Birth story - Abby and baby boy

I had a really great & straight forward pregnancy, I had little nausea in my first trimester and was low risk throughout. At 39 weeks I was booked in for a sweep, I wanted to avoid induction so thought the sweep might move things on naturally, although the midwife could feel baby’s head, the sweep was unsuccessful due to my cervix not being soft enough and positioned wrong… they also thought baby had stopped growing so referred me for a scan and rebooked my sweep for 3 days later.. the growth scan showed baby was fine and growing well. Over the 3 days, I walked loads, ate dates, and had lovely acupressure from Hubby. If you’re trying to bring labour on naturally, try walking with one foot on the curb! My second sweep was a success, and the midwife predicted that baby would come before my induction which was 4 days later! The following day, my mucus plug started to come away gradually up until I went into labour which was 2 days later.

Labour : 5 minutes before the England final in the Euros I finished dinner and felt a mild cramp, I didn’t want to get my hopes up so carried on pottering around until they got more intense around 90 minutes later! I started to time the surges and took some paracetamol. Surges were every 4-6 minutes, lasting between 20-40 seconds, hubby ran me a bath and put some candles on, sprayed the bathroom with liquid yoga spray and played positive affirmations. This helped for a little while and then I moved into our bedroom around 11pm and sat upright in bed, the Freya app helped massively with up breathing and remembering affirmations. I managed to ride it out until 5am, at which point I had a 4 minute long contraction and wanted to get checked.

We went to hospital, I was assessed and was 5cm dilated, surges were coming on really strong so they took me to the MLU and ran the pool, 4 hours passed and I was getting through the surges by up breathing, they were 2-5 minutes and very intense, this ended up being because baby’s head was super low in my pelvis! I got assessed 4 hours later, at 10.30am, and I had only dilated by 1cm and my waters still hadn’t broken. I used BRAIN and decided to have pethidine to help with the pain… in all honesty it didn’t really help but it did make me a little more drowsy! My waters were broken for me and this took the pressure on my pelvis to another level! During this most intense 2 hours, I went onto the bed, hubby fed me Haribo and counted me in with my up breathing, I also had gas & air which helped in between surges. 2 hours passed and I’d only dilated by 1cm and was now at 7cm, the midwife advised that she thought baby would be here by 8pm… 8 hours later!

I went back in the pool at 1pm and had an urge to push, the midwife advised not to as I was only 7cm but I went with it and could feel baby’s head, 4 pushes later at 1.54 and I picked our baby boy up out of the water! It was the most amazing feeling, and all of a sudden I felt completely normal again. Our beautiful baby boy had arrived! His cord snapped on his way out so unfortunately we couldn’t have delayed cord clamping but Hubby was still able to cut the cord. I had mostly first degree tears and one second degree.

We had the famous tea & toast and had skin to skin contact with our baby boy. The PBC book and digital pack helped us both massively prepare for labour. I can’t recommend it enough.