Birth story - Saffron and baby Eric

After doing the positive birth company hypnobirthing course, we really wanted to have a home birth so that’s what we had planned! As my due date came and went, I became more worried we wouldn’t have our home birth as we were told we wouldn’t be able to if we went 10 days overdue. We rejected a sweep on my due date but once we got to 41 weeks we decided to go ahead with it in the hope of getting the ball rolling. I had the sweep on the Monday morning and that evening my waters broke. We went into the hospital to double check it was definitely my waters and because I didn’t have any contractions, they had booked us in for an induction 24 hours later in case my contractions still hadn’t started.

We went back home and tried to get some sleep but unfortunately I didn’t as I had pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy (PUPPP rash) which was ridiculously itchy so I gave in about 5am and had a cool shower then went for a walk. Halfway through our walk I started to feel some contractions so when we got back home we put on Bridget Jones and my husband went to the shop to get some snacks ready for our home birth!

We were lucky enough to have community midwives and I had the same midwife throughout all my appointments so I text her to let her know that I was in labour. The midwife on call popped over just to see how we were getting on around the Tuesday lunchtime then left us to it. I was in active labour by around 3pm and the midwives were sent to us about 6pm and we started to fill our birth pool. I used my breathing throughout the contractions and tried using a TENS machine but I found it didn’t really help so decided to just use my breathing.

The birth pool was a really good pain relief and I loved labouring in there at home. The midwives started to worry at how long things were progressing and asked how I would feel about going into the hospital because of my waters breaking quite a while ago and the risk of infection increasing. We tried lots of different positions, in the pool, on the sofa, on the toilet and even tried to walk up and down the stairs. I was examined some time in the early hours of Wednesday morning and I was 9cm dilated so it was decided that we would carry on with the home birth.

A few more hours had passed and I had made it to 10cm so started pushing, baby was moving around a lot and I was told that he was trying to find a position to get into to help me push! At one point I was in the pool and the midwife told me if I reached down I would be able to feel my babies head, which I did and it really gave me the motivation to keep going! Unfortunately, all the pushing wasn’t getting the baby out and his heart rate had shot up so the decision was made to move to hospital.

I was taken to hospital in the ambulance on the Wednesday around mid morning and taken straight to the labour ward where a doctor was waiting to examine me. He suggested that I have an episiotomy and an assisted delivery with forceps. We were only in the hospital for 10 mins before Eric was born and the staff were very quick and efficient in welcoming our baby into the world!

Every decision that was made was perfect for us and the hypnobirthing course really helped with keeping me in the right mindset throughout my whole labour and delivery. Although we didn’t have the birth we had planned, I’m still very happy with how it all panned out and it was actually really handy that we ended up In the hospital because I got a lot of support with feeding Eric as well as help with my PUPPP rash which disappeared a few weeks after delivery.

We now have a very healthy baby boy who is 3 months next week, how?!?