Birth story - Caroline and baby Digby

*Trigger warning* - contractions.

What a difference my second labour was to my first!

My first labour in October 2020, which I prepared for with PBC, was a planned homebirth which became a hospital transfer and eventual forceps delivery due to baby being back to back and my having reached my limit with exhaustion after being in labour for 28 hours! I’d spent most of my first pregnancy in lockdown and as such I wasn’t very active at all and spent a lot of time working from home but on the sofa as it was the only place I could get comfy! This time round I remained as active as I possibly could (which was pretty easy given I was running around after my first little boy who had just turned 17 months when Digby was born!) and I was also very aware of maintaining good posture and positions to ensure baby was in the best possible position for labour!

My first baby was 8lbs 13 and so I was fairly sure baby would be big! I had one growth scan at 28 weeks which estimated him to be just under 4lbs already, but declined further growth scans as I felt ignorance was bliss in this instance! I was just focused on practicing up breathing and keeping as relaxed as possible in the lead up to due date. I had had twinges and strong Braxton Hicks for a few weeks before due date but each time nothing further came of them. At 40weeks + 6 days my husband took the morning off work to look after our little boy and I booked myself in for a facial and massage. I started getting more Braxton Hicks whilst on the massage table and thought this could be the start of things because I was so relaxed! I had a normal rest of the day and went to bed early as usual.

I woke up at 3:45am needing the loo which had been my usual wake up time for a few weeks. Whilst on the loo I had my first surge, and a second quickly followed. I went to tell my husband I thought things were happening and I was going to go and bounce on the ball for half an hour to see if things progressed. I got the Freya app open but only managed to record a couple of contractions before they started coming thick and fast with only approximately 30 seconds in between! I was using this time to get dressed and ready to go, whilst using up breathing, and we quickly got our neighbour round to be on call for my eldest who was still sleeping, while my mother in law made her way to our house from an hour away!

We got in the car at 5am for the 30 minute drive (down country lanes) to the birth centre. About 25 minutes into the drive I started feeling the need to push!! My husband was on the phone to the midwives to let them know and ask them to fill the pool, and they advised him to stay on the line in case he needed to deliver the baby!!! We made it to the birth centre at around 5.30 and I somehow got into the pool… two huge contractions and two big pushes later, Digby was born at 5.38! And he was a whopper!

I caught him in the water and bought him to my chest while I tried to fathom what had just happened!

I had a 2nd degree tear which required stitches for which they gave me gas and air and I used up breathing again…this was actually far more painful than the whole labour had been!

We then stayed at the birth centre for a few hours and were home by 2pm to get our first baby up from his nap!

I’d spent so long worrying about childcare etc for my first but actually it couldn’t have gone any better!

Moral of the story- hypnobirthing is AMAZING and teaches you to cope with anything and second labours can be very, very different to the first!! I am sure keeping so active during pregnancy helped me have such a quick and relatively painless delivery and I’m so happy I spent so many months thinking about posture, even if it was difficult during the time!