Birth story - Samantha and baby Isobelle

I started with mild twinges early Saturday morning and was awake with them from 1:30-6:30am. During this time I lost some of my plug. 

On Saturday I had a feeling things were starting but carried on my day as normal. My husband Scott and I had a lovely (last!) breakfast together, we went into town to run a few errands and then we did some gardening! At 4:30pm I felt a little trickle and something told me my waters had gone, so we called triage.

Our local birth centre was not open as it is an on demand service so we travelled through to the main hospital who confirmed my waters had broken but sent me home. Looking back, I had definitely started contracting at this point and the Freya app confirmed this, but I knew being at home was best for speeding things up. 

At 7pm we left for home where I did my best to get comfortable. The Freya app told me surges were coming regularly. At about 9pm I decided to put the TENs machine on which really helped as I tried to concentrate on my up breathing.

At about midnight I asked Scott to call the hospital back as I was beginning to struggle on my own. After a few arrangements and phone calls were made they were able to open our local birth centre for us. We made our way there at 1am where we were met by 3 midwives and the whole place to ourselves!

I was examined and found to be 7cm which was an incredible feeling. I had got there all on my own by breathing through it! Straight away the pool was ran and I was introduced to gas and air which made things much easier for me to manage. Scott sprayed my room spray and put out my candles. I had a vitamin drink and straw which I was able to sip through between surges. Getting into the pool was amazing and there I laid with my gas and air having a fantastic time!! 

I felt things start to change and knew baby was on the way when the midwives all came into the room, quietly and discreetly. Everyone sat around in the dark whilst I started to transition (which I was definitely aware of!) One of the midwives kept using a torch to have a quick check whilst monitoring the pool temperature and baby’s heartbeat. This was when I told her we were ‘definitely having a boy’ and he was to be called Jesse...

The pushing stage was scary to begin with but I let my body do its thing and within 20 minutes or so we had a head! The rest of baby quickly followed and midwives helped us put baby straight onto my chest where it was Scott’s turn to announce to the room that we had a baby girl. The feeling was indescribable - I remember just laughing and saying that I couldn’t believe it! It was perfect. Baby Tyzack was born at 4:01am, just three hours after arriving at the birth centre. 

Later we decided on her name - ‘Isobelle’ after one of her amazing midwives, and ‘Rose’ after the name of the room she was born in. Thank you to The Positive Birth Company for giving me all the knowledge I needed to safely bring our daughter into the world and for making it a wonderful experience which we will never forget. I will forever recommend your book and digital pack to anyone I know expecting a baby!