Birth story - Hannah and baby Oscar

I had already declined one induction for a week after my due date and I was beginning to get stressed that I would be pushed to go for induction at my next community midwife appointment.

On Sunday day time I had been in town with my husband and parents at a street food festival, bought some nice treats for myself and headed home about 3pm. I had a long bath with some really nice bath stuff, did a face mask and my nails, shaved my legs and just really pampered myself.

I went to bed that evening at 11 with nothing more than a few Braxton Hicks that I had been having on and off for weeks anyway. So thought nothing of it.

I woke up at around 2am with tightenings l couldn't sleep through. I walked around our house, used my birth ball and breathing exercises and by 4am they were coming every 3-4 minutes so I called the birth center and they told me to come in.

We got to the hospital and I had a VE that put me at 4 cms but they thought baby was slightly disturbed so I was offered 20 mins of CTG monitoring to check all was well. Baby had a slightly lower heart rate than they wanted so I had a bottle of lucozade that perked us both up. The doctor said that he wanted me to stay on labour ward with continued monitoring until my next VE in 4 hours time - I firmly but politely told him that as the CTG had perked up for baby I didn't feel like I needed to be on labour ward and I would be going back to the birth center - my amazing midwife agreed and we headed back down the corridor where she had already rang ahead to the sister to get the pool filled.

It was about 6am at this point where I got into the pool and it was BLISS. Tightenings were really strong and felt productive and I was still managing to breathe through them. The room had got really bright because of the sun coming up and there were no blinds so I was really greatful I had brought an eye mask to keep things dark for me.

I laboured in the pool then until 10am when I started to feel pushy so I hopped out for another VE. I was 8cm but my waters were bulging hence the pushy feeling. I got back in the pool and couldn't stop myself pushing and with my next tightening my waters went.

This ramped up the intensity of the labour and I needed gas and air mainly to help me control my breathing through the peak of my surges. As I came closer to delivery I struggled to find a comfortable position with such intense pressure and I kept shifting between kneeling, squatting, standing and sitting with each surge.

The midwife became concerned with babies heart rate during my final pushes, but I knew I was close, this spurred me on and with my biggest push so far and his head was born. I said "oh my god it's got ears" to my husband 😂

His body was born with my next tightening and I caught him in the water and pulled him up onto my chest. My husband looked and announced the sex for us. He cried, I didn't! Oscar was born at 11.45 am 💙

I had the injection to deliver the placenta as I have a family history of PPH but kept skin to skin thoughout and had delayed cord clamping. I needed a few stitches for a graze to stop it healing to its self.

We were home by 7pm the same day and I was so grateful for that as I didn't want to spend the night on the ward on my own due to Covid.