Birth story - Kate and baby girl

*Trigger warning* - Breech Presentation

I was lucky to have quite a comfortable pregnancy (apart from nausea during the first 3 months where I could only manage to eat rice cakes 🤣). I was walking and swimming and sleeping as much as I could until the final weeks.

We loved the idea of a water birth and I planned to try intervention free if I could. We live in Thailand and have more frequent scans here, so we knew baby was breech all along but assumed they would turn at some point. When we got to 35 weeks and still head up, I started trying all the tricks - spinning babies techniques, headstands in the swimming pool, acupuncture.

By 37.5 weeks it seemed baby had no intention of moving so we made the call to schedule a c section. ECV are not offered here.

It took me a few days to come to terms with not having the birth we had planned. Our doula was amazing in helping us process for the new situation, even though I didn't have a traditional labour I still found her invaluable. After that we got into planning mode, researching options to make the c section as gentle as possible - even though hospital policies are not as flexible here as in the UK we wanted to do what we could. We changed hospital at the final stage to accommodate our c section preferences. I read the breech/ c section related posts in this group and I also watched lots of videos on YouTube to understand exactly what was going to happen, which really helped!

We checked in to the hospital the night before as we were scheduled for 6am. I ate 2 bowls of pasta (recommend) and tried to get some sleep.

On the morning our doula joined us very early to talk everything through one more time, she was such a calming presence. The nurses took me downstairs to the operating theatre which was so calm and quiet as it was early morning, and they played spa music. I was most nervous for the spinal but the anesthesist was so gentle it really wasn't bad. Once I was in position and the curtain was up my husband joined me and then our doctor arrived who was really friendly and chatting away.

Once he got started it was really quick and baby was out in around 10 minutes. I used all the breathing techniques I had practiced as well as my husband stroking my arm. The hardest part was the final few minutes where I could feel my abdomen being rocked as they wiggled baby out (doctor told me after that her head was quite stuck into my ribs and he had to make the incision slightly wider to pull her out). My husband cut the cord and held baby as she came to me for a quick cuddle. My husband then left with the nurses and baby whilst I was stitched up, which was actually really quick and didn't feel anything. I requested no sedative drugs for this so I relied on my own breathing.

I was put under a heated blanket in the recovery room which was amazing, again as it was early I was the only person there. After about 20mins the nurse bought our baby down for proper skin to skin. Then we were all fully together in our main room after 90 minutes of recovery.

The first few days recovery in the hospital were very tough physically, not being able to lift my baby or lean over her sleeping were difficult and I almost fainted when I first stood up to go to the bathroom. Plus the hormones hit hard! Once we were home the recovery was much better. Our doula visited us in hospital and at home to help us with baby/mother care and feeding, I definitely found the value of a doula even with a c section.

Now our baby is 6 months old and I am so grateful to look back on my birth as a positive one, despite it not being what we expected. It helped me learn from the start to follow babies lead not my own expectations 🙂