Birth story - Mum and baby boy

I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes very early on in my pregnancy, 8 weeks. It was a tough slog controlling my diet and then taking various medications to control the diabetes. After monitoring my diabetes numbers carefully it was clear that it was well under control and therefore I used BRAIN to request for a due date induction.

I was hopeful in pushing the induction back to due date I would increase my chances of a spontaneous labour. At 38 weeks I was trying everything to get the oxytocin flowing. My husband and I had re-watched the hypnobirthing digital course to refresh our memories and the birth bag was all packed with my 5 senses kit. But nothing! Baby was far too comfortable. So I prepared to go into hospital for the induction.

On the day I had my examination and it was decided that I needed a pessary to soften and prepare the cervix. This was the same as my previous induction so I was very relaxed. We live too far from the hospital to have a home induction, so I stayed in, wandered around the hospital, read and bounced on the birth ball. Evening came and I had a relaxing bath and went to bed. My main aim was to keep calm and save energy for when I would have waters broken etc.

However, at midnight I started to get some tightening. My partner had gone home as he was not allowed to stay on the ward over night. I decided the best thing to do would be to try and get some sleep so I dozed until 2am. At this point I could no longer sleep through the surges. I asked for paracetamol and a birthing ball to breathe through the surges. The Freya app was amazing, and I was so focused on breathing and then really relaxing between surges. I was conscious of my jaw and my shoulders and relaxing them between surges and getting back to the green.

At 3am I spoke to the midwife trying to communicate that things were ramping up. This was difficult. I was by myself and determined to stay calm, but this meant the midwife didn’t think I was in established labour, although Freya clearly said I was. I focused on staying calm and this meant the midwife decided to put the monitor on me, but not move down to labour ward.

Things then progressed very quickly. I was still breathing through the surges, but I had one very powerful one. This was the only point where I feel I went into the red and needed a birth partner. But I was able to breath and relax by myself. At this point I called out for the midwife and they came rushing back just as my waters broke and I had another very powerful surge. I then went into transition.

The midwife did a quick examination and saw I was going to have baby! I had to call my husband at this point, all I could manage to say was ‘baby is coming! Baby is coming!’ I think this was a rather surprising phone call for him to receive at 4am, but he did his best to get to the hospital as quickly as possible from that point!

Thankfully my body had a pause during transition and I was able to get in a wheel chair and have a very very speedy move to the labour room. I finally had some gas and air (wonderful!) and with 1 moo and 2 surges little baby boy was born.

Daddy arrived 20mins after that and had some skin to skin while I had a couple of stitches and a quick bath to clean up. I then had some lovely white toast and jam, which was such a great treat as I hadn’t had either for 30+ weeks due to the diabetes.

I am so proud that I was able to use my breathing and trust my body to birth my baby. It was an amazing experience to feel the power of what we can achieve. The body is perfectly designed to birth the baby. I am sad that because I was able to stay so calm the midwives were not able to spot how progressed I was and support me on getting my birth partner there sooner. If I could do it again I would try to have a discussion about hypnobirthing with the midwives before I went into labour, to try and prepare for a calmer birth so they were less surprised too. But I felt like a true super hero bringing baby into the world calmly under my own steam in the calm way I wanted.