What to do if your unborn baby decides to make an appearance on April Fool’s Day during lockdown? You “call the midwife”, as a Schoemansville couple did on Wednesday last week.

Deon and Frances Joubert’s healthy baby boy was born with the help of a midwife and paramedics in their home in Karel Street in Schoemansville on Wednesday afternoon after Frances started getting mild contractions the previous day.

“It was an unbelievable experience and not stressful at all. On the contrary, it was a very calm experience,” Deon said.

We have been seeing a midwife who specialises in births after caesarean section births as we did not want to go that route again,” Deon said. “However, the baby was supposed to be born in medical rooms in Pretoria. With the unexpected lockdown we were not sure what was going to happen. When Frances went into labour on Wednesday we were worried. With the current lockdown and the Covid-19 situation, we did not want to go to a hospital and we did not know if we would be stopped in roadblocks or what would happen. We called the midwife for advice and to our surprise she agreed to come all the way out to Hartbeespoort with her team.”

He said it was the best experience ever. “What is normally a very stressful time turned out to be a blessing. It was all so calm and a bit strange. We were all sitting around eating and drinking coffee while waiting for the baby to make his appearance. Little Lucah was born shortly before 19:00 after only an hour of intense labour. He was born in water in our bathtub and even my two-year-old, Aron, was present. And afterwards, my wife and I and Aron had a ‘snuggle puddle’ with the baby.”

Deon said if it wasn’t for the lockdown they would have not gone this route but now he would advise it for everyone. “It just makes such a difference not having the stressful surrounding of a hospital. My wife bounced back to her normal self so quickly and the baby is calm and growing by the day. I want to thank our midwife, Yolandi Maritz and her team from You and Me Birth for helping us have this amazing experience.”