Birth story - Erica and baby Rowan

First of all I want to thanks Siobhan and her team for producing the digital pack, the process of studying it in the lead up to my birth was invaluable and definitely enabled me to get the best out of my birth.

You’ll have to bear with me it’s quite a long one, but while I may not have got the birth I planned or wanted the end process was controlled by myself and managed using all of the hypnobirthing tools I learnt on the course.

So it all started last Sunday when I was 41+4 I had been booked in for induction on the Monday due to no sign of baby and the sizing appearing large, on the Sunday eve I started getting surges and thought fantastic no more induction, however from speaking to the induction team on Monday they still wanted to induce me to give me the best chance of a speedy delivery.

Needless to say 2 days later I was still not in active labour, I had had one propus and was awaiting the second, needless to say I was disappointed and feeling a little defeated by the entire process - why was my natural labour not working along with the propess induction? After 2 days in hospital due to not being able to return home with the propess I was examined and told I was 2-3cm - after 2 full on days I was gutted. It was then that it was explained that I should move straight onto the drip rather than the second propess to speed up the process, it was here I used my B.R.A.I.N and decided that the drip was not the best route to go down, we continued on the first propess and the labour quickly developed, I hovered around 8-9cm for a good 7 hours and several examinations by multiple midwifes were giving me varied facts so it was at this point I knew that I needed an epidural, the surges were becoming very very strong and my up breathing which I had managed all the surges to date over the last 3 days were no longer cutting it, there was varied opinion from the midwife team on whether to have the epidural but I weighed up the positives and negatives and decided that for me at that time it was the best route to take. Finally by 41+7 I was approaching 10cm dilated when I was examined by the doctor on call and she came in and told me I was actually only 8cm and my cervix was blocking it developing further, in addition to this the baby was now back to back and that they thought the head was also stuck, it was 3am on day 4 of labour that I was told that I would be having a c-section - my heart sunk, all of the hard work over the last 4 days was for nothing but that’s where I was wrong!!

The next hour panned out to be one of the best of my life, the entire anaesthetist and surgery team were amazing, we had our birth playlist playing, all 3 of our midwifes present and our amazing doctor Amy who had only 20 minutes earlier delivered the c-section news I was dreading on hearing.

Baby Rowan appeared all 8lb13 of him to La Boheme - Puccini at 3.26am to a room of tears and cheers from all involved.

While a c-section was the total opposite of what I wanted the outcome was by far the best given Rowan’s situation, back to back, head stuck and reduced heart rate monitoring. We’re now home in the safety of our lovely home and loving having a new life in the house - I just wanted to reiterate that the up breathing and the B.R.A.I.N analogy we’re by far what got me through those 4 days of labour so a massive thank you to Siobhan and this community for sharing your stories and for us all to know a positive experience can come from a far from perceived picture of what you think your labour would be like.