Birth story - Alice and baby Edith

Possible Triggers – Use of word contraction, sweep, induction, 2nd degree tear

Born during lockdown 3.0

Background:

I had an extremely positive birth with my son 2 years ago thanks to finding out about hypnobirthing and the Positive Birth Company during my pregnancy with him. In short, I went into labour following a sweep at 41 weeks. I had a long latent stage of labour (around 50 hours) but active labour was fairly short (around 5 hours). I got my wish of having a natural water birth on the MLU at our local hospital and spent the majority of my labour at home. I was 9cm dilated on arrival to the MLU! I had no pain relief other than the use of the birth pool and using the up-breathing technique. I required coached pushing and my son came out very quickly at a good weight of 9lb 5oz – this resulted in a second degree tear and a fair number of stitches. But overall it was an amazing birth and my hope was to achieve the same thing again with our second baby.

Fast forward 2 years. I had a straight forwards and low risk pregnancy throughout, other than low Feratin levels and being Group B Strep Positive, I was blessed with very minimal interventions and zero growth scans.

With my 1st baby arriving 9 days “late”, I was adamant to not focus too much on my “due date” with this pregnancy and we kept the actual date to ourselves except for very close family. This seemed to help with my mindset and I felt that I was much more relaxed about the date coming and going than I was when it happened with my first baby. I felt confident in refusing the first sweep offered to me at 40+3 weeks, wanting to give my baby as much chance to come naturally and in her own time. However, by the time I got to 41 weeks I was beginning to really struggle with feeling uncomfortable. I had my 41 week community midwife appointment when I was 41+3 and accepted my first sweep on that day, knowing that if it didn't work within the 48 hours then I would have made it to the induction day that had already been booked by the midwife. After the sweep, my midwife told me that my cervix was 1cm dilated (likely due to this being my 2nd baby) and still quite posterior. I was still deciding whether to accept the induction or not at this point but thought it best to take it day by day. My parents came to stay with us a few days before I was booked in for induction to act as childcare for our 2 year old – our family all live 2 hours away so having them living with us took a lot of pressure and stress away.

Over the next two days I was having increased amounts of Braxton Hicks, losing parts of my mucous plug and having bouts of diarrhoea. There were so many times where I thought “this could be the start” and it never turned into anything, I was beginning to feel like induction was the likely outcome for us. Initially I was not happy about the idea of being induced – particularly with Covid restrictions in the hospital and knowing that I would have to do a lot of it without my husband next to me for support. However, I was so keen to have another water birth and our hospital policy is that if you are 42 weeks or over you automatically become “high-risk” and therefore consultant led with no water births allowed! With this knowledge I decided that having to be induced at 40+12 would give me a good chance to have the birth that I so wanted. On the morning of my induction, we arrived at the hospital at 9am, my husband walked me to the ward and we said our goodbyes at the doors – a difficult moment for both of us.

After a quick chat with one of the midwives on the ward they decided to move me straight down to the Birth Centre as the ward was extremely busy and they thought that my induction would be fairly straight forwards and fast with me being so “overdue”. This was fine by me as the ward was not hypnobirthing friendly in the slightest and I was already starting to feel anxious and out of control!

I was led to the birth centre where I had my son and shown to a 2 bed triage room which was empty at the start. This immediately made me feel so much better. The midwife introduced herself to me and we discussed the plan going forwards. I had two options – if my cervix was “favourable” enough for her to break my waters then she could, however this would mean I would need to go into active labour within 4 hours before they would then need to introduce the hormone drip. The second option was to insert the Propess Pessary to see if that would be enough to kick-start things. Because I was wanting to keep things as natural as possible and keep to the plan of a water birth, I decided to have the pessary and avoid being hooked up to monitors and drips as much as possible. When the midwife inserted the pessary she informed me that I was 1cm dilated with my cervix still quite far back and posterior. This made me feel more confident with my decision to accept the induction as there was no change in my cervix from 48 hours previous.

The pessary was inserted at 10am – this was uncomfortable but not painful – I used my up-breathing throughout this procedure which worked a treat. After this, baby needed to be monitored on the CTG machine for 1 hour, I was then told I could go for a walk so I met my husband who had been sat in the car and we walked round the grounds with coffees and snacks to keep us going! It was bitter cold (about -3!) but I was enjoying his company so much. It felt like we walked miles! He was told he could come for a 2 hour visit later that day so he went home to see our son and I set myself up with Netflix and bounced on a birth ball. By this point I was experiencing irregular tightenings but I was still able to talk through these. I was hooked back on the CTG machine (baby needed to be monitored every 4 hours due to being induced) and the tightenings were starting to increase in frequency but remained short in length. My husband came back and we enjoyed our 2 hour visit together and when his time was up we went for another quick walk around the grounds before he left to go home. In that time another lady had come and gone from the triage room. One of the midwives quietly told me that she had moved her to another bed so I could have the room to myself so I could “get in the zone” (she was a big hypnobirthing advocate!). Overnight the decision was made to remove the pessary as I was getting 6-7 tightenings every 10 minutes and baby’s heart rate was increasing and showing signs of distress. The plan was to see if the tightenings would continue – the hope was for them to regulate and increase in intensity. I had a few hours of pacing the room and timing the pains – I was reluctant to call them contractions at this point as I was not needing to fully focus and breathe through them. They slowed down but did start to increase in both time and intensity and after a while I was finding myself using the up breathing technique.

My midwife offered me a bath in one of the birth pools which I accepted feeling like it would either slow things down slightly so I could get some rest (it was 2am and I was exhausted!) or speed things up. Amazingly she led me to the same room and pool that I gave birth to my son in. This was an extremely strange feeling but also hugely comforting. I bobbed about for an hour or 2 experiencing further pains that seemed to be slowing down. I decided to try and get some rest at this point so that I was as energised as possible for the next steps and managed to get a couple of hours sleep in bed.

