Birth story - Abby and baby Alice

I took the full hypnobirthing course when I was pregnant with my little boy about 4 years ago now, and I never got round to sharing my birth story with him because at the time I felt like it was quite a traumatic experience. In hindsight it was actually a fantastic labour but (shock) nothing went to plan so it was something that took me a while to want to talk about. With that experience in the bank I was determined to have a positive experience this time no matter how my labour played out.

My little boy was 1 week early so I was pretty convinced my little girl would be early as well but thanks to cycle tracking my due date was (quite literally) bang on. By the time my due date came round I had experienced quite a few episodes of braxton hicks and I was feeling quite fed up. I woke up at 5.30am on my due date having had possibly the best night sleep I had my whole pregnancy and feeling wide awake but not remotely like I might go into labour so I got up to have breakfast but was grouchy. At 6.30am I had my first tightenings, presumed these were braxton hicks so I tried to get myself comfortable on the sofa and relax but really struggled to find a comfortable position so I started to use my up breathing.

At 7am my husband was due to leave for a meeting so he asked what he should do and I said he could still go but he hung around for a bit to check I was okay (thank god). By 7.30am my tightenings had ramped up and I was pacing but having to stop to focus on my breathing whenever one came on.

We rang my parents just before 8am, my dad was coming to look after our little boy and my mum was my second birthing partner. My mum had already got to work so said she would meet us at the hospital. My dad came to our house and took over with George who was still fast asleep so missed the whole thing. We called the hospital who let me know the pool was already in use but agreed it was time to come in. We arrived at the hospital at 8.30am, by which point I was having to stop every couple of minutes to breath through tightenings as they were coming thick and fast.

Our midwife was lovely, I couldn’t praise her enough, she showed us to our room and asked to do an exam to see where we were at. Sean had to go and move the car as he’d parked at the drop off point but my mum arrived at the same time so I said she could do the exam straight away. I was struggling to move around much but was still managing to breath through.

My midwife did my exam and at first wasn’t going to go into detail about how dilated I was as she said there were lots of other things to focus on and didn’t want me to get hung up on that (so obviously I presumed I was like 2cm dilated and had ages to go) so at this point I asked about pain relief but it turned out I was 9cm dilated and had breathed through most of my active labour so didn’t have time for anything except gas and air. From arriving at the hospital time seemed to fly by and shortly after my exam I had the urge to push, as soon as I started to push my waters broke and within 3 pushes our little girl was here. She arrived at 9.29am, three short hours after my first tightening. I had a small graze which required 1 stitch.

We were allowed to stay in our room for the required health checks and we were discharged at 5.30pm so we were home to introduce big brother before bath and bedtime. I feel so lucky to have had such a straight forward labour but I do feel that the knowledge I had of my body from taking a hypnobirthing course really was invaluable for helping me to cope and remain calm throughout both of my labours. I feel like I’ve probably missed loads out but it feels an achievement to even write everything down this time.