Alice’s Positive Water Birth
Love reading positive birth stories, you’re in the right place…. This positive birth story is with Alice and her first baby. She had a water birth at her local birth unit and used a Tens Machine for pain relief in early labour. Alice welcomed a baby girl into the world at 40+ 6 weeks gestation.
It’s taken a while to find the time to write my birth story but I have absolutely loved reliving it and it was actually such a positive experience. I still can’t actually believe that I did it and bought our beautiful baby girl into the world in such a calm and wonderful way!
I honestly don’t think I would have been so calm during the birth if it wasn’t for this course, I would not hesitate in recommending it so thank you so much Beth Kitt!
My contractions started around 6am on the Saturday morning, they were coming every 7 minutes or so, so I tried to relax, put on the TENs machine and we got on with the day (easier said than done!). By the following morning they had started to slow and had almost stopped all together. Around 6pm Sunday evening they really started to ramp up and were coming thick and fast so I called the emergency number.
The on call midwife called me back, she later delivered our baby girl and she was absolutely amazing. We had a conversation where she was trying to persuade me to get some sleep at home and take a bath etc to manage the pain and wait until the morning to see how I felt, and me telling her that I definitely won’t get any sleep as the contractions were so intense compared to what I had been experiencing. Even though I had never experienced labour before, I knew my body was telling me it was happening and happening fairly soon! She even asked me if I had any contractions whilst on the phone to her in which I said ‘yes’ and she told me I can’t be in established labour as I wouldn’t have been able to talk through them! She then decided to come around to our house to examine how far gone I was as she lived locally.
The minute the midwife walked in I felt at ease, and after the examination she told me I was 4/5cm dilated. I couldn’t believe I had got this far at home with just the TENs machine! And she couldn’t believe how well I had done and even questioned if I had a high pain threshold (which before giving birth I definitely didn’t think I did, I have always been a bit of a drama queen). We had decided on giving birth in the local midwife led birth centre (about 20 min drive away), this isn’t 24 hours so the midwife went ahead to open it up and get it ready for us. We followed on behind and I must say, experiencing the contractions in the car was a different level of pain. I was just singing the words to whatever song was on the radio and squeezing my husbands hand when they came to try and distract me.
We arrived at about 9.30pm and were welcomed into a lovely large room with dimmed lighting and fairy lights. We were able to bring our own oil diffuser which we set up and the centre provided the lavender and clary sage oils. The pool was nearly ready for me. I couldn’t believe just how wonderful the warm pool water felt, it really helped ease the pain of the contractions. After 3 hours the midwife asked me to get out so she could examine me again to see how we had progressed. This was tough, leaving the lovely water to lie on the bed, I was immediately uncomfortable and in more pain. I took some gas and air to help me but actually I found it wasn’t for me and decided to stop using it. It made me feel a bit out of control and that was not a feeling I wanted.
They examined me as quickly as they could and told me I was 7/8cm dilated. They said they would examine me again in another 4 hours if baby wasn’t already here. At this point I panicked as all I heard was ‘4 hours’ and felt like there was no way I could carry on for another 4 hours. I started crying and had a wobble and said ‘I can’t do this’. Looking back I believe this was the start of the transition phase.The midwives and my husband calmed me down and helped me get back in the pool and pretty quickly after this I started to feel the contractions change and I wanted to push.
90 minutes of pushing later, with lots of encouragement from the team and my husband, our beautiful perfect baby girl was born at 2.28am. I decided to opt for the injection to deliver the placenta, this did make me throw up but by that point I didn’t care and the feeling quickly passed. There was a little bit of concern as the placenta wasn’t coming very quickly and the umbilical cord was apparently very thin, the midwives were worried if they pulled too hard on it to try and deliver the placenta it could come away from the actual placenta which would have resulted in us being taken to the local hospital. This luckily didn’t happen, and I actually went and sat on the toilet and pushed the placenta out.
They then examined me to check for any tears, this was something I was really nervous about and when I was pushing I kept saying ‘I don’t want to tear!!’. Thankfully I got away with just a few grazes and a small 1st degree tear which I was so relieved about.
The toughest part of the whole experience was getting Bella to latch and breastfeed which she really struggled with, which did in the end result in us being sent to the local hospital for additional support. My advice to anyone wanting to breastfeed who may struggle to take advantage of any support that is offered to you. We are now exclusively breastfeeding and I still find it tough being the only source of food for my daughter as it’s such a huge responsibility, I am really however glad I preserved with it and feel proud that I did.
Good luck to all you mums to be, you will absolutely smash it and I can’t wait to read all your stories when it’s your turn. ❤️
Click the link for more information about The Bump to Baby Chapter’s Hypnobirthing and Antenatal Online Course. Know what you can do to stack the odds in your favour for the birth that you want. Videos, checklists, audios & a support group all created by a midwife to get you feeling excited, prepared and confident for birth.
