Birth story - Rachel and baby Angus

I purchased the digital pack early on in my pregnancy and genuinely don't believe I would have had nearly as good a birth without it.

At 40 weeks I enjoyed rewatching the 'due date myth' video and, it helped me relax and I decided to decline a sweep until the following week.

At 3am labour started naturally. Although even from the start the surges were quite intense, I was managing to breath through them. I went into hospital at about 9am and was disappointed to find out I was only 2cm dilated despite the surges being very regular. We went back home and I had a bath and tried to relax all day. I took paracetamol to take the edge off the surges. We went back into hospital at about 9pm when I felt like I had entered established labour and had a significant show of bloody mucus.

Whilst the midwife was trying to establish how far dilated I was my waters popped and I was admitted on to the MLU at 4cm. From then my surges became stronger but less frequent and I thought they were dying off but I started to feel the urge to push at 1am, I was advised I probably still had some cervix there and to try and breathe through the pushing sensation. I tried gas and air but didn't personally enjoy the dizzy feeling.

At about 1.40am I asked to get in the birth pool although I had been told to hold out till I really felt like I needed it. Clearly PBC had helped me stay so calm that the midwife didn't think it was going to happen so soon. She commented a lot of times afterwards that I didn't even look in labour. I started pushing involuntarily in the pool. The surges for me stopped being painful at this point just felt very powerful. They also became more spaced out and this allowed me to become calm again between each one. I ended up pushing for around 40 minutes and baby was born at 2.20am but it was only around 7 surges.

As someone who has a very low pain threshold and will cry from a stubbed toe, for me to get through labour virtually without any pain relief was nothing short of a dream come true. I was of the mindset that if I needed pain relief I was happy to accept it but I would go as far as I could without.

I cannot thank the positive birth company enough!

After a couple of stitches and skin to skin I got up, had a shower and had so many comments on how I didn't look like I had just birthed a baby.

My favourite things to think about during labour were the traffic lights, always bringing myself back down to green in-between each surge and counting up to the peak of each surge and then back down again so I could really feel the wave sensation.