During my pregnancy, I found people really keen to tell me their birth stories. And most of them were horror stories. Think being dramatically cut open, emergency cesareans, hundreds of doctors in the room and bright lights. Don’t get me wrong I know this happens and can happen but I always think being told these stories WHILST PREGNANT can have an effect on women’s births and their mindset about labour.
So I want to share with you all my positive birth experiences, and I am always keen to tell expectant mothers my story as so many dread birth and expect it to go wrong which is not the case! And please, if you’re reading this and you had a birth that didn’t go how you wished, please don’t think I’m smug about my births, I just feel its so important to share positive stories that its not all gory, and honestly I have no idea how they went as well as they did really. I’ve never thought I had a particularly high pain threshold. I guess I was just lucky.
My son was born in 2017. I had a straight forward pregnancy, apart from severe heartburn which I put down to the mounds of hair on his head at birth, but my 24 year old self was pretty clueless as to what to expect (in birth and afterwards to be honest!). Hundreds of pounds spent at NCT (me and my friend I met there laugh that we were both the most expensive friends we’d ever bought)! Many lessons spent on how my partner can massage my way through labour (if only it was that simple!)
My waters broke on Saturday 23rd September, 8 days before his due date. We had been at a wedding the day before and perhaps dancing had spurred him on. It was 5.30am, my husband just left for work and so he had barely got up the road when he came back. We naively got in the car to go to hospital, thinking this was it, we’d very soon have a baby. The contractions were coming more regularly and getting stronger but still about 10 mins apart. The hospital checked me over and told me I was 1cm and to go home until they come more regularly. So off we drove home.
Once back home, my husband was ready to use some of the techniques we’d learnt in NCT and give me a back massage, however I am not the person to be touched or even spoken to when in pain and so I told him where to go with that massage and I ran myself a bath! Amazingly, 5 hours passed in the bath (draining a bit of water and re-running hot, mooing like a cow and focusing on the flame of a really expensive candle I’d been saving for labour!) before my brother in law told my husband that really I should go back to the hospital now.
I climb out and suddenly I’m in complete agony. The hospital was a 20 minute drive away, and the sheer thought of the journey was making me sweat. My husband carries me to the back of the car and suddenly, I start pushing. Honestly I’d never realised that when they say you can’t control or stop the pushing, they’re right. I’ve actually since read that if you were in a coma while in labour, your uterus muscles are so strong they would push the baby out!! How incredible is that? So yeah, here we are driving to the hospital, I’m screaming and pushing, my husband is screaming and driving.
The time is now 12.30pm. We pull up to the hospital and my husband gets a wheelchair for me. He’s trying to push me through the carpark but it’s one of those ones you don’t push, you pull. Honestly at this point all I can compare us to is Lou and Andy from Little Britain. The language coming out my mouth was something else. We go up to the reception (i can only apologise to these poor women waiting quietly for a check-up) and the receptionist is now a new one from the one we met at 6am. ‘First time parents?’ she asks, ‘yes’ my husband replies.
‘Did you ring before you were coming in?’
‘No’ he responds.
‘Okay, just wheel her over there and someone will be in shortly to get you’.
By now I cannot stop pushing, and the feeling is nearly every minute.
‘Erm, my wife is lifting her bum off the seat, and pushing, should she be doing that?’
The receptionist gets on the phone ‘We’ve got a pusher!!’
Suddenly, a midwife rushes in to get me, says I must get off the wheelchair and run to the bed. She checks me (and sorry TMI but I'm only giving honesty, her hand disappears up there)… 'You’re 10cm, you are not putting your trousers back on, we’re going to wrap