Day 2 in hospital, I woke up after managing 2-3 hours of sleep with no pains waking me. This threw me and I unfortunately got myself in a bit of a negative head-space. I felt completely disheartened that I had been there 24 hours with little to no progression (or so it felt at the time!) and as a result I was extremely tearful. Soon after that I met my new midwife for the day. She had a student working with her who had been looking after me the previous day which was nice for continuity. She gave me two options; having another pessary inserted for a further 12 hours and see if it restarted things or examining me and seeing if it would be possible to break my waters. I opted for her to break my waters if my cervix allowed as I wasn’t convinced the pessary would develop things much further.

She examined me and told me that my cervix was 2cm dilated, thin and stretchy and she thought that breaking my waters should be possible. I was relieved to hear that the tightenings I had experienced from over the last 24 hours had actually done something! We went ahead and she managed to break them after a fair bit of fiddling “you’ve grown tough membranes” were her words!! This happened at 10:50am and she cannulated me and immediately went to get the IV antibiotics ready for the Group B Strep so that we could get the dose administered in time for baby to be born (I needed to have received a dose 2 hours prior to giving birth for it to have chance to pass through to the baby). I called my husband and casually told him to make his way over to the hospital – I honestly thought we would be pacing the hospital grounds to try and get things going before the 4 hour time slot ran out. He took my relaxed tone for what it was and calmly drove to the hospital (25 minute drive), calling his mum to have a chat and stopping to talk to one of our friends who he happened to bump into in the hospital grounds!

He text me once he arrived to find out where I was up to and got a short reply from me “can’t talk, contractions too strong”. At this point he was stood outside the Birth Centre and could see my room through the glass panel. He says that he could tell that there was a lot of activity and he knew things must have progressed in the time it took for him to get to the hospital.

Meanwhile, my contractions started immediately after my waters were broken and the intensity quickly ramped up to the point that I knew things were progressing very quickly. There was very little break between the contractions and I was unable to use my Freya app that I was so looking forwards to as I could only focus on getting through each contraction and nothing else! I managed to keep to my up-breathing technique despite not having my husband (or Freya!) to count through and support me. The student midwife was having to continuously monitor the baby on the CTG machine as they apparently needed 10 minutes of a good trace before I could get in the birth pool. She was having trouble getting the trace due to the strength of the contractions and me being unable to keep still! As a result she was holding the pads in place whilst I bounced on my ball and breathed through each contraction. In hindsight I wish I had questioned the need for this monitoring but I know that I was not able to due to the intensity of the contractions. If my husband was able to be there to support me then I know he would have been able to ask and question the need for this – unfortunately he was still stood outside the Birth Centre in the corridor!!

Whilst myself and the student were in the triage room and my husband was still outside, the other midwife had started me on the IV antibiotic drip and was getting the birth pool ready. I was told that my husband could join us once I was transferred to the birth room which now, looking back I struggle to understand as I was in a large two-bed triage room on my own. I felt like the support from my husband during those contractions would have been a great help to me – he was also feeling extremely helpless and upset that he was not able to be by my side. However, the power of hypnobirthing helped me manage it all completely on my own – I was able to stay calm and in control of it all.

After a little while I could feel the change in my contractions and I remember saying to the midwife, “I think baby is coming, now!” - and her reply was, “yes, I think so too”. They asked me if I could walk to the pool room – I tried to stand up and found this almost impossible so I knew there was no hope that I could walk! They got me a wheelchair and I ended up having to kneel on it backwards as I felt unable to sit down. At this point all I had on was paper pants and a bra – so they threw a sheet over me and literally ran with me through the birthing unit. I knew at this point that I had already transitioned as I could feel my body pushing as they were running me to the room. As we entered the birth room I remember saying, “I’m pushing!”. By this point my husband had been shown to the room and was waiting for me. He heard me coming and was in complete shock that I had got to this stage in such a short space of time.

Unfortunately they were unable to get the 10 minutes of monitoring they needed for me to get in the birth pool, but in all honestly I had got past the point of wanting or needing the water so was quite happy to give birth on dry land. I was whizzed into the room at such great speed that the student crashed the wheelchair into the bed and was so apologetic – I really couldn’t have cared less – I just knew the baby was coming, and fast! I managed to get onto the bed with some assistance and the midwife called for help as the room still wasn’t ready, about 5 other staff members came in and got everything organised – my midwife taking the lead and doing a wonderful job in coordinating the whole thing. She told me she could see the baby’s head and to “listen to my body” and continue doing what I was doing. I stayed in the zone, this time with my husbands hand to hold (hurrah!!). I was offered gas and air which I rejected as I didn’t feel like I needed it and remembered it making me feel horrible when I tried it during my first labour.

My body was taking over, almost like it was expelling the baby. It felt very primal and instinctive – an amazing feeling. Just five minutes after I entered the room, Edith Lily was born – 1 hour 29 minutes after my waters were broken!

My husband was in shock and I felt like a superwoman! I had gone from 2cm dilated to having a baby in my arms in less than 1.5 hours. I suffered a small tear which needed 2 stitches – much less severe than the tear with my son and I had a physiological delivery of the placenta within 5-10 minutes. Both my husband and I enjoyed a number of hours of skin-to-skin with our new baby before he left to go home to our eldest. Myself and Edith were transferred to the post-natal ward so she could be observed overnight – this was necessary because I didn’t receive the IV antibiotics in time before she made her grand entrance into the world!!

I want to thank the Positive Birth Company for yet again providing me with the knowledge, power and tools I needed to have another amazing and empowering birth. I honestly think about the births of both my children with such positive and happy thoughts and will continue to be amazed at what my body was able to do.