Birth story - Rebecca and baby Archer

This is my second birth with the Positive Birth Company (thank you Siobhán and Co!). It was really interesting revisiting the Digital Pack through more experienced eyes but I really appreciated the refresher and reminders. I bought Freya, very excited to use her and once again, I had absolutely no chance because of the speed of my labour and delivery. I did enjoy listening to the tracks before bedtime in the lead up to the birth and often fell asleep listening and had to turn them off hours later once I woke up!

Summary:

●Precipitous (rapid) labour for the second time.

●Drove home from collecting my daughter from nursery arriving home at 1.30pm. Archer was born at 3.18pm in a hospital 20 minutes away from where we live!

●I'd had an appointment with my gynaecologist at 8.45 that morning (Friday) and she'd done an internal exam to see how I was doing. I'd gone from 2cm dilated on the Monday to 3cm dilated that day. This was similar to my last birth.

●I mistook my contractions for Braxton Hicks. I'd had the same sensations on the Monday after my internal exam but they'd tailed off by the evening.

●It wasn't until around 12.30 that the sensations had started to get a little uncomfortable on the day of the birth and I'd noticed they were perhaps becoming regular.

●After driving home and arriving back at 1.30, I decided it was best to go to hospital after my labour progressed so quickly last time and didn't want to take any chances. We set off at 2.05 and arrived to the hospital at 2.25. Archer was born just under an hour later.

●Due to living in Turkey and having private medical care, I had the same gynaecologist throughout my pregnancy and I'd messaged her to say I was on my way to hospital as she wasn't answering her phone!!

●Assessed to be 7cm dilated on arrival to hospital (5th floor) , taken to the birthing suite (13th floor) in the lift and stopped for a wee which totally wasn't needed even though it felt like it, hopped onto the bed at 15.00 and had my feet put in stirrups with velcro over them (not my choice but turned out to be an excellent idea) which was the same as my last birth, was now assessed to be 10cm dilated

●Gynaecologist broke my waters for me (they went of their own accord last time) and I joined in pushing with my contractions. I was gentler this time as I pushed really hard last time and my daughter had been born very quickly but also did some damage (bruising, tearing which I didn't feel, hemorrhoids)

●The final 4 pushes made it clear that I was going to have to push extremely hard to get baby out. It was the most uncomfortable feeling but strangely I still wouldn't say painful. I summoned all of my strength and my gynaecologist helped by pushing upwards from my bottom (bizarre feeling) and our son was born. He let out a huge cry unlike his sister who was very quiet when she entered the world!

The details:

I had a very straightforward pregnancy. Despite my age (due to give birth a week after my 38th birthday), but my gynaecologist was very cautious this time and her language was interesting. She always said things looked healthy 'so far' as though she was expecting complications but it never bothered me because I am generally a very optimistic person.

In Turkey, you have scans, as standard from 6 weeks of pregnancy onwards, every 4 weeks at least, including 4d from 16 weeks onwards which I believe helped keep me calm as I saw baby lots.

I recapped Siobhan's tutorials when I could this time as it was a bit more of a task with a toddler to entertain too and chatted about it which my husband when I found something interesting or wanted to reflect on something that had resonated with our first birth. We have talked a lot about birth since we had our daughter 3 years ago so he was much more engaged this time, having an idea what to expect.

Siobhan's knowledge, logic, experience and clarity put me at ease to such an extent that I put all of my trust in my body and by the time I arrived at hospital on the day of delivery, I was already 7cm dilated and progressed to 10cm within 30 minutes. I had only realised that I was in labour a few hours before. I proceeded to give birth within 55 minutes of being in hospital, with zero pain relief.

I had a gynaecologist appointment at 8.45 am on the day (Friday) for an internal exam to see if I had dilated more since 5 days before. I was discovered to be 2cm dilated on the Monday of the same week having put off having any internal examinations this time until 39+4. On the day of birth, the doctor estimated that I had progressed to 3cm dilated but I asked her not to do a sweep this time. I didn't really notice that the doctor had clearly agitated my cervix as it took me hours to realise that the Braxton Hicks I thought I was having were actually contractions. I had lost bits of my mucus plug on 2 occasions that I'd noticed during the week before the birth which didn't happen last time.

