Mellissa’s Birth Story

I just wanted to send you a message to thank you for this brilliant course and to share my experience. Like many ladies, my birth story was completely different to the preferences I’d had in mind. My due date was 22/12/20 and I was sent by my midwife straight to the hospital the following day to check whether my waters had broken. They had, but not enough for me to have noticed.

I had no other signs that I was in early labour and my cervix was closed. I was offered the gel insert to encourage my contractions to start, then spent the next 6 hrs walking around the ward, keeping ‘UFO’ and bouncing on the birthing ball. Nothing having happened after 6 hrs and I was offered the oxytocin hormone drip to encourage dilation and early labour. I was attached to a baby monitor to make sure there was no stress on the baby. My hope of having a water birth were now over at this stage due to being connected to the monitor.

I was disappointed but I kept referring back to the course to remind myself of the alternate options I would now have. My contractions eventually started and became more intense. I managed to breathe through my contractions solely on codeine, no other pain relief. After 5 hrs I measured 2cm dilated, this meant the Dr could break my forewaters and hopefully my body could take over and start to dilate quicker. This did not happen, I was assessed again after 5hrs and still at 2cm. By this time I was exhausted, I’d had no sleep and very little to eat other than my labour sweets! Baby was fine throughout this whole process so we decided to give it another 2 hrs on the drip and see if I could get to at least active labour.

They inspected me and I’d only managed 3cm, this baby was just not meant to be born naturally. I was given a category 2 C-section and we met our beautiful baby girl, Jessica Eve, at 19:53 on 24/12 and we were ecstatic.

There was so much useful information on this course that I had no idea about before starting it but one of the main points to take away from this is to ‘let go of what you cannot control’. Once you have that mindset, you’re prepared for anything that happens on the day.

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.