Birth story - Samantha and baby boy

I spent so many hours throughout my pregnancy reading through everyone else’s birth stories and found they helped set my expectations and put my mind at rest so I wanted to share my own experience in case it helped anyone else’s.

The start of my pregnancy was pretty straightforward, I had some morning sickness but this cleared up around the 11/12 week mark.

I felt our little boy begin to move at 18 weeks and had my first kick on my birthday weekend at 21 weeks which was exciting!

Then at 25 weeks I had my gestational diabetes test which came back as positive. I initially had a huge cry as I thought that was my idea of my dream birth experience being snatched away from me. I thought I’d be induced and hooked up to loads of wires so no chance of getting in the water. I tried to then just focus on enjoying the rest of my pregnancy and managed to remain diet controlled until around week 30 (even over Christmas!) at that point my glucose levels started becoming unstable and I was moved onto insulin, with the dose being raised almost every week until the birth.

One of the positives of the diabetes was the additional growth scans I was offered meaning I got to see my little (or I thought not so little) one progress over the last half of my pregnancy. One of the obvious things was that this one was breech and was very determined to remain that way! I had never seen him in a position other than breach. So using B.R.A.I.N - me and my wife decided that a caesarean would be a more positive experience for us than an induced insulin controlled breach delivery. So we went into my 36 week scan ready to discuss that with our obstetrician. But lo and behold… the little trickster had turned around. I discussed the options again with the obstetrician but again decided a caesarean was the right choice for us as I had completely got my head around that idea over an induction and I didn’t want to feel restricted by the additional monitoring that would’ve taken place because of the diabetes.

So we were booked in for our section at 39 weeks. However, over the weekend of turning 37 weeks I had significantly reduced movements as well as elevated glucose levels.

After discussing options with the midwives and again using B.R.A.I.N, we agreed to bring the caesarean forward after 48 hours of insulin control and 2 rounds of steroid injections to help his lungs be as strong as they could.

I’m not going to lie, those steroid injections were not pleasant. I was nervous for the spinal block but that was nothing compared to those injections. In fact I found the spinal block really easy.

So on the Wednesday morning we arrived for our section, and I was first on the list which was exciting.

We got changed into our theatre clothes and we were getting so excited to meet our son.

The weather was beautiful and the view out of the 13th floor of the hospital was stunning that morning. We were allowed to play our own music and had a calm Disney playlist on.

I bent over for my spinal block, you get some very cold stuff sprayed on your back. The yoga that I’d done during pregnancy really helped with the bending over for this part and I used up breathing to keep me calm and relaxed.

I then laid down and my wife and I started talking about what I was going to have for my post birth meal. It was barely a few minutes and then we saw someone fiddling with the curtain, which suddenly dropped to see our son being held up in front of us.

We both burst into tears and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever felt euphoria quite like that moment I wish I could’ve bottled that up. He was born to an instrumental version of tale as old as time, the same version that my wife and I walked down the aisle to at our wedding, it was absolutely perfect.

I had skin to skin with my son for around 15 minutes, but then I began to feel unwell. It turns out I was losing blood quite rapidly due to my placenta breaking apart - I lost around 1 litre in total. I threw up a couple of times and had to have some oxygen, whilst my wife held our son instead, but honestly this felt like a blip in an otherwise perfectly positive experience.

Whilst it wasn’t the birth I’d dreamed of when I first got pregnant, in the end I couldn’t have asked for a more positive experience, and it was ours.

♥️♥️♥️

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