Birth story - Abby and baby boy

My husband and I agreed that we needed to go to antenatal classes, with little knowledge of the stages of labour and me with moderate anxiety about vaginal birth, at around 6months pregnant I was considering opting for a planned C-section to avoid vaginal labour. Our antenatal classes were good, they helped us understand our options more and helped us to start piecing things together, however I still felt anxious about labour and so I started to research hypnobirthing.

At 7 and a half months pregnant I purchased the PBC book, and was hooked. I read it in 2 days and was blown away by how much it made sense, the ‘science’ part along with the positive affirmations changed the way I felt about my upcoming labour completely. I bookmarked multiple pages for my husband to read and I went onto download the digital pack. I practiced different elements every day; in the car on the way to work, in bed before going to sleep and more so when I started my maternity leave.

At this point I felt so much more informed and confident about the prospect of birth and actually started to look forward to it. I just hoped that everything I had read and learnt would come to fruition.

Our “official” due date came and went and as much as the theory tells you it’s just an estimate, it is very hard not to over think! I was trying to enjoy the time as much as possible, remaining active, doing some decorating and going for long dog walks, also trying to keep cool in the summer heat.

On 13th September at 40+5 after a lovely afternoon at my parents house, sitting in their garden in the sun, I felt a small twinge just as my husband and I were going out shopping at 6.20pm. I didn’t think much of it at this stage as it wasn’t strong, and I’d been having minor twinges all week..

We got home around 7pm and I cooked dinner. I had a couple of light twinges (I now know they were surges) during dinner and at around 8pm I went upstairs as I thought I should probably try and relax and maybe get some sleep.

I had to do a couple of bits, like wrap up a birthday present for a friend, so I lit some candles and put the Freya app on, listening to the guided relaxation.

Things then started to escalate very quickly. I went to the toilet at 9.15pm and had what we thought was a ‘show’, but there was a lot of fresh blood, so we called the birthing unit and they asked us to go in for checking due to the fresh blood. Just after getting off the phone my waters broke around 9.30pm and the surges became stronger and quicker. Getting from the house into the car was challenging, but I kept the Freya app going and just concentrated on my up breathing. I had around 6 surges in the car on the way (a 15minute journey), and more outside the hospital door, they were well past ‘3 in 10’ at this point.

It was about 9.50pm when we got into the hospital, and we were shown to an examination room. I explained my birthing preferences and declined an internal examination. Things were feeling more intense as I concentrated on my up breathing and after about 45minutes I felt the need to “push”. As I switched to down breathing, trusting in my body, they checked the babies heart rate which was lowering. At this point I was still in the small examination room. I wanted a water birth as part of my birthing preferences, however they needed to monitor the baby closer so they moved me into a consultant led delivery room, and said once they knew what was happening I could maybe move later.

The hospital staff were great, although they were very skeptical that I was in the down stages of labour at this point, and explained it could be the positioning of the baby making it feel like I need to push. They asked again to do an internal examination, and I, using BRAIN, once again declined, trusting I knew what my body was telling me. It didn’t matter too much by this point, because when they took a look, the midwife said she could see the head! They then soon set everything up for delivery. I continued with down breathing, concentrating hard on that and nothing else.

The babies heart rate continued to go down with contractions (as expected) but still wasn’t returning to the normal level. At this point the staff said he needed to come quicker because of his heart rate, so they asked to perform an episiotomy and use forceps, which from doing a lot of previous research I knew I really didn’t want. Again, using BRAIN, I asked them if we could wait a little longer, and the consultant agreed. I knew we weren’t far, and after just a few more surges and continued down breathing, our baby boy was born, at 11.51pm on 13th September, intervention and pain relief free, just 5 and a half hours from the very first twinge, and only just over 2 hours from my waters breaking (and us being sure I was in labour).

The delivery was not the dim-lit, waterbirth that I would have preferred, but I used the Freya App and breathing techniques throughout, as well as using the tools and knowledge to make the right decisions for us, I trusted my body and did things naturally which was the most important thing for me. I found the whole experience positive, empowering and just amazing.

We had delayed cord clamping and around 2 hours of immediate skin-on-skin, which was the most beautiful euphoric time.

I want to thank the PBC for completely changing my perception of labour and making the birth of my son the most amazing experience of my life.