Birth story - Debbie and baby Zoë

*Trigger warning* - use of the word contraction

I finally have the time to share my birth story - it has been a while.

So my pregnancy was quite straight forward. I had very bad nausea in the first trimester up until 16/17 weeks, my second trimester was nice and in my third trimester I had bad heart burn. I tried to stay as active as I could, for me that meant going on evening walks with my husband nearly every day in the third trimester and Yoga in the second trimester. The baby was in the right position from week 28.

I was quite scared of birth and of having a traumatic experience, since I am not very good with pain, so I wanted to try hypnobirthing to calm my nerves and the course helped - afterwards I was even excited for labour to begin.

About a week before my due date I started to lose a little of my mucus plug, but at that time, I didn't know it was the mucus plug, because it was not that much at once. I had a few Braxton hicks in the week before my due date - but nothing major.

So, on my due date I accepted a sweep at my doctors and in the evening of that day, I lost some more of the mucus plug. I did not find the sweep painful at all. Two days after the due date, I had another appointment at my doctors and accepted a second sweep and went on a long walk with my husband that evening.

After our walk, we sat on the couch and watched a birth vlog of one of my favourite Youtubers and then I started to notice, that my leggings were a little wet. I thought, I might have wet myself a little and changed. Back on the couch, my new leggings were wet again and I thought, well that is strange. I wanted to get a towel from a cupboard and squatted down, in that moment a bigger puddle of water appeared beneath me and I realised that my waters had broken. I stayed quite calm, told my husband what was going on and we continued to watch TV and packed a few last minute things into our hospital bags.

About an hour after the waters broke, I started to get contractions and went on my yoga ball, did the upbreathing and my husband timed the contractions. They directly started at 3 minutes apart and stayed that way for the next 5 hours. After a while we went to the bedroom, dimmed all the lights and turned on a feel good movie. I was concentrating on my breathing, so I didn't really watch the film, but the atmosphere was nice and calm.

At about 4 am (6 hours since the contractions started) I had the feeling, that I really wanted to go to hospital now, the contractions were 2 minutes apart and were starting to get really painful. So, we drove to the hospital (15 minutes away) and parked directly up front. Walking was now really hard and once inside, the staff took me in a wheel chair up to the labour ward, stopping for every contraction, because it was easier to have them standing up.

As we arrived on the labour ward, they hooked me up to the monitor to watch the heartbeat on the CTG for half an hour and checked me, to see that I was already 5 cm dilated.

Before labour I wanted to go to this specific hospital, because they want as little interference as possible during birth and don't directly put a needle into your arm, once you arrive. But when I arrived there, I told them I wanted the needle as soon as possible, to get pain killers. So, they put the needle into my arm and said I would get the pain killers in about 30 minutes, because there was a shift change now.

These 30 minutes were the hardest part of labour. At the time I didn't know that this was the transitioning phase. Upbreathing really helped, but still it was painful, since the contractions came on top of each other.

When the new staff finally came back to the room, I was already "mooing", so they checked me again, and to the surprise of everybody they told me I was fully dilated. I was so "in my zone" that I didn't really understand that I was about to give birth soon and just begged for pain killers - but of course that wasn't possible anymore.

The midwives hurried me to the bathtub, which was not really full yet, but still the warm water helped a lot with the pain. And that is when the "pushing" began. I laboured in the tub for about 45 minutes, but things weren't progressing enough, so the midwives told me to get out and try a few other positions. I went on all fours, standing, squatting, but best for me was sitting on a small block and that is were my beautiful baby girl Zoë Skye was born at 7:34am, after another 45 minutes of pushing.

I carried my baby (still attached to me) to the hospital bed, where they then cut the cord and I delivered the placenta within a few minutes. They checked me for injuries and to my surprise I had none! I has so happy and in love with my baby. And I couldn't believe my luck - I really had a dream birth.

I had a bit more bleeding than normal directly after birth, but the midwives got that under control quite quickly and I could go home with my baby girl the next day.

Postpartum, the beginning of breastfeeding and the first few weeks with a newborn were harder than I expected to be honest, but I am still so grateful for the positive experience.