Birth story - Lianne and baby Dylan

I started writing my birth story for the Postive Birth Company Facebook group as many women who have completed the digital course do but for some reason I never pressed send. I was immensely proud with myself for how I coped with delivering my second son into the world but the shy and non boastful part of my personality told me not too.

Because I’ve also been at the other end of the scale, with my first baby, where I didn’t have any faith in myself, where I was scared of any pain, I went along with what anyone told me and I jumped at the chance to accept pain relief. I panicked when my waters broke and wanted to get straight to hospital and funnily enough, it being Christmas Eve they were keen to start moving things along with a drip and get the baby out.

My second, Dylan was born at 3.38am on Friday 9th November on the maternity DAU at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. I was 40+5 weeks and he was 9lb6. According to my paper work my labour was 1hr48 minutes. Although I’m not sure what this related too. My waters broke at about half 1. I phoned the maternity unit at about 2am with meconium in my waters and we arrived at the hospital at about 3ish....

I also questioned whether I should write up my positive birth story as a lot of what happened straight after delivery wasn’t too positive. Plus my birth was so quick that I didn’t get the opportunity to fight a ‘wobble’ which would have been my biggest test.

However, everything I learnt from the digital pack 100% adjusted my mindset and helped me avoid falling into panic! This is coming from someone who went in straight for the epidural at the first sign of powerful surges with my first birth (induced due to high bp).

My first baby arrived on his due date after my waters broke and I was induced due to high BP. I often look back and wonder how different my first birth could have been with the knowledge I have now. When my ‘due date’ arrived this time, I decided to keep myself as busy as possible!

At 1.30am on Friday morning, I felt damp, it was obvious it was waters over anything else. I put on a pad and went back to bed, I thought we would have a while. However, I felt another gush and I went to check. Unfortunately, it was stained with meconium. My heart sunk as I knew this could mean intervention couldn’t be avoided. Especially as I hadn’t had any surges yet. I phoned the maternity unit and they asked me to go in to the DAU to check my waters ASAP. I called my mum to come over and look after our 3 year old and my husband and I started gathering up bits to leave.

We changed the bed sheets and I even considered putting on some make up 🤣. However, while waiting for my mum to arrive, I started to feel surges. I asked my husband to get his timer app out as it felt like they were coming pretty regular. My mum arrived and we got in the car. I was feeling surges regularly, it was weird it didn’t quite hit me how regular until the next day. They were coming every 3 minutes. The up breathing was all I was concentrating on and I tried to close my eyes and not worry about my partners driving!

We parked on the ramp outside maternity and I struggled to walk to the lift and to the DAU, pausing with each surge. By the time we got to the reception it was obvious that things were really moving on now. I could feel the pressure start to build.

I lent against the desk while my husband went to find a midwife. She took one look at me and calmly walked away (apparently she was moving a women being monitored swiftly out of a side room). They took me in and asked me to get on the bed to be examined and check on the meconium situation. At this point I was standing at the end of the bed, stripping off. The midwife pulled my leggings down and asked if baby was coming and I said I think so. I got on the bed on my knees and held onto the back of the bed. They asked me to lay down so they could examine me and I don’t remember saying anything but it didn’t happen. I said I felt I needed to push and they asked me to try not too.....just like Siobhan says it wasn’t a ‘pushing’ that I needed to do, it’s hard to explain, my body was doing the work for me and I remembered to switch to down breathing. I was aware that there was a lot going on around me but I was concentrating on being in my own head and telling myself I could do this. It was all happening so quickly, without the positive birth company I would have 100% been in full on panic mode!

The Midwife’s were then asking me to get down from the bed and into a wheelchair so I could go to the delivery suite. Again, I don’t remember saying anything, just positioning myself on my knees, upright at the back of the bed.

I could feel the babies head was right where it needed to be and with the next surge I used down breathing again and again and then he arrived!

I couldn’t move for a few minutes, I was trying to turn my head to see him and asking to double check he was a boy 😂

They got me to turn around and placed him on my chest. Unfortunately the poor little guy had inhaled some meconium and I was loosing a lot of blood after the speedy delivery so we both got whisked off which was heartbreaking. However, even in the aftermath, the tools I learnt from the positive birth company kept my spirits up and we now have a very happy and healthy little boy.

I feel like an absolute super women too 😊 thanks so much to Siobhan and the positive birth company.