Birth story - Ashley and baby Nora

On the 1st of April Lily Pebbles did an Instagram post about the positive birth company. I was 11 days till due date with my second baby. I had been lucky enough to have a first positive labour story of my own with number 1 so I had not been worried about the birth till this day.

As a nurse and manager of an elderly care ward myself, I was aware of Covid 19 just starting to escalate and having a large impact on our local services the days before I started on maternity leave. My pool birth at my local community hospital where I work was cancelled and we would have to go to the acute hospital about half an hour away. I sat and cried and phoned my husband at the sense of losing control. I read Lily's post and was diverted to your page. I quickly got the Freya app and watched some of your YouTube videos and read all the positive birth stories during that week of lock down (in between all of the homeschooling!) and felt very inspired by all these women. 

On Friday 10th I started getting horrendous pain in my right side. I knew this was unrelated to the baby but phoned the labour ward, who agreed to see me. I was admitted for a possibly kidney infection but they were unable to get an ultrasound due to a mix of being the bank holidays and coronovirus making things very busy. I started Intravenous antibiotics and oral morphine for the pain, which was unbearable and was longing for contraction pains! The following day still in pain and no husband (due to visiting restrictions) they said they would like to induce the baby in the next 24 hours incase the baby was the reason causing the pain in my kidney.

I would have usually been terrified of the thought  of being induced, but had read all of the positive birth stories coming out of the Covid-19 posts of all sorts of births and different plans and lack of plans. So I didn't panic but I was worried about how I would cope with both labour pain and flank pain at the same time. I was fortunate to also have a very lovely doctor who shared my concerns but also had a positive outlook.

Over Saturday afternoon I kept up analgesia and slept as much as I could to try and rest up incase I was going to have to put in the work later. While I was dozing I felt like I had tightenings in my stomach but it was hard to distinguish between the pain in my back with anything else but then at 5 my waters broke. The doctors and midwife then said we should look at induction soon. Due to having my waters break with my first child and labour starting soon after with quite a speedy delivery. I was confident to try and hold off for a couple of hours and try to get things going myself. I had my last dose of oral morphine, slept for half an hour and then put my headphones in and started walking/dancing round the ward listening to my labour playlist and soon started having to do the up breathing I'd only learnt from you in 5 minutes a couple of days before. I couldn't believe how something so simple helped so much.

I got through to the delivery ward and was 5cm. I was allowed to phone my husband to come in. With half an hour drive, he only made it with 20 minutes to spare. There was no time for the pool but I went with the flow of what my body wanted to do. I hadn't thought of positions out of water but the midwife recognised this baby was going to come quite swiftly and guided me up on the bed. At this point I went for the gas and air and just trusted in my body and the midwives and knew that going with this flow would allow me to eventually meet our baby!

Fortunately after she was born and with another days antibiotics the kidney pain also resided so we were allowed to come home last night. 

I have got so much help from just your Instagram page and the 2 breastfeeding workshops I've watched today. Postpartum pack is purchased and I'm so pleased and loved up and would recommend to anybody. Especially at the moment when everyone must be feeling a little isolated.