Birth story – Jo & baby Tomos
??Positive Birth Story??(sorry – it seems really long!)
Hi everyone, please welcome Tomos Macsen Fall to the world ? He arrived last Saturday 12.09.20 at 3.28pm – a healthy 8lb 2.5oz and nearly a week before his due date of 17th September – which I wasn’t expecting as a FTM!
On the evening of Friday 11th September (after a phone call where my mother-in-law was adamant he would arrive the next day & we laughingly disagreed) I went to bed as normal with no signs of impending arrival.
04.50am Saturday, I awoke due to a ‘pop’ and gush of warm fluid ‘down there’! Imagine my surprise! A visit to the bathroom and lots more continuing fluid confirmed to me my waters had broken!! I sat there for about 10 mins in excited shock I think. I wasn’t having contractions at this point so I wandered about for a bit & thought about going back to sleep…after nearly an hour I woke my partner. We decided to call labour ward and they asked us to come in to be assessed. I was starting to feel mild periody-type cramps at this point which started to ramp up pretty quickly and by about 6.30am were 6 mins apart. I attached my TENS machine & took 2 paracetamol. In the car on the way there they quickly became 3 mins apart and felt strong – I kept using the TENS Boost mode during the contractions & focusing on breathing.
I was assessed at 8am as 4cm dilated – yay! My partner then came straight up & we were taken to the delivery room. After another half hour, contractions were getting super strong at this point & I was starting to groan like a cow through them ? as it seemed to help! My partner was reminding me to breathe & suggested I might want some music /oils but I declined as felt I needed to concentrate on the contactions. I found his touch extremely reassuring & calming though and his words helped me enormously ? I thought I wouldn’t want to be touched when in pain but it was the thing that helped most.
At this point, we used EBRAN to choose an epidural. I have a very mild form of Spina Bifida, but it meant if I needed a c-section I wouldn’t have been able to have a last minute ‘Spinal’ and would have had to have a General Anaesthetic. Although things were going well, I decided overall that it would be better to have a working epidural that could be topped up if I needed a section…GA was not something I wanted to happen if possible. I have to say it was the best decision we made…after about 30 minutes the pain disappeared and we really enjoyed excitedly waiting for the little man to arrive.
By 12pm, the midwife confirmed I was fully dilated ? Pretty fast I think! They advised waiting another hour before pushing though due to the epidural. This is where things slowed down a bit…after 2 hours of pushing he still hadn’t arrived. We decided to try a bit longer. After 3 hours of pushing, he still hadn’t arrived (possibly due to the epidural, I don’t know). The doctor recommended intervention at this point – my blood pressure had started to rise & I had some protein in my urine. As my epidural was working really well, we decided to have forceps help. Wow! These babies are tough – the tugging was really strong! His head finally emerged on the final attempt (thankfully as they had started to prep theatre for c-section)…I was asked to stop pushing while they performed an episiotomy to prevent tearing at this point. He was then finally born and placed on my stomach ??? Emotions over-ran me then and I was overcome with love & relief.
My partner got to stay until 9pm, as we were in our own room. He left when Tomos & I had to transfer to post-natal ward. We stayed in for 2 days and came home Monday night. I have managed to pick up a mild infection in my episiotomy which has meant it is extremely sore & I can’t sit at the moment, but apart from that, I view the birth extremely positively and credit this course for giving me the knowledge & confidence to feel in control of decisions.
I was terrified of birth when I started this course so know that you CAN do it and you will have those angels called midwives & doctors with you every step of the way ?? xxx
If you want to know about ways to keep calm during your birth, ways that you can stack the odds in your favour to have a great birth and techniques that you can start practising now in your pregnancy so that you can feel prepped, ready & excited for birth, then you can get all the information from the convenience of your own home on your own time, by accessing our online course.
An online course put together by UK midwife, Beth offering both hypnobirthing and antenatal education, which has helped women across the globe feel confident and calm during their birth.
