Katie’s positive birth
This positive birth story is with Katie and the arrival of baby Jasper. Katie had an induction after her waters broke and had a suction cup to support the delivery of her son.
On the morning of the 14th March I woke up at 8am to feel a gush of water. After telling my husband and running to the toilet to see what was happening, we rang the hospital – we were advised to go in to get checked as there were no signs of labour
On arrival, the midwives checked to see if it was my waters that had gone, which they had. I was hoping to then be able to go home to wait for labour to start, but unfortunately at this point it was found that my blood pressure was high, so I had to stay in to be monitored.
Everyone was hoping that I would go into labour without intervention by 8am on Monday to avoid having to be induced (due to risk of infection as waters had broken). After a night on the ward, and lots of bouncing on a birthing ball, labour did not start, so I was transferred to a delivery room and the process of induction began.
The first thing that was tried was a pessary gel, but this didn’t have much of a response – contractions did start, but they weren’t very strong or regular. We went for a couple of walks, had some food and entertained ourselves by playing a couple of games, but by the evening still not much was happening. As we had already been in a delivery room for over 12 hours, the midwives we started with had gone home. The next midwife wanted to see if all of my waters had gone, and if not she wanted to break them.
It seems that I just had a leak on the Sunday morning as when she broke the remaining waters there were several huge floods! After another couple of hours, contractions still weren’t really happening so I was put on an oxytocin drip (?) and everything went a bit mad from here on in. I went from using the breathing techniques I learnt on this course, to a TENS machine (which really didn’t work for me), to gas and air (which did work for some time), to an epidural as the pain was too much to handle. As it turns out, in case anyone was wondering, the epidural didn’t make my legs go numb as I was expecting, it just made them feel heavy which was a huge relief (as was the epidural by this point!). The biggest challenge I faced was the wait of over two hours from asking for an epidural to having it. After the epidural I was left without the drip for a while to recover a bit, and to allow me to get to 10cm.
Finally then, the pushing started! This part was actually the best bit of the entire process for me, as it felt like I had some control over what was happening, and I could actually do something to help our baby arrive. After two hours of pushing (I could still feel the contractions despite having an epidural but they were now completely manageable), the decision was made that I needed some extra help, so a vacuum cap was used to assist with the final bit. I followed the doctors instructions when pushing and was lucky enough to avoid tearing or needing to have an episiotomy, something that I was very proud of as the doctor said she had never managed to avoid this in a FTM before.
Our lovely little Jasper then arrived, screaming the place down and was put on my chest for skin to skin and his first feed. My husband cut the cord and there you have it – one adorable baby.
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.
