Birth story - Becky and baby girl

*Trigger warning* - low Papp-A, bereavement of parent, membrane sweep, contractions (not a negative term to me), emergency buzzer for code blue.

Pregnancy was physically relatively smooth, I had nausea until the start of the second trimester and was very tired, but other than that I can’t complain.

Following our dating scan & screening bloods, low Papp-A was identified, so I commenced taking daily aspirin.

We had growth scans at 32 & 36 weeks which were normal, and a further growth scan at 40+4 following fundal height static growth, this scan was normal too.

I undertook a hypnobirthing teacher training course back in February (I’m a midwife), but wanted to undertake a course together with my husband, so we purchased the PBC package.

When I was almost 30 weeks pregnant, my mum very suddenly & unexpectedly passed away. Dealing with grief and planning a funeral whilst heavily pregnant was extremely difficult.

The pregnancy gave me a focus and I tried to use the relaxation techniques from PBC to help me manage as best as I could.

Labour -

I had a membrane sweep at 40+6.

I woke up the next day (41+0) with a mild dull period type ache , but went and got my nails done and had another pregnancy massage.

That evening before going to bed, I started having a few irregular contractions, but was able to breathe through them easily and then fell asleep.

41+1 -

I woke up at 04:30am with contractions 1:10, and felt the need to get up & go downstairs. My husband got up with me, sent off some work emails and started his paternity leave!

I used my exercise ball, TENs machine, hypnobirthing/spa music, and had my diffuser going with clary sage & lavender aromatherapy oils.

I spoke to to my midwife whilst in the bath around 10:00am, reporting still contracting 1-2:10, but also still irregular at this point.

We knew this could last for ages yet, or go off altogether.

I was managing well in the bath, eating toast & Pringles, drinking a smoothie and raspberry leaf tea.

My husband was reading relaxation scripts to me. I was using clary sage & lavender oils, and nipple stimulation to encourage contractions.

I then felt I needed a change of scenery & some fresh air, so at 11:30am we went out for walk, during which I was needing to stop for contractions & breathe through, we timed them coming as 2:10 more consistently.

I think I had spontaneous rupture of membranes whilst on our walk (felt little trickles in pad but no big gush).

We got back home from our walk and contractions suddenly felt much more intense and frequent.

I noticed my Bloody show in my pad & on wiping.

My husband rang labour ward in a panic at 12:35pm to say I was in labour.

He then shortly phoned them back again to ask if we could have a pool room.

He had made a fish finger sandwich for lunch, of which I managed 2 bites before saying we really needed to leave now.

We made our way into the hospital, I had my eyes closed & my TENs machine on full whack for the car journey. I was becoming increasingly more vocal.

We arrived on LRBU at 13:30pm and I was quickly examined, to be told I was FULLY DILATED!! Neither me nor the midwife were expecting me to be that far along. I was given entonox- great stuff! 😂

I then felt sudden pressure upon standing up & quickly got into the pool onto my knees, resting my elbows over the side.

I continued using entonox, and my husband was feeding me haribo & lucozade. We had Spa music playing.

Between contractions, I was looking over at my affirmation cards & a photo on the wall of my mum when she was pregnant with me.

It wasn’t long before I was pushing involuntarily.

Baby girl was born into the water at 15:20pm & brought between my legs up onto my chest.

I felt so POWERFUL!💪

She was not breathing at birth, so her cord was quickly clamped & cut by my husband.

The Emergency buzzer was pulled, and a ‘Code Blue’ put out, and the room filled quickly with people.

Baby needed inflation & ventilation breaths and some oxygen. The wait for her to cry seemed like the longest time in the world.

Meanwhile, I was helped to stand up in the pool & delivered my placenta into a bedpan.

As I got out of the pool, I had a brisk blood loss, so was helped onto the bed, was given the oxytocin injection & an in/out catheter, after which the blood loss settled.

The overall blood loss was however within normal limits.

We had a lovely long period of skin to skin & breastfeed, after which I had a few stitches for a small labial graze (no perineal tear! 👌🏻)

We had to stay in overnight for baby’s bloods to be repeated (normal), and for her NIPE to be done by a paediatrician the next morning.

Thankfully we were able to stay in the same room which meant my husband could stay with us.

We were discharged home at lunchtime so overall admitted for around 24 hours.

We were looked after my my colleagues incredibly well during pregnancy, labour and postnatally 🥰.