On the day of the birth, I had taken my brother-in-law to a medical appointment at 12pm and was having a coffee in a yoga studio with my husband who was off work because of it being a Bank Holiday in Turkey. When my sister and brother-in-law were finished, they joined us for a drink then we all went to collect my daughter from nursery so it was far from our average day but we were having a lovely time. However, when I was driving home I noted that my 'Braxton Hicks' were getting more uncomfortable and they seemed to be getting more regular, in fact around every 3 minutes. I didn't for a second think that my labour could have been instantaneously started that morning, for a second time as this had happened with my daughter.

The next few hours were a bit of a blur but went something like this...

13:30 Arrived home and decided to pack the car and go to the hospital so as not to be caught out by another quick labour.

14:05 Drove out of the apartment complex and tried to call my gynaecologist. She wasn't answering so I sent her a message to say things were happening quickly again and I'd be at hospital in 20 minutes.

14:25 Arrived in hospital, dumped the car with valet parking but had to wait for our keys which was not ideal. I had managed to get the bags out of the car myself while my husband was paying the valet so I was still functioning fairly well.

14:30 Checked in with patient admissions, gave them all of my details including insurance etc and was told that they were just finishing cleaning a room for me. At this point I felt like I had to tell them that my first birth had been very quick so that they hurried things along a little. I clearly didn't look as close to giving birth as I was because I was managing the contractions quite well.

14:35 Taken to my room in a wheelchair in a lift, my husband helped to get me changed as I was having very close contractions at this point and was having to really stay in my zone to manage them (no worse than bad poo pains though) and a handful of nurses came into the room to check my blood pressure, take blood (still not sure why!) assess how dilated I was (7cm) and get me to sign some more forms (!)

14:50 My gynaecologist arrived, was informed I was 7cm dilated and said we could go to the birthing suite. We walked slowly to the lift (I declined a wheelchair to make use of gravity on the walk) and we went in the lift from the 5th to 13th floor. The lift stopped on every floor and at this point I was still signing forms (in Turkish might I add which I only have a basic grasp of!!)

14:55 Arrived on floor 13, asked if I could go for a wee which was a wasted effort as the pressure I could feel was actually the baby needing to be born.

15:00 Walked into the birthing suite with a horrid clinical surgical chair in the middle (all very modern but still...) and climbed up on said chair and had my feet put into stirrups with velcro put over them for support. I wasn't happy about this but had decided during the whole process that it was important that I trusted the medical staff and their training and therefore let them do what worked for them, as long as it didn't go too far away from my comfort zone.

15:00-15:18

I pushed along with my contractions much more tentatively for this birth as my draughter flew out very quickly and this had caused damage and she hadn't had chance to expel mucus whilst in the birth canal which had caused some issues. This time, I didn't feel Archer descend as he was already very low down by the time I got into the birthing suite. Just as Archer's head was about to be birthed, I felt incredibly uncomfortable; it wasn't the ring of fire, it was a sensation of his head being in a space and stretching it beyond what was comfortable or even capable of. After 4 pushes of feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere, I summoned more strength than I ever have before (had an extremely easy birth first time around) and pushed with all of my might while my gynaecologist pushed upwards from my bottom (which was the strangest feeling ever) and Archer's head was delivered. My gynaecologist then pulled his body out, presumably because he was in some distress. This didn't happen with my daughter, I had pushed her out along with a contraction. He let out a fantastic cry and we had a gorgeous cuddle but not quite skin to skin as he was wrapped in surgical blankets I was far too grateful that he was here safely to even take notice of the delayed cord clamping but my gynaecologist knew that was my preference. Archer had his Apgar Scores etc done while I was having a few stitches and my nappy put on!

Once I was sorted, I was wheeled back to a recovery suite with Archer in my arms and we had a lovely 24 hour stay just soaking up our newborn before we went home and the madness of being parents of 2 started!

The following text is from my first birth story but relevant to all first time Mums so I've left it here!

I cannot thank Siobhan enough for her online course. Being abroad has meant that we couldn't do antenatal classes etc so the hypnobirthing course was my one stop shop for everything. Not only did I find out more about the physical side of birth, she made me consider things that make so much sense but I'd never thought of before, purely because of stories and portrayal of birth from the media and personal anecdotes. She gave me the knowledge and confidence to be able to make decisions about my body and my birth, all very well informed, rational and confidence-boosting.

I've always been absolutely terrified of giving birth, even though I could appreciate the beauty of it. I'll never be able thank her enough for helping to make my first birth experience so positive and quite frankly, easy!!

Good luck to all of you expectant mothers. You'll smash it!