Birth story - Kimberley and baby Ayla

I started really watching the PBC videos around 34 weeks, I really wanted my partner to be on board but he dismissed the whole thing, so I had to mentally prepare myself as much as possible, I did my birth plan way in advance and practiced up and down breathing as much as I could. I honestly believe PBC enabled me to find my inner warrior momma in order to birth our baby girl completely drug free and without tearing, can’t recommend it highly enough!

My first labour was induction due to pre eclampsia, also at 40+1 but was very quick, teared my labia and son was born with two knots in his cord and 2 cephal heamatomas, so not exactly a smooth process.

Had my first period type pain on Saturday morning, then nothing all day until 6pm, when I started having regular period type cramps, they stayed about 30 seconds in length and about 30 mins apart until I went for a bath at 11pm, after which I went to bed and managed to sleep all night 😊

Sunday morning within about an hour of waking up the surges kicked off again, by about 10am I was having to use up breathing as they were about 15 mins apart.... I relaxed at home recording each surge on the Freya app. My 2.5 year old brought me a card, a HUGE chocolate bar and 2 bunches of flowers for Mother’s Day which REALLY helped the oxytocin flow 🙂

By 11:30 the surges started coming more frequent, every 3/4 minutes so I called my mum to come and have my son so we could make our way to the MLU.

Got to MLU at 12, and the surges where quite intense, finally led to our room at 12:30 where I was checked for dilation, I was 5cm!

I asked the midwife to help me put the TENS machine on which really helped until I got into the pool around 2:30 when I couldn’t walk/breath through the surges anymore.

The pool really was instant relief! So warm and felt lovely! I laboured in the pool, grabbing on to my husband for something to hold and bear down on, whilst freya app played in the background, pushing in the water felt very different to pushing on the bed like I had with my son and I doubted myself that I was actually doing anything, but I shouldn’t have, because at 16:21 little Ayla was born into the water, after 3 minutes of pushing, and practically no blood loss. We did skin to skin in the pool while we had delayed cord clamping, once cord was cut, she was handed to Dad for more skin to skin and I was led to the bed to birth my placenta.

All in all my dream labour, didnt once consider any drug pain relief and so proud I did it all on my own.

I had a student midwife with me at all times and she was brilliant with little words of encouragement exactly when I needed them. We were showered, fed and home by 7:30pm and my healing and recovery has been so fast I felt 100% back to normal by day 7 as I had finished bleeding too 🙂

Thank you Siobhan Miller.