Birth story - Sarah-Jayne and baby Noa

Because of this course I completely changed hospitals as my original one only had one birth pool, so I chose one with a beautiful midwife led birthing unit.

My stubborn little one had other ideas and decided to stay breech from 36 weeks. I tried the exercises at home to no avail so I tried an ECV. This unfortunately also didn’t work so they gave me the option to arrange a c-section, the midwife also said to look into natural breech births. I was initially upset as my beautiful tea light lit water birth slipped away from me, as time went on though we decided on the c-section and I’m glad I had the chance to get used to the idea (to be honest, I got a little bit excited at having a date to meet my baby).

Our date came but unfortunately they had a lot of emergencies and it wasn’t meant to be. The midwives and doctors were extremely apologetic and allowed us to come back 2 days later on May 1st. They said they don’t do elective c-sections at weekends and certainly not bank holidays but as we had waited from 6.50am till 8pm they’d make an exception for us.

Well, on the new date we didn’t end up waiting too long and all of a sudden it was our turn. I told the midwife I felt like running to theatre! They set up our iPad playing our playlist and even put out my battery tea lights! The staff were so friendly and down to earth, they even danced and sang along to our music, commenting what a refreshing playlist it was (rock music!). She was even born to my favourite band Incubus, and had her first dance with daddy to our wedding first dance song! It was so special.

They were incredibly accommodating, informative and friendly for our whole time there.

For my Epidural, the end of the procedure and whenever I felt I needed a little destress I used up breathing One of the surgeons did an amazing job of helping me during the epidural also, placing his hands on my shoulders and talking me through relaxing. Singing along to my own music majorly helped take my mind off things too.

It really was an amazing experience (I even said to my husband, our wedding was good but this is the best day of my life!)

I may not have been able to utilise everything the course taught but what I did use was massively helpful and integral to the experience we ended up having, as I had no idea of the choices and options available beforehand so I’m forever grateful.