This week’s birth story comes from a lovely couple Alice and Simon who attended a TCBS Hypnobirthing course with Tracey Harper of Birthing Calmly in Hertfordshire.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful story with is!
Friday 7th Feb!
He’s called Maximus William Fox Jones.
9 lbs 3 oz
Natural birth
I had a sweep on day 40+5 I think it was, then was advised to go for a really long walk. That absolutely got things going early hours of Wednesday morning, only very early stages.
We went to the birthing unit Wednesday night but were turned away because I hadn’t dilated yet. So, I had a really long bath, played Hypnobirthing affirmations and focused on my breathing.
Had a tricky night trying to rest, but things picked up again Thursday daytime and we went back to hospital Thursday afternoon where we stayed as surges grew very close together.
All throughout the time at home, the surges were managed by breathing alone!
I was given a shot of morphine to ease my pain and this allowed me to sleep which got me to 4 cm, and then my waters started to trickle.
This allowed us to get into the pool and we were in there from 11 pm till 5 am. ?
We had our lavender diffuser on, John Mayer playing, the room was so peaceful!
I got to 6 cm with all of my hypnobirthing breathing and a little gas and air. Simon LITERALLY was repeating the breathing technique to me at every single contraction, he was incredible. Kept me hydrated and kept popping Percy pigs in my mouth (which I am now obsessed with) ?
As things were taking a while they decided to check if my waters had fully gone, they hadn’t….and they came gushing, but unfortunately also showed meconium!
So, we were scooped up and moved over to the labour ward at around 6 am.
By this point I was pretty exhausted, and I went back down to 5 cm (also not helped by the fact the lady in the birthing suite next to us was being extremely loud, so it threw me off!)
Anyway, the midwives on the labour ward were incredible.
I had another morphine syringe to keep me going but once there things did pick up again I remember the contractions being pretty full on.
Eventually I was told to sit on the semi circle shaped stool to try and get things going, did this for what felt like forever but once I got up to 8 – 10 cm I was moved onto the bed with legs put in stirrups for the final showdown!
I was pushing for 1 hr 30 mins when they started to get concerned about his heart rate so they asked if they could give me an episiotomy, to which I agreed and then a few pushes more and he was out at 1.57 pm.
Thankfully due to the midwives acting quickly on the episiotomy I managed to get away with a pretty good birth, because had they not, the doctor was very close to coming into our room and was a fan of assisted delivery and probably would have used forceps to get him out but they knew how much I was against that type of intervention!
So, all in all, it went pretty well. It did feel like a lifetime at the time!
I was stitched up very well and am healing great, I guess had I not delivered such a big baby and had he not done a poo I probably would have been able to have stayed in the pool. Perhaps next time!
Thank you for all your help. We definitely could not have done so much of this without your help Tracey”
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