Birth story - Rhea and baby Albert

Early in pregnancy I developed itching on my hands and feet, which was worse at night. I knew it was a sign of a liver problem in pregnancy, so had bloods taken and my levels were all fine. When I was 36 weeks pregnant the itching intensified. Bloods were still fine, but my bile salt levels were going up, which explained it. By 37 and half weeks I was bathing my feet in cool water at night and wiping myself down with a cool flannel as the itching was now all over my body. I still wasn’t diagnosed with OC as my levels were borderline, but by nearly 39 weeks and with not a lot of sleep I was ready for baby to come. I could feel he was getting ready as I often felt pressure very low down where baby’s head was engaged.

I went all over town on a Thursday afternoon running errands and walking with my Mum, then did a food shop the next day, and that evening, on 22nd Oct 2021, I was sitting watching telly with my husband and started to get tightening every 6-7 minutes. This lasted for over 3 hours, but unfortunately petered out which I found very disappointing. I went to bed and went about my day normally the next day, bouncing on my ball loads and went to bed on Saturday night around 9pm.

I then woke to more contractions at 1.30am on Sunday morning. They were stronger than the ones I had before so I got some candles in the spare room (I thought this could be the real deal and didn’t want to wake my husband so he could be rested), put a hypnobirthing track on and just laid there breathing and recording them on the Freya app until about 7am.

I then got up and had some breakfast, bounced on my ball and just kept breathing through the contractions - they weren’t particularly strong at this point. By lunch time they were 3/4 minutes apart, much stronger and lasting a minute or so each time. I called triage about 2ish and the midwife really annoyed me as she wouldn’t talk to Tom (even though he tried to explain I was hypnobirthing) and kept me on the phone for over 5 minutes and said I needed to stay at home because I didn’t have a contraction whilst on the phone to her (obviously because she took my focus away from breathing by asking loads of questions) and so I should take some paracetamol and call again once they were closer together. That completely threw me off, the contractions then moved back to every 8/9 minutes for about half hour and then moved back to every 3 /4 minutes once I’d had time to refocus.

By this point they’d got a lot stronger to the point where I was having to stand up for each one and bend over the sofa and breathe through it whilst also groaning a bit. Around 5pm we decided to head to the hospital. I kept the Freya app going the whole car journey, closed my eyes and pulled my hat down so the street lights wouldn’t throw me off. Luckily the hospital was quiet and we were taken straight to a birthing pool suite for the examination and they found baby was already really low and I was 4cm dilated, which I was so happy about!!! The midwife then ran the pool.

I tried a bit of gas and air, but stopped using that once I got in the pool about an hour after arriving, as I felt like I should save it for when things ramped up a bit more. At 8pm we had a change of midwife and by that point my contractions were pretty strong, but I felt like they were still bearable using the Freya app and breathing. I had to get out of the pool to have antibiotics through an IV as iId tested positive for Group B Strep, and the contractions felt a lot more intense out of the water. Another 45 minutes back in the pool they were coming every 3/4 minutes still, but were way stronger. I was kneeling in the pool hanging onto two bars and grinding my forehead into the side of the bath by this point. Then just before I started to want to push the strength of the contractions were very intense and I started mooing or making ooouuuuuuu sounds all the way through the out breath.

Tom gave me some more gas and air and then I think I only had another one or two contractions and I suddenly got the urge to push and the intensity of the contraction was insane - I found this the most painful part and started to scream through my contractions. Later my husband said he’d never heard anything like it. The midwife didn’t re-examine me when I said I wanted to push (she was an absolute dream and followed our birth plan to a T), and told me to follow what my body was telling me to do. I started shouting I can’t do it, I can’t do it, but my husband and the midwife were really encouraging, telling me we were going to meet our baby really soon.

After a few pushes and gently breathing my baby down, I could feel he was progressing and moving down, but we soon realised that my waters (which we thought had broken earlier) hadn’t fully broken and I was in fact birthing the amniotic sack first. We were really concerned as the midwife had never seen this before, but she reassured us that so many animals are born in their sacks so if our baby was born inside it it wouldn’t matter. The midwife then told me I needed to channel all the power of my contraction and screaming down into my body, so I did as she said and this helped speed things along, as another two or three pushes and our beautiful, tiny little boy was born at 10.08pm. He broke through the sack at the last minute coming out all in one go with one arm in front of him like superman. And suddenly there he was and I was looking down at him in my arms with my husband holding onto him too - the most surreal moment of my life!

We had a short amount of skin to skin, and delayed cord clamping. This was mainly because I was in shock and kept getting concerned about the amount of blood in the pool around me (which wasn’t actually that bad). I got out of the pool, with the help of the midwife, and continued skin to skin, and birthed the placenta, which came away really easily. I unfortunately then had to go to theatre for a second-degree tear which was my choice, as I was very sore due to the nature of the tear and didn’t think I would tolerate stitching with local and gas and air. It was a bit of a shame to have no pain relief during birth, and then have a spinal block for this, but I’m really glad I chose this as it took a lot longer for them to repair the tear than they anticipated.

I’m so happy with my birth and so proud of myself. I’ve always suffered with anxiety but hypnobirthing, reading the Positive Birth Company book and using the Freya app meant I wasn’t afraid of birth and went into it feeling really calm and relaxed. And I feel sure it’s why I had a very short active labour (4 hours and 43 minutes) as a result too. I will recommend hypnobirthing to everyone!