Birth story - Georgie and baby Douglas

My birth was a real tale of two halves; the induction process was so much more frustrating than I had anticipated but the active part of labour and birth itself went so well and I definitely see my whole experience as being very positive. All due to the techniques learnt from the PBC!

I had a very straight forward pregnancy right up until week 35. We negotiated a move from Malaysia back to the UK at 30 weeks as well as 3 months of lockdown abroad and I fully expected to give birth in a pool at the beautiful birth centre attached to the hospital. However at 35 weeks I started itching all over and was diagnosed with obstetric cholestasis at my 36 week appointment. This immediately classed me as high risk and consultant led and sadly put a birth centre birth out of the picture😑. We made sure we looked at the positives and I was actually quite pleased that our baby would definitely be arriving by his due date as I was dreading the inevitable questioning if I went over! At my check up the following week, my bile acid levels had risen above 100 and so I was advised that I would need to be induced the next day. As the risks of refusing this included an increased risk of stillbirth, I decided to accept as I knew I wouldn't be able to relax knowing that it was a possibility. I also was struggling to sleep with the itching and was keen to get baby out as this is the only cure!

I got to the induction ward at 9:30am the following day (Friday) and had the pessary inserted at 11. Due to Covid, my husband couldn't be there but I had my kindle, Netflix on my ipad and lots of snacks to keep me going! Having never had a stay in hospital before, I didn't really anticipate how demoralising it would feel being stuck in the little cubicle on the ward and how little progress would be made on that first day🙈 I rather naively thought that, as I had been induced under fairly serious circumstances, it would be a priority to get things going asap but I was left to it until the 24 hours were up. I spent as much time as possible UFO and went for lots of walks around the ward. I found this time quite stressful as I was feeling very impatient and annoyed at having to be in hospital when it felt like nothing was happening and I could just as easily be at home!

Once the 24 hours were up on the Saturday at 11am, I was examined by a midwife (not at all painful for me in case you're worried! Just a lot of pressure and a bit of a strange feeling🙈) and she found that I was 2cm and said my waters were ready to go🎉 she said that as soon as a room was available upstairs on labour ward then I could go up. My husband was visiting at this point so we got very excited about the possibility of things getting started. I was given a birth ball so I got bouncing and we watched some Netflix to get the oxytocin going. Unfortunately, they were having a very busy day upstairs and the hours ticked by with no news of a room. My husband had to leave and I worked hard to focus on the positives and not get too impatient!

Finally at around 11pm I got the call to go upstairs. This was very exciting and my lovely midwife Daisy came to help me bring all my stuff up to the room. She quickly broke my waters (very strange feeling!) and got the monitor set up. Once she was sure baby had reacted well to my waters being broken, I was able to call my husband to come in and he arrived soon after.

Surges started quickly and we got into a good routine of starting the Freya app with my headphones in and my husband standing behind me massaging my back or shoulders. I was mostly on the ball either upright or leaning over the edge of the bed. Due to the obstetric cholestasis, I had to keep the monitor on for the whole birth. This was sort of frustrating but luckily I was happy sitting on the ball and didn't have much of an urge to walk around so it wasn’t as much of a nuisance as I might have expected!

I had an hour or two (timings are fairly fuzzy in my mind!) contracting by myself using the app and up breathing before Daisy suggested the hormone drip. I happily accepted as I was finding the surges very manageable and was keen to get things going a bit quicker. She said the she knew I hadn't wanted the epidural having read my birth preferences but that lots of women had it put in at the same time as the drip and did I want it. I was worried about getting tired as I hadn't really slept much over the previous 48 hours due to being in hospital and the itching so was very tempted but my husband was quite pushy in reminding me that I hadn't wanted it and should give it a go for a while without and I was very grateful for this afterwards!!

The drip was set up and I continued using the up breathing through the surges and finding it really manageable. The drip was increased slowly and didn't make the surges noticeably more intense for quite a while which I had been worried about, we both even had a little nap between contractions at one point!! I found that if I lost focus or wasn't in quite the right position when the surge started, they were noticeably more difficult to get through and so we worked hard to make sure we were ready for each one with the app, headphones in and my husband standing behind me.

After around 4/5 hours of this, the surges were very powerful and I suddenly decided that I couldn't do it any more and asked for the epidural. At the time, it didn't occur to me that this could be transition, I was just very focused on convincing Daisy that I needed the epidural as soon as possible as I couldn't bear the thought of doing one more contraction. However both Daisy and my husband reminded me that I'd wanted to try gas and air first and convinced me to get up on the bed, kneeling and leaning upright on the headboard with the gas and air.

Around this time I felt my body start pushing and knew from the course and others' stories on here that I must be fully dilated! This was such a massive relief and I got a huge surge of adrenaline as I knew baby would be here soon. I got going on the gas and air and loved it😂 it worked really well for me and made the surges much less intense. It also really reduced my inhibitions so I was loudly telling my husband and the midwife about how I knew I was fully dilated because my body was pushing and basically regurgitating the whole PBC course😬 I also refused to only start breathing it in after the surge had started as I knew from stories on here that there is a bit of a lag on it working so was basically just breathing it in the whole time!

The whole pushing stage is a bit of a blur but I really went for it with the mooing which I found very satisfying to do but freaked out my husband quite a bit! I had an examination at one point which wasn't fun as I had to be on my back.

Daisy said I was only 7cm, which I loudly said was nonsense as I knew I was pushing so must be 10😂. Turns out I was right as Douglas was born 12 minutes later! Pushing the head out was the most intense part but over very quickly and his body came with the next surge. I unfortunately forgot all about breathing him out gently and really went to town on the pushing but I actually sort of enjoyed it in a weird way and found it very satisfying!

I did have a slightly complex 2nd degree tear which a consultant was called in to stitch me up but she did an amazing job and I had no pain or even stinging from it at all and its completely healed now 3 weeks later (while on gas and air having the local anisthetic injected, I very enthusiastically told the doctor about the PBC and how amazing hypnobirthing is and that everyone should do it as my birth had been so great🙈) .

I do think that not having many drugs involved did help my recovery to be super easy; Douglas was wide awake when born and latched on very quickly which helped get the oxytocin flowing straight away and I'm sure this helped reduce my bleeding and contract my uterus down quickly. He has so far (touch wood) been a super calm baby as well and maybe the calm birth has been a factor in that🤷‍♀️

Despite ending up with an induction and no water birth, I feel so positively about the birth and will be singing the praises of the course to any pregnant women I come across😬