Birth story - Tammy and baby Henry

*Trigger warning* - use of the word pain, 2nd degree tear

♡ Positive story:

I woke up on Tuesday morning (38+3) at 4am with diarrhoea and period-like cramps. Throughout the day the cramps were present but were very manageable. The night from Tuesday to Wednesday I got a very decent sleep but woke up again around 7am with cramps and diarrhoea. That day, I had my 38-week check up with my midwife. She advised that it could be the start of the labour, or it could disappear again and take another few weeks for it to start. But I know this was it. At 7pm my surges started. They quickly became 5 minutes apart. My partner and I dimmed the lights, put on music and got a salt lamp out to make it cosier. I was breathing through my surges, sang through them and used my Swiss ball to bounce around and get comfortable.

Around 10pm, the surges got stronger and more frequent and lasted between 40-120 seconds. By 11pm I send my partner to bed, so he could get some sleep as I knew that I'd need him later down the line with all of his energy. At 1am I woke him up as I couldn't deal with the pain by myself anymore. We used a TENS machine to cope with the back pain, however the TENS machine overwhelmed me, so we took that off pretty fast. By then showers and singing helped me the most, so that's what I was doing. Also, holding on to my partner and swaying back and fourth as well as looking at my feet and creating a pattern in my head by saying "feet, feet, feet, feet" while stomping helped heaps.

Just before 2am we contacted our midwife as my surges now were 4 in 10 minutes, for an hour and she headed out to our place to assess me. My mucus plug and waters broke at 2.20am, and labour progressed fast from there. The midwife arrived at 2.45am and said that I was only 4cm dilated but had active bleeding, which she thought could be antepartum haemorrhage. She decided that we should head to the hospital to be on the safe side. This was not my ideal and preferred plan, however was included on my birth plan as plan B, so I was prepared for this as well.

By 3am, I felt strong pressure in my bum, which I remembered to be a sign that the baby was definitely close. So we packed up and got in the car and left the house by 3.10am. We knew it would take us 40 minutes to get to the hospital so we were driving safely but a little speedy 😉 My partner played music in the car to distract me and talked me through my surges (which I don't fully remember anymore), as I was in a lot of pain and felt the incredible urge to push/breath the baby out. At 3.54am the baby was born in the car. Just before that I felt the baby crowning and I was able to strip down my adult diaper to my ankles (yep that's what I was wearing, an adult diaper, a t shirt and flip flops!) and put my feet up on the dashboard. With the next surge, I was able to breath out my baby boy!

My partner was driving on the expressway and we were about 10 minutes away from the hospital. I caught my baby and pulled him up to my chest. Luckily the umbilical cord was long enough for me to do so. I unwrapped the umbilical cord from his neck and sucked out some of the mucus from his mouth. I even remember to look at the time to know when he was born!

My partner, very much in shock, continued driving and called our midwife. She advised to now meet at the birth centre as the baby was crying and breathing well. Once we got there, the midwifes and our LMC midwife waited for us with warm towels and a wheelchair. They were joking that this was definitely not on our birth plan! We got wheeled into a delivery room for golden hour, cutting of the cord, delivery of the placenta and some skin-to-skin time. After a nice shower and some stitch for my 2nd degree tear (and finally the use of gas!), we walked to our postpartum room where we stayed for another 2 days with the most amazing support.

Even though this was not how I envisioned giving birth or even labouring at home for that long, I absolutely think I had a wonderful birth and feel empowered. My partner and I did everything by ourselves and I’m so proud of us. We love our boy so much and cannot wait to see him grow up into this amazing person.

Without the PBC, we wouldn’t have understood how important the physiological part for labour and birth is, and how important it is to feel safe and loved. It gave me and my partner the tools to make this birth special.