Birth story - Claire and baby girl

So it's taken me a whole week to be able to start writing this. I purchased the digital pack really early on in the pregnancy as I thought it might compliment my pregnancy yoga and settle some of my first time mum nerves.

As I was working a busy catering job watching the videos in the evening was a nice little bit of me time and I would fall asleep listening to the tracks 😊

All the way through the pregnancy everything was completely plain sailing, I had no complications and was all set to deliver in my local MLU hopefully in the pool. However as my due date got nearer there was still no sign of the little monkey but honestly it didn't bother me as I knew not to get too hung up on due dates.

Using brain I didn't accept a sweep until 40+7, and despite a few little cramps it came to nothing and neither did the second at 40+9...unfortunately as I approached 40+12 it was looking unlikely that the MLU would accept me so I booked in for an induction. This did initially break my heart a bit and I had a bit of a wobble as I'd never been into hospital for anything before. So the night before I focused my brain on relaxing, listening to the positive birth affirmations and looking forward to seeing my baby.

So we went to the hospital for 9am on 29/9 and the lovely midwife did another sweep and said that as I was just over 2cm dilated they were really optimistic that they could break my waters and I'd have a straightforward induction. So they transferred me straight to the Labour ward where around about midday they broke my waters. Thankfully they let me and my partner have a walk around then as I was starting to get cabin fever! So we walked around for half hour or so, went to Costa and I could already feel the surges starting to build unlike they had before.

So we headed back up to the Labour ward for monitoring and my partner started making the room as I'd like it, music playing, lights dimmed, rubbing lavender oil into me....the surges started getting a lot stronger and the monitor picked up that the baby was moving downwards very quickly so I opted for my tens machine to help me through each surge.

If I'm honest after this part everything happened so quickly that the details are a bit vague to me...after much fighting I opted to lay sideways on the bed as the surges were getting uncomfortable but then something told me to move on all fours and then I fully understood what the transition to pushing meant as it was like nothing I'd ever felt. But in my head I kept thinking this was too quick, I haven't even been induced yet! At this point I accepted some gas and air, still not sure how much pain relief it was but it definitely focused my breathing.... as did my partner who was right in front of me breathing with me.

So in the space of 3 and a half hours I delivered my beautiful little girl naturally with only the aid of tens machine and gas and air. We had the most amazing skin to skin time, first with me then my partner and he also cut the cord.

So even though everything happened so much quicker than I planned and some of my wonderful birth plan ideas went out the window there was so much I took from the digital pack that helped, especially the breathing as the midwife said she was amazed how calmly I breathed out her head, only sustaining a minor tear due the baby's hands.

So thank you so much to Siobhan and the positive birth community for giving me a wonderful first time labour ❤