Birth story - Elizabeth and baby Astrid

This was the best experience of my life 😍😭🙌🏼

I proudly present to all, my beautiful daughter
🎀 Astrid Jade ✨

It was literally the birth of my dreams and the one I prepared for months with the hypnobirthing techniques and breathing plus meditation, yoga, nutrition and exercise.

I've always been a very positive person so I knew the more I surrounded myself with positive birth stories and experiences and just general happy thoughts, the more at ease and happy my body and baby were going to be (oxytocin).

I'm not saying everything was a breeze or a piece of cake during pregnancy, I had my challenges as well, but I was blessed to have a nice and low risk journey as I trained my mind so my body would follow 💗
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So, it all started that same day on Friday morning (28-August), a day after my 38weeks appointment. I started having mild “periods pains” (surges), but I really didn’t pay much attention to it as I kept busy tidying up my house and listening to empowering audios on YouTube...

By noon, those "pains" really started to feel a bit more, so my mind and attention just focused on them; hence why I started timing them with my Freya app. I was honestly a bit on denial as my husband and I still needed to move out to our new house (on Sept 5th) and we also had a dinner reservation for a Mexican restaurant (on Monday Aug 31st)... 🤣🙈 So I wasn't quite sure that it was "the real thing" lol. But then I had my "bloody show" so I knew things were really starting (I just wasn't prepared for everything to move as fast as it did 🙈)...

My husband came home early from work (3:00pm), I had time to take a nice relaxing shower, shave and eat while powering through those surges 🙌🏼 We headed to Maternity Assessment at about 6:30pm, arriving at 7 and I was checked at 7:30, where the midwife told me I was already 6cm dilated!!! 🤯 They were taken a bit by surprise (so was I), as I was really taking it like a champ 💪 still being able to chat as normal and using my breathing techniques just when I felt an surge. So luckily hubby was able to stay with me the whole time.

I was moved to my room with the biggest pool they had (as I was told) and established labour started at around 8:30-ish

Now this is were it gets a bit intense... As it was a little "traumatic" for my husband (according to him 🤣 bless him). For I started screaming lol, but not a horrible scary scream, it was more some sort of loud grunting noises with some type of primal screaming that I seriously couldn't control. My body just took over! They offered me paracetamol and gas and air but I couldn't be bothered as I kept telling myself "I'm one step closer to meeting my baby, I've got this." My mind was honestly much stronger than I could imagine 😭🥰 I did feel the "ring of fire" though and Man! Did it burn! 🔥😬 But at that moment I knew my sweet girl was already almost out.

I also requested not to be coached to push, I wanted my body to take total control of the process so I felt when I needed to do so and when I had to stop (but seriously thought I was gonna 💩 all over the place 😂🙈) ... So at the end she came out (9:37pm - with the most peaceful expression you could see, without crying, just looking all around her)- on the last 4th push after 30 or-so-minutes of active labour...

*Now my eyes are closing as I write down my story 🙈😴💤 so I’ll wrap it up here as it was seriously a very light and straight forward experience 💕🙌🏼*

My placenta came about 45minutes after my little Astrid was born and then we all enjoyed our precious golden hour moment as a new family, with lots of snuggles and cuddles ☺️❤️ (Ps. That first toast with butter and jam after birth is seriously heaven on Earth 😋)

Thank you now for reading my story, (short but to the point I’d say)... And thank you to the PBC for providing me with the tools I wanted/needed for birth 👍🏻
Hope you all have an amazing and positive experience, regardless of how your birth pans out; make the most out of it 🙌🏼
We’ve got this Mamas 💃🏻