If you ask most people that know me they would say that I like to be prepared and plan. My preparation started early into my motherhood journey, from buying baby items from 12 weeks onwards to gathering resources that attempted to tell me what to expect when bubs is born. Taking into consideration my preparation mindset I knew I had to enrol my partner and I into some sort of antenatal class.
Like most first time moms I enrolled ourselves into the Parent Centre course. However, I knew I wanted more of a holistic approach to motherhood and especially so with the birth of our wee girl. This brings me to our positive birth story. A story that cannot be told without giving credit to Andi Stringer ( A Calm Space) who helped us build the foundation to our empowering, positive birth story below.
Relax. Breath. Surrender. This was my mantra for the last five weeks of my pregnancy. I took note of all the possible ‘tools’ I could use from our hypnobirthing course and practiced each day in hopes that this would have a positive impact when it came to ‘show time’. Two weeks before my estimated due date I started to feel mild period like cramps. These would come and go but I would notice them more at night. As you do, you get on with life and try not to get too excited.
Days go by and my due date is now five days behind me. Again, you tell yourself this is normal but I was still inpatient. The word ‘induction’ and ‘stretch and sweep’ were starting to be thrown around and I even started to put more of my energy into reading up on induction in case this was the path my labour journey took me.
Luckily on 9 January 2022 things started to fall into place and bubs was starting to make her entrance into this world. That morning I did some stretches, listened to my hypnobirthing MP3 tracks while I had a clary sage blend diffusing. Around 12pm I started to lose my mucus plug and it was at this point that I could not control my excitement. I continued with my day as normal and then around 2pm started to feel surges. As the surges increased in intensity I decided to move down to the bedroom and set up a calm space. This consisted of music, diffuser and lots of different positions on the medicine ball while controlling my breathing as taught in a dark room. I used the a tens machine which really helped me work with the sensations during early labour.
I told myself that I would wait to inform my midwife because this could just be the start of a very long journey. However, things started to progress quickly and before I knew it my waters had broken(7pm) while swaying on the medicine ball. My partner suggested we contact our midwife. I started to move into ‘my zone’ and as a result it felt like I was not mentally or emotionally present in my surroundings, I was so focused on surrendering to each surge, knowing each one got me closer to meeting my baby. I listened to the hypnobirthing tracks on repeat and I kept repeating in my mind “I’ve got this”. This resulted in me not being able to communicate much at all to my partner but he knew what steps to take and how to help because our hypnobirthing course prepared him for this moment.
The pain increased and the frequency of my surges were much closer, I vomited somewhere around this point but I kept telling myself that I needed to wait because I did not want to be turned away at the hospital if I was not dilated enough. My partner kept suggesting we make our way to the hospital but it was so hard to get myself out of the room to the car. The journey to the hospital was only five minutes but it felt like forever. We arrived at 8:30pm to which I could barely walk inside without having a contraction in the hallway.
Our midwife wanted to complete the routine check-ups but at that time I was too uncomfortable to sit down and allow her to complete these. My partner asked for the pool to be filled prior to arriving but our midwife wanted to wait as she thought my labour had not progressed far enough as I was feeling my surges down low. I finally made it to the bed so she could check me and to everyone’s surprise I was 10cm dilated and all I can remember her saying is that ‘this baby is coming, I can feel her head’. At this point I was overjoyed and reassured myself that I had done the majority of the hard yards. I was pretty adamant that I wanted a water birth but we were not sure if we would have time to fill the pool. Nevertheless, the midwife started to fill the pool and once I stepped into the pool around 9:30pm my body relaxed even more, I kept focusing on my body opening gently like a flower. The relaxation was enough for my body to feel the need to bear down and so I pushed with all my strength. My mindset alongside my fascinating body pushed our baby girl out within a few pushes at 10:39pm.
It seemed like I did not even have the strength to lift our wee girl out of the water but somehow I gathered up the strength to do so. We spent the next hour or so on the bed doing skin to skin, attempting some feeding, waiting for my placenta to be birthed and most of all enjoying the cuddles. Our midwife wanted to examine me to establish if I needed stiches. As my adrenaline had worn off by now, she offered me gas which I was reluctant to take as I am naturally a nauseous person. I was pleased I took the gas and really enjoyed the outer body experience it offered. So much so that I was telling my midwife that she should have offered me this pain relief during labour.
It was determined that I would have to go to theatre to get stitched up as I had a 3A degree tear. This meant I would need to also get a spinal which put a bit of a damper on the positive, natural birth I had just experienced. These emotions were soon replaced with gratitude, love, warmth and cuddles as we settled in for the night as a family of three.
I couldn’t have asked for a more empowering swift birth. I never once let fear creep in and am so grateful that all of my birth preferences were met. If you do the preparation and trust your body things fall into place. One affirmation at a time, one breath at a time led us to our beautiful wee Sofia Salome Forsyth.
