Birth story - Charlii and baby Primrose

I will say from the start my birth plan did not go to plan at all but thank you to the digital pack, I can honestly say I wouldn’t change it!

Throughout the whole pregnancy I planned for a water birth at my local MLU and I even refused to watch the caesarean videos incase I “jinxed it”🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️however at 39+1 I had an episode of reduced movement. Baby was absolutely fine after monitoring however due to anxiety, after using BRAIN, when we were offered an induction we decided to accept.

We went into hospital the morning of Father’s Day rather naively thinking we would be meeting our little bundle that day! I was induced first thing and spent the whole day walking around the car park, watching films and bouncing on the ball with my husbands company eating lots of yummy treats!

At around 9pm that night I starting to get some surges which were more than manageable but fairly frequent (2 in 10)
The hospital have a policy not to monitor after 10pm to give you time to rest however as the surges hadn’t long set in they offered me “a quick monitor to put my mind at ease before bed”. However for some reason they couldn’t get a solid baseline for baby’s heart rate and it kept shooting up and dropping down (on reflection after, we believe it was a dodgy machine!)

After further monitoring and using BRAIN again we all decided it would be safer to take me through to labour and try to break my waters to get things going. Upon examination I was only 2cm and they couldn’t break my water as baby was still too high. After this examination my surges really intensified coming every 2 minutes and they were strong! At this point my hypnobirthing really set in and I got my mind into the right place knowing baby was okay and I would be meeting her soon. I laboured all through the night with no other pain medication, just using my up breathing (my husband commented at this point how calm I was!)

At 9am another doctor come in and wanted to try and break my waters again. Upon examination I was still only around 3-4cm and baby was still high however they did manage to break my waters. At this point baby decided she wanted to have her hand on her head, playing with her hair (a position I actually sleep in) with some help for gas and air the doctor managed to move her hand back and felt her head drop.

I continued to labour naturally through the day occasionally using gas and air to regulate my up breathing if I forgot myself. I kept positive knowing every surge was bringing me closer to meeting my baby.

However at 3pm upon examination, I was only 4cm and we discovered baby had bobbed back up (despite me being UFO the whole time) and her little hand had popped back on top of her head! The doctors tried again to move her arm however this caused me too much discomfort.

At this point I agreed to an epidural in hope they could move her arm and I could continue to labour naturally.
Unfortunately after much trying it was decided at 10pm by a very tired me, my husband and the doctors that the best way forward would be a caesarean.

We were very fortunate that it wasn’t busy and baby was in no danger so the doctors and anaesthetist were able to take their time, making sure I was calm and also discussing and honouring our wishes for my husband to tell me our babies sex, my calming music and positive affirmations to be played before we went into surgery and for me to remain practicing my hypnobirthing techniques throughout to stay calm.

At 00.39 on the 19th June our baby girl Primrose was born weight 7lb 1oz.

Throughout my entire pregnancy I was told my baby would be big, at the final growth scan at 37 weeks she was apparently measuring nearly 8lbs and it was because baby was actually small and I had more fluid that her arm had managed to get on top of her head!

Re writing her birth has just made me feel all the more positive about her birth and confirms to me that without the digital pack there is no way I could have stayed as calm as I did and made informed and thought about decisions.