Birth story - Chloe and baby girl

My positive birth story:

Throughout my pregnancy I was terrified of giving birth. I started the PBC course at around 30 weeks and then recapped a lot during the last few weeks of pregnancy.

I was due to be induced on my due date so was offered a sweep at 38+3, which I declined.

The next day at 38+4 I had lots of period like pain. I went on a long walk and spent a lot of time bouncing on my ball. I went to bed that evening and woke up at 1.30am to my waters breaking. I tried to get back to sleep and at about 2am I experienced my first contraction. I was surprised at how strong this felt so early and I got out of bed. I spent about an hour bouncing on my ball while timing my contractions on the Freya app. This quickly said that I was in established labour but I didn’t believe that it could be happening so quickly so I ignored it.

At 2.45am I ran myself a bath and lit some candles. I had one contraction in the bath and got straight back out. The pain was all in my back and I couldn’t handle being sat in the bath. I woke my partner up and we watched TV for about an hour while I rocked on all fours/sat on the ball. I was finding the pain really hard to deal with and my partner rang the hospital at 4am. I focused on my up breathing. They advised that I needed to go in because my waters had broken but said that I might need to go home.

The 15 minute drive to the hospital was pretty awful as I found it so difficult to sit down. The only position that was bearable was leaning over something, which obviously I couldn’t do in the car. I continued to try and focus on my up breathing. We arrived at 4.40am and headed to the assessment unit.

As soon as we got in the room I thought I felt the need to push but didn’t believe that was possible as I’d only been in labour a few hours. A midwife examined me and to our complete surprise I was 10cm dilated. This explained why I found the contractions so intense so early! My bags never made it out of the car.

I was wheeled through to delivery suite where I was given gas and air. At this point I think I experienced transition as I lost control for a bit and was asking for an epidural. The midwife told me that my baby had lots of hair and that there was no time for an epidural. I was told I could start pushing but I panicked a bit and didn’t do much for a while. At this point I was kneeling on the bed so the midwife suggested that I turn around and put my feet up to have something to push against but the pain in my back was so intense I couldn’t do it. I stayed on my knees leaning against the back of the bed the whole time. The gas and air helped me to focus and the midwife talked me through what I needed to do. After a couple of pushes my beautiful baby girl came into the world at 6.30am, 1hr20 after arriving at hospital and 5 hours after my waters broke.

We had immediate skin to skin and delayed cord clamping. I was given the injection for the placenta. The placenta wouldn’t come and I had 5 minutes left before I would need to have it removed in theatre. I gave baby to my partner and had an in out catheter to empty my bladder. I stood up to let gravity help and eventually the placenta was delivered. I had some minor tears so those were stitched up while I had skin to skin again. Baby was monitored for 12 hours because of my medication and we left hospital just before 8pm.

It was a truly wonderful experience and I’m so grateful for the PBC helping me to overcome my fear.