through the pelvis, a sensation of absolute fullness I had no words for. In my previous births I remember thinking: I can’t do this, Mirco should be doing this, this is too much.

This time, there were no thoughts at all.

My mind had gone entirely quiet. It was just me and Kian and the water and my breath.

I called out to Mirco: Call your mother. He’s coming now.

Things moved fast. I pressed my hand gently to my vagina, instinctively, the way a body knows what to do before the mind does, and I felt his head there, emerging slightly with each surge and then resting back. I remembered a video I show in my HypnoBirthing classes: Joya, breathing her baby into the world with a long, open YES. Her face appeared in my mind’s eye as clearly as if I were watching it on a screen.

With the next surge, I breathed yes and Kian’s head was in the water.

I asked Mirco if the head was fully out. He reached in, felt around, and said: there’s already an arm. And his hand.

And in the next moment, his whole body was there.

7am.

What Nobody Knew

#

Mirco lifted him onto my stomach. I was shaking with gratitude, with surprise at how quickly it had all happened. The umbilical cord was loosely around his neck, we fumbled a little, clumsy with emotion, and once it was free I pulled him to my chest and held him.

Our friend Marie was there with her camera, having arrived at some point during the birth to capture these first moments. Mirco’s mother Christel appeared a minute after the birth, walked in wide-eyed saying where is the midwife???

The midwife arrived thirty minutes later. Stuck in snow and morning traffic.

Aaron was already awake, beaming the way children beam at Christmas. Lias slept until 9am, somehow undisturbed by all of it. When he finally opened his eyes and saw Kian lying next to him in my arms, he smiled slowly and asked: Can I touch him? And very gently, touched his head.

What nobody knew until afterwards was that somewhere in the third trimester, I had quietly wished for this. I had wanted to be alone with Mirco when Kian came. I never said it out loud. I didn’t quite know how to explain it. But part of me had held that wish, and my body had simply arranged it.

When I finally told Mirco, his reaction wasn’t what I expected. He wasn’t touched or surprised. He was a little annoyed, actually. Why didn’t you tell me? You know I would have supported you in that.

He was right. And he wasn’t wrong to say it. But the body doesn’t always wait for us to find the words. Sometimes it just moves toward what it knows.

What This Has to Do With You

#

I share this not to tell you that birth is always easy, or that everything always goes the way you quietly wish it will. I share it because I know what it is to carry deep fear about birth. I grew up with my mother’s story of how terrible mine was, how much pain she endured, how the forceps came at the end. That story lived in my body for years.

And I know what it is to move through that fear into something else entirely.

How you give birth matters. Not because the birth needs to be perfect, but because you deserve to feel powerful in it, present in it, trusting your body through it. That is possible. I have seen it with my own students again and again.

If you are pregnant and want to prepare your body and mind for a calm, conscious birth, I would love to support you in 1:1 HypnoBirthing sessions, tailored entirely to you, your fears, your history, and what you want your birth to feel like.

Work with me 1:1 here

And if you are not pregnant but feel drawn to reconnect with the instinctive, creative power of your body, that is also what I work with. The Yoni Egg Initiation Course is a journey back into your body, your feminine power, and the deep wisdom your womb already carries.

Explore the Yoni Egg Initiation Course

Kian is 5 now. I wrote this when he was 4 months old.