Birth story - Amy and baby Edith

My maternity leave began earlier than most, at 32 weeks, as I'm a teacher and the 6 week holidays began before my maternity leave officially started, although I was very lucky with this, it also gave me more time to think about giving birth and as the days went on I started feeling very anxious about it. A work friend had given me a hypnobirthing book and another had recommended the positive birth company digital pack. Originally I dismissed these, however, becoming more anxious I decided to give it a go.

After the first few videos I was completely invested and knew this was going to have a really positive impact on the rest of my pregnancy and birth. I started telling anyone who would listen all the science behind giving birth and the information about oxytocin and adrenaline, I was fascinated and really surprised about how informative it all was. Everything was explained so clearly and I felt so well informed about the whole process. For some reason I expected it to be completely separate to how the midwives would explain birth but when I went to the antenatal classes I found lots of what I was finding out during the hypnobirthing course was also being said by the midwives.

On the Thursday night, 4 days past my due date I felt different, I needed the toilet frequently in the night and noticed my plug was slowly coming away. I kept calm and left my husband to sleep, in the morning I didn’t tell him I thought things were starting to happen, I wanted him to go to work so he didn't have to start his paternity leave until the following week. I knew I was going to see the midwife later that morning anyway.

My midwife examined me and said I was already 4cm dilated, she could feel babies head and she thought things would start soon. Usually I would have been straight on google, panicking, but I trusted my body. My husband immediately rushed home from work and was surprised when he got home at how calm I was. We ended up going shopping and had a coffee in a café in the early evening. I wanted to keep busy and I felt ok to do so. Looking back now I cant believe I went out and carried on with my normal day, my waters could have gone at any moment. But I guess it shows just how relaxed I was about the whole situation- thanks to the hypnobirthing!

As soon as we arrived home, things ramped up and I decided to put the tens machine on and start measuring how far apart each contraction was incase the midwives asked me when I rang. I was struggling to time them, this was because they were so regular I was hardly having any breaks between them. We rang the birthing centre and they told me to have a bath, keep monitoring my contractions, and ring back in 2 hours or when my waters had broken, 10 minutes later I started with an uncontrollable urge to push. That's when I knew we should probably be heading to the birth centre! I randomly demanded an apple cutting up and then we headed over to the birth centre (After waiting for my husband to eat his tea- which he since told me gave him crippling indigestion- I'm so glad he didn't tell me at the time, can't say I'd be too sympathetic! 😜)

On arrival at the birth centre at about 7.30pm, I was examined and told I was fully dilated. I was given gas and air and then the birthing pool was filled. My waters still had not broken. I got into the pool and continued to let my body push naturally, also using the downbreathing technique which I found really useful. I was in the pool for 1 hour 20, trusting and allowing my body to do all the work. I don't remember panicking or doubting myself at any point throughout labour. I think this is because I was so well informed about the whole process. At this point my waters had still not broken and I could feel the sack of fluid inbetween my legs between contractions, she said I could pop them myself, but I didn't want to!

At 9.21pm, our beautiful baby was born, still in the sack. Our midwife told us this was extremely lucky, and said she would never die at sea apparently! We didn't find out the gender during pregnancy so it was lovely for my husband to look and tell me I had given birth to a baby girl. (He did have to ask the midwife to double check incase he was wrong😂 ). I was so proud and so excited for a brand new chapter with our baby girl, Edith Lily.