Birth story - Claire and baby Remi

*Trigger warning* - induction, episiotomy and ventouse and use of the word contractions as not negative for me.

I was being monitored closely due to IVF pregnancy and slightly high blood pressure and encouraged to consider induction after I had gone over 40 weeks.

At 40+3 went in to commence induction, however I was already 2-3 cm dilated and booked the next day to come in again.

40+4 patiently awaited the call to return to the hospital, I had a bath in the morning and they phoned around 9:45am to say come on it. We met our beautiful midwife Maja - she was incredibly empowering and kind, explaining everything clearly and allowing us to make decisions.

They started induction at 11:45 rupturing my membranes and we agreed that we would allow up to 4-6 hours to see if my body would kick off labour on its own. I engaged in lots of crab and stair walking, walks around the hospital, cuddling, hand expressing and bouncing on a birth ball and checking in hourly with Maja. Contractions had started but were irregular, I was using the tens machine for pain relief and really enjoyed up to this point.

My contractions slowly increased on their own to about 90 seconds apart and were becoming reasonably intense, the Dr visited and did a vaginal exam and I was only 3cm dilated and she wanted me to start on syntocin drip, however Maja advocated for us and said she would like us to keep going with our current approach.

The contractions continued to increase in intensity and within the next two hours I began experiencing extremely intense contractions and I was having the urge to push (I began to request pain relief and they provided some gas and air - which was mild but helpful!) - after a brief check they said I was fully dilated and encouraged me to push when the urge came. I was on all fours over a birth ball after trying a couple of different positions and had a lovely student midwife rubbing my back. At this point my second stage stalled a little and whilst they could see her head, she did not seem to be progressing.

At 1.5 hours of pushing they had the Dr assess, I changed up positions on the bed/side, kneeling over bed head despite incredibly strong contractions and my best attempts to push I was not making any progress. At this point we discussed the option of the ventouse and an episiotomy to accompany. We considered our options and agreed to proceed as I was tiring and was lacking energy to push that I needed in those final moments.

After a series of pushes/pulls she was out at 10:15pm. She needed a slight detangling of the cord and her hand was up by her face with the cord holding it in position, which they said may have contributed to the difficult pushing.

Dad cut the cord and we had 3 hours of skin to skin before they completed any checks, Remi took to breastfeeding very quickly and spent a good amount of time in those first 3 hours getting used to sucking.

She then got all her checks 3.87 kg and 52 cm long. She slept for a good part of the night and we were moved to the antenatal ward, where Dad had to say goodbye (due to covid policy).