Birth story - Jade and baby boy

Just want to point out that my partner and I started the course late and only managed to get to 60% completed.

My little boy made a surprise appearance just a few days ago on Friday 31st May. We had no idea he’d be early as I had absolutely no signs of labour at all and was really expecting to be late.

Hit 38 weeks on Tuesday, on Wednesday eve I decided to go for a walk around the park, came home, made dinner and had some cramping in my lower tummy and back, different to how I’d experienced Braxton-Hicks before! I let my partner know but I was able to act completely normal through them and even fell asleep that night only waking up once or twice and noticing the cramps.

Thursday morning I had a lie in till 10.30 and even arranged to meet a friend for coffee as I had no pains, but then when I got out of bed my waters broke! It wasn’t a massive gush but not a small trickle either and begun leaking out of me throughout the day. I called my partner and he came straight home from work and got the pool blown up. I then spent the afternoon with my friend as my partner got our shop and a few things organised and ready for the evening ahead.

Surges had started, I used the Freya app to remember my breathing and our midwife came at 2ish but as I was able to just breathe through them and they were only lasting 45 seconds every 3-6 minutes she went on again and left us to it.

By 7pm the surges were much stronger, lasting over a minute and happening every 2-3 minutes. At 10pm I went upstairs to the bedroom to try to lie on the bed, the midwife checked and was 2cm dilated, my partner and I used the app to help me to breathe through each surge as I was really starting to struggle as the power of the surges got stronger! I’m not really sure of timings after this point but at some point during the night I got in the pool alone to help with the waves but the midwife with us was getting concerned as I had ketones in my wee that weren’t going and I wasn’t eating and barely drinking as it had made me sick a couple times. My partner did a great job at not telling me that the Midwife’s had concerned as he knew it would make me more stressed and which could make progressing slower!

My mum arrived at 1am-ish (I think) and brought lucozade sport with her and after a bottle the ketones were better which made the Midwife more calm, a second midwife arrived and after a check of the babies heart beat we asked them to sit upstairs as my partner (and the Midwife’s) had noticed that my surges had decreased and were not happening as regularly, due to me just being so tired, I kept falling asleep between them! After some time just with my mum and partner, he called them down as my breathing had naturally changed from upward breathing to a more downward pushing breath.

We got in the pool around 5am and I used my partner as support to start pushing the baby down and out. At this point I was finding it really hard, so asked for some gas and air. Only after 10 minutes and a few surges his head arrived and I had a little panic as I wanted to sit but knew I couldn’t and I completely forgot about everything I had learnt in the course, fortunately another surge came pretty quickly and his body was delivered at 5.56am.

My partner and I slowly brought him up to the surface, he didn’t cry to start with but was breathing and looking around everywhere. They cut the cord so they could give him a bit of a rub to see if they could get him to cry to make sure his lungs were okay, he did a few squeaks but was just so chilled so was passed back and my partner had skin to skin with him in the pool until we were ready to get out.

He weighed at just 5lb12oz and I had a 2nd degree tear. And the Midwife’s left by 9am leaving us to enjoy our first day together. It was the hardest but most beautiful experience I’ve ever been through, really didn’t expect him to be so small or early but he’s absolutely perfect and has taken to breastfeeding so well and even given us some good nights sleep! So blessed 💖