Hilary Duff Gets Candid About Delivering Daughter Banks Violet in a Home Water Birth
It’s been two weeks since Hilary Duff welcomed her second child, a baby girl named Banks Violet Bair, and now, the mom of two is getting candid — really candid — about delivering her bundle of joy in a home water birth with her boyfriend, son, mom, and sister by her side.
Speaking with Dr. Elliot Berlin on the podcast Informed Pregnancy 10 days after giving birth, the 31-year-old opened up about her and beau Matthew Koma’s decision to go the natural route. The Younger actress went into labor around 12:30am on October 25 and reached out to her doula and midwives around 2am. Contrary to what she expected, however, she was in labor “for a really long time.”
Describing the water birth as “such a happy moment and also scary,” the former Lizzie McGuire star revealed that, once she got in the tub, “it was, like, five pushes. That part didn’t hurt as bad as I thought it was going to. I was scared it was going to be extreme pain in my vagina and it was not like that. It was very painful in my hips and then it was more scary [in] just the overall bigness of what was happening than, ‘Ow, this hurts too bad, I can’t do it again.’”
While her son, Luca (who wasn’t initially excited at the prospect of having a sibling), was “totally calm” throughout the whole process, Koma received some reprimands when he told his love to relax. “You have to shut up,” Duff recalled telling him. “You’re going to die if you say that again!”
With help from everyone around her — “It was taking so much to push that I couldn’t hold myself up” — she eventually delivered little Banks, who received “a couple of breaths” from one of the midwives because she looked blue. After that, it was nothing but joy and excitement.
“They hand her to me and I’m looking at her… and she reaches up both of her arms and curls into me,” Duff gushed. “[She] reaches up her arms right at my neck, as if to give me a hug. I couldn’t believe how strong she was, but it was so clearly a hug. It made me feel like she was like, ‘Good team, Mom, we did it.’“ And yes, she “would totally do it again.” Congrats, Hilary and Matt!
Do you know anyone who had a home water birth? Tweet us @BritandCo.
(photo via Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
