Giving birth to a New Year’s baby is definitely something to celebrate, but there was something extra special when Chloe Robertson and Matt Hildreth-Johnston’s daughter Naomi was born on Jan. 1.
After giving birth twice via scheduled Caesarean sections, Chloe finally experienced what it was like to go into labour and to have a successful vaginal birth.
Born at 12:49 a.m., Naomi was the first baby born at Chilliwack General Hospital in 2024.
Chloe knew when she got pregnant that she did not want to have another C-section.
“This time I had a lot more determination and I just wanted it. I put a lot of mental, emotional, physical prep into the last nine months,” she said.
But what she didn’t know was just how long this birth would take.
“I wanted my body to go into labour on its own. I wanted to experience some of it because I’d never experienced any of it.”
She was eight days past her due date when labour started naturally around 7 a.m. on Friday (Dec. 29, 2023). Little did she know, it would continue for 65 hours.
At 4 a.m. on Saturday (Dec. 30, 2023) she was in a lot of pain so she and Matt left their Harrison Mills home and made the 40-minute trip to the hospital.
“I thought I was at the end,” Chloe said.
But it was just the beginning.
She was not admitted to the maternity ward as she was still in the early stages of labour. Chloe was very discouraged and was in tears as they told her to come back later.
They didn’t want to make the long drive back home, plus their other two children were at home and she wanted to labour in a quiet space, so they decided to get a hotel room in Chilliwack.
After being given morphine at the hospital, she and Matt checked into the Coast Hotel where she ate, relaxed and finally slept. In the morning, staff at the hotel gave them a free breakfast.
Her contractions started to pick up, so they went back to the hospital around lunchtime on Sunday (Dec. 31, 2023) and met her midwife Winifred Angus there.
But Chloe was still in the early stages of labour, having only progressed slightly in 24 hours.
Chloe told Winifred that she didn’t want to lose the opportunity to have a vaginal birth after having two C-sections.
“She gave me such a good talk. She said ‘What gives you the most anxiety right now?’ And I said ‘Going back to the hotel. I want to be here and be ready to get into the next stage of this.’”
The midwife spoke with the on-call obstetrician who gave the OK to admit Chloe, give her an epidural and break her water.
“‘Because you’ve had progression, hopefully that will stimulate things to continue,’” Chloe recalled Winifred saying.
It worked. The baby finally started moving down.
Hours passed and it was getting close to midnight. The nurses and midwife briefly stepped out of Chloe’s room to have a little New Year’s celebration, and when they came back in, the midwife had a party hat on.
Soon, it was time to bear down. The baby was facing the wrong way, so Winifred helped rotate the baby as Chloe pushed.
There were a lot of thing pumping her up – her midwife, her doula, the nurses, her fiancé, and an energetic song on her birth-music playlist.
And there was one more thing.
“When I was pushing, there were fireworks going off outside that we could see,” Chloe said.
It may have been well past midnight, but people outside were still ringing in the new year as Chloe and Matt were celebrating inside the hospital.
After about 15 minutes of pushing, Naomi was born at 12:49 a.m. weighing nine pounds, one ounce.
Matt’s face lit up with excitement and pride.
“I’ve never seen a baby delivered vaginally. It was amazing to see,” he said.
They put Naomi on Chloe as she cried and said “I did it! I did it!”
“It was such a rush. It was the best feeling,” she said. “Because I put so much work into it this time, the reward was amazing.”
She said she was very happy with her experience at the hospital and was grateful to the team of female nurses, her midwife, and doula Dayna Pollard for providing emotional and physical support.
“Matt made a really nice comment,” Chloe recalled. “He said ‘It was very cool to see women coming together like that… the support in different forms and all these women coming together in a room.
“Guys are a little different,’” she said with a laugh.
Naomi has two older siblings – eight-year-old sister Skarlett, and three-year-old brother Jack.
B.C.’s first baby of 2024 was born at exactly 12 a.m. at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster.
READ MORE: B.C.’s first baby of 2024 born at 12 a.m.
