Birth story - Yaz and baby girl

I feel so incredibly lucky that I came across The Positive Birth company just by chance while I was searching online for hypnobirthing courses, thinking I’d like to attend an in-person course. The course was discounted to £12 due to the company anniversary so I thought what do I have to lose! Little did I know, I had a lot to gain instead 🙂

My pregnancy wasn’t the nicest experience although I know it could have been far worse! I had awful morning (all day!) sickness from about week 7 to week 15 and lost a lot of weight. The remainder of the second trimester was fine, the third trimester baby girl was up in my ribs aaaaall day long and I had heartburn every single day which I’d never had before in my life! And being a FTP and a bit anxious in nature, I did go three times to triage for RFM but each time everything looked fine.

I had my last community midwife appointment 2 days before my due date, where I was booked in for induction for 40 + 7 for no other reason than it was hospital policy to be induced if you hadn’t gone into birth spontaneously by that date. I knew I didn’t want to have an induction and constantly had in my mind the positive affirmation ‘my baby will come when my baby is ready’, but I was reassured that I could decline it on the day, but I had to be booked in and be told about the risks etc. With that in mind, I spent the following week going on plenty of walks, harvested colostrum using my electric breast pump, YouTubing positions/movements to induce labour naturally 😂

On Friday night (40+5), I went to the hospital for my 3rd time with what I perceived as RFM. After being checked out with a CTG trace that was normal, I was strongly advised by the hospital doctor to have an induction that day because I was over the due date and that it was the third time I’d gone in with RFM. I declined, and said I’d wait until Monday (40+7) when I’d already booked in. They agreed but said I’d need to go back in the next day at 1pm for another CTG and the following day they’d do a scan. I went for the CTG the next day (Saturday) and all was fine.

Come Saturday 10.30pm, I was sat on the sofa watching the tele when I felt something down below, like the feeling when your period has started. I got up and saw a small mark on our dark grey sofa and thought oooh maybe that’s my waters breaking! I went to the toilet and sat down and saw blood dripping into the toilet seat… I panicked! I told my husband and we very quickly grabbed the hospital bags and went straight to triage, calling them on the way to let them know. At this point I was really questioning whether I’d done the right thing by declining the induction!

When I got there, around 11.30pm ish I was asked to do a urine sample and the bleeding had stopped. They did another CTG trace which again was normal, and I could see the uterine activity bit looking like contractions and I started to feel tightenings. They did a swab test to see if the bleeding was actually my waters breaking with a bloody show, which they confirmed it was so I was transferred to the birth suite with continuous foetal monitoring, and I had a lovely experienced midwife and a student midwife stay with me the whole time.

The doctor explained her plan that we’d see how things progressed but if things were slow then they’d have to induce. The tightenings, which I now understand were contractions, were frequent now but really manageable with the upbreathing - because of this, the doctor didn’t believe I was actually progressing so I had an examination where I was told I was 4cm dilated around 1.30am. At this point, the decision was made to break the rest of my waters and as the hospital is part of a research program where every lady is offered strep B testing which I gladly took, I was swabbed and unfortunately tested positive.

In our panic, we’d forgotten our snack bag 😂 so after the examination, my husband left to go to Tesco which was around the corner as we (and the midwives!) thought we’d have a good couple of hours before anything exciting happened. However.. baby had other plans and things started to ramp up very quickly after he’d left, and around 2.30am I had the most uncontrollable desire to push (it really feels like taking the biggest poo of your life!) which shocked the midwives! They checked me and I had gone from 4cm to 9cm in about an hour! I rang my husband to tell him to get back quickly.. later found out he had gone all the way home because it was Sunday morning and all of us forgot that no shops would be open at that point 😂. I’d not yet had my antibiotics set up to cover the strep b risk, so there was a bit of a mad rush with the midwives to get it sorted at this point!

I think active pushing started around 30 mins later… for me this was definitely more painful than contractions. At this point I used some gas and air to help which I’d been reluctant to do because I was having heartburn and didn’t want to feel more sick. Baby was out in 27 minutes , born at 4.42am, after I laboured on my side with my leg up in a stirrup. Baby girl was put straight on my chest where I burst into tears with just immense love for her straightaway. My husband didn’t want to know the gender throughout my pregnancy so I’d kept it secret from him and all my family and friends (I let the odd midwife or random supermarket worker know when asked 😂).. he was so surprised when he saw it was a girl as everyone had convinced him it was a boy from scan pictures!! I had active management of placenta delivery while she was still on me which came out easily and painlessly.

I came out with a 2nd degree tear and some labial grazing - my midwife thought it was worse than this so she asked the doctor to do it instead. We were given a bit of time for skin to skin but I then passed baby onto her daddy so they could do the stitches, which was bloooomin painful and I think I complained more and used more gas and air during this part than anything else 😂. After all was done, we were left in peace to get to know our baby and to complete the antibiotic drip. As part of mine and my husband’s faith, after a baby is born, the call to prayer is whispered in their ear. During this time when we were alone, my husband performed this and it was such a beautiful moment which made me cry again and is a memory I will always cherish.

Because of the strep b positive result, we had to stay in for 12 hours after she was born for routine monitoring which was all fine and then we were on our merry way home at 5.30pm to introduce baby to her family!

The whole thing happened very quickly (total time 2 hours 20 mins from established labour), and definitely did not go according to my birth plan, but I’m so grateful for the course to help me manage my contractions, understand the labour process and use my BRAIN to make my own informed choices and stand up for myself. I can’t thank the two midwives I had enough… they were so empowering, constantly giving me positive affirmations and set up the room with a star projector and calm-spa like music without me even asking. So the course, alongside these brilliant midwives, gave me an experience I’ll never forget for all the right reasons ✨