Birth story - Dani and baby Cash

Cash born 12.34pm 7/6/19 9lbz 11oz

As a mother of 4, I have been lucky enough to experience progressively more positive birth experiences with each baby, but my last (and final!) birth really topped them all! 

All of my babies have been born ‘post dates’ (10, 5, 14 and 11 days late) which has been tough as I’m not naturally a patient person and with my last two births nearly ruined my desperate wish of having home births. The positive birth company digital pack really helped me to let go of some of my anxiety about the possibility of needing to be induced and helped to feel empowered to be able to have the calm and gentle birth I wanted even if I did have to go into hospital for induction.

With my first baby I had a heavily medicalised high risk pregnancy and birth with epidural and episiotomy which took a very long time to heal from physically! 

With my second child I knew emotionally I wanted to improve on my first birth and actually felt excited to change my experience. This ended in a much nicer birth centre birth but I was still heavily dependant on gas and air. 

Third time round and I eventually got the home birth I so desperately wanted at 14 days ‘overdue’. But this time I wanted the birth to top them all!  

I bought the digital pack at 28weeks and had completed it within 2 weeks, raving about it to every pregnant woman I subsequently met as it made me feel so empowered and excited about my upcoming birth I just couldn’t contain myself. I watched positive birth videos constantly with such a smile on my face imagining my own upcoming positive birth with such eager anticipation! I listened to the positive affirmations in the bath and regularly fell asleep to the MP3’s. I downloaded Freya as soon as it went live and couldn’t wait to use it as part of my labour ‘tool box’. 

My due date came and went with no sign of anything happening but as I had been late with all 3 of my previous babies I was expecting this and wasn’t too impatient. By 7 days over I was pretty fed up but still declined any sweeps as I just wanted to let my body do it’s own thing. I informed my midwife I didn’t want to be induced until 14 days ‘over’ as I knew my babies like a little longer to ‘cook’.  

On Thursday 6th I’d had heavy period pains in the early hours of the morning so my husband stayed home from work and we went to a local shopping centre with our toddler after dropping our eldest two at school. We did lots of walking, had a lovely lunch and generally enjoyed some time with our youngest. 

The period pains continued when we got home and I spent the evening bouncing on my ball, doused in clary sage oil and went to bed early. 

By 2am I woke, quite uncomfortable with period pain, so went downstairs and watched some TV, using Freya to keep an eye on what was happening. By 4am no pattern was developing and the discomfort wasn’t increasing so I decided to go back to bed. Within 10 minutes of lying down I had two much stronger surges and knew that this was the real thing. I woke my husband, contacted my mum to come and take the children to her house and called the hospital to ask if a midwife could come out to me (we live on a farm that’s a little tricky to find so with this being baby number 4 I was advised to call as soon as something started to ensure a midwife could get to me in time, advice I should have remembered a little further into my labour).

The midwife arrived and after feeling my tummy and checking baby’s heartbeat etc asked if she could examine me. I wasn’t really keen but agreed as I wanted to know what was happening. I nearly knocked the poor midwife off of the bed with my knees in discomfort as she tried to feel how dilated was, but as my cervix was still quite far back she said she could barely reach it let alone tell how dilated it was, which didn’t surprise me as I’d had 3 unsuccessful sweeps in my 3rd pregnancy. I told the midwife I was sure baby would be born today and felt like things would progress once my mum had picked up my children and my husband and I had set up the birth space, but as all the excitement had stalled things a little, I was happy for her to leave and I’d call back when things got going.

Well that was exactly what happened! Once the kids had been picked up my husband went about setting up our playroom with the birthing pool, covering the place in waterproof sheeting and towels and getting my essential oils diffusing whilst I had a bath.

My husband had stocked up on snacks so after a soak I just wandered around the house Up breathing, eating and drinking as I wanted and enjoying the calmness I felt. I was timing each surge on Freya but being so relaxed about the whole thing failed to notice around 10.45am that it had turned green and I was in established labour! By 11ish I finally twigged that each surge had become over a minute in length and so instructed hubby to fill the birth pool and asked him to call for a midwife. This is when it all got a bit chaotic! 

I had coped so well to this point with just ‘up’ breathing and all of a sudden I had a proper wobble and told my husband I badly needed gas and air or I wasn’t going to be able to carry on! He reassured me that because I was coping so well I hadn’t realised how quickly things had developed and I was doing brilliantly breathing through surges, so just to keep my cool until the midwife arrived.

The last 20 minutes went by in a flash a bit like this:

• Midwife arrived (finally) and introduced herself to which I sort of barked my need for gas and air.

• Once the gas and air was set up she passed me the tube, I took a huge pull on the mouth piece and told her my body was pushing.

• She looked at me disbelieving and asked me to lay down so she could examine me.

• I told her I couldn’t as his head was about to come out. At this point she looked down below and said rather startled that if I wanted to give birth in the pool I needed to get in quickly.

The water wasn’t even past the minimum line but I awkwardly flopped myself over the side into the pool and with one push his head was born, another two and he shot out into the water and I scooped him up onto my chest. The midwife had arrived at 12.15 and by 12.34 Cash was born weighing a very healthy 9lbs 11. I literally couldn’t believe he had arrived!! 

I 100% attribute my calmness and coping to the techniques the PBC digital pack (which I absolutely rave about to every pregnant woman I meet) gives you and the information about how the body works in labour makes such a difference to your mindset! 

It was the dream birth of my last ever baby and I couldn’t have asked for a more positive experience! Thank you so much!