Deck the Halls for Holiday Home Births Part I

Sarah Redfearn’s fourth child was four days overdue on December 25, 2005. The snow was blowing outside her home in Kilworth (near London) and her mother had started preparing the Christmas dinner she’d brought over. Sarah’s sister and her sister’s two children (a one-year-old and an infant, who’d been born at home two weeks earlier) were there, along with Sarah’s husband and her three children, aged eight, five and two-and-a-half.

By late afternoon Sarah was in early labour. Her contractions started when the family was opening presents and she went upstairs to spend some time on her own. Her midwife, Jane Erdman (who had attended the births of her three other children, two of them at home), arrived at the house wearing a Santa hat. Jane had Christmas dinner with the family while Sarah was in early labour upstairs.

The children were very interested in the labour and, before long, four of them were jumping on Sarah’s bed. She found it very humourous that her baby would be born into this kind of chaos.

“And then my water broke because I laughed too hard, which I thought was a lovely way to bring a baby into the world,” remembers Sarah.

Then her five-year-old son decided that she needed a Christmas mint “because mints make babies come faster.” Eventually the children settled down and her daughter fell asleep. But both her sons were in the room at 10:10 p.m. on Christmas night when their new baby brother, Ethan David, was born – and they both had important jobs. One brother dried the baby off and the other told the relatives waiting downstairs that the baby was a boy.

Before the birth of each of her children, Sarah baked a birthday cake for the newest member of the family. Her husband took Ethan’s cake out of the freezer when she went into labour and after Ethan arrived, they put the candles on the cake and everybody sang happy birthday to him.

Sarah wasn’t a midwife when Ethan was born, but she later entered the Midwifery Education Program at Ryerson University and graduated in 2011. “Jane Erdman was a big reason why I ended up wanting to become a midwife. I really loved my birth experiences with her. They were such meaningful experiences for me that I wanted to be able to do that for other women,” says Sarah.

Ethan will turn 10 this Christmas and loves having his birthday on December 25. Sarah says she appreciates the fact that her fellow midwives have always recognized that Christmas day is an extra special day for her family. This is the first year that she’ll work on the 25th, but only in the morning. Sarah will cover for a colleague so she can open her presents and then at noon she’ll go off call and head home to celebrate Ethan’s birthday with the family.

“We’re very grateful for our best Christmas gift ever, which was Ethan,” says Sarah.