Birth story - Chess and baby Ella

Positive Birth Company you did it again! I can’t thank you enough for helping me achieve a second positive birth experience after an anxious second pregnancy and a lot of nervousness about giving birth for a second time despite having a positive first birth. I used your digital pack with my son over his 33 hour labour in March 2019 and have just used it again for our daughter and her 6.5 hour labour on 14 September 2020.

My contractions started at 2:30pm but I wasn’t sure if it was definitely labour as they were irregular and not too strong. As the first part of labour with my son had been so long I carried on with my day going to get petrol, playing with my son when he came home from the childminder, and cooked dinner. I used the upwards breathing and stayed upright, forward and open to manage them as they became more regular and stronger. My partner got home about 5:30pm and I tried to eat some dinner but couldn’t manage all of it so I decided to lay on the sofa with my TENS machine (bloody adore that thing), relaxing spa music, candles and lavender diffuser from about 6-8pm, sipping Lucozade and water.

At around 8pm I told my partner he needed to call the pregnancy line to go in to the birth centre. We got to the hospital (after some unexpected road closures!) at 8:37pm according to the car park ticket and went to birth centre who were expecting us. However I had to be scanned to make sure she was definitely head down as she had been breech at 37 weeks (but very luckily turned the next day after I was hanging upside down on the sofa, using heat and ice, creating my own positive affirmation card for my bedroom called ‘Head down, baby!’ etc (huge thanks again for the tips on breech babies) so I narrowly avoided the ECV thank goodness). Annoyingly I had to be wheeled up to maternity triage for scanning, stopping every couple of minutes for intense contractions, but the scan luckily revealed she was still head down and ‘deeply engaged’ so I was taken back down to the birth centre.

My partner had been setting up the room with candles, music etc while I was gone and as soon as I got in the room I ‘needed a wee’ then felt I needed to push so quickly got into the pool. Four very intense pushes later our little lady arrived at 9:04pm. She was so speedy they hadn’t had time to examine how dilated I was and I think everyone was surprised at how quickly she came. There was nothing I could do apart from trust my body to get on with it.

I’m so happy I mostly laboured at home again in my safe, relaxing environment using hypnobirthing and adored the haven we created in the birth centre room for our water birth delivery and post birth bubble.

I can’t thank you enough and I will continue to recommend your digital pack to anyone I know who gets pregnant as I don’t know what I would have done without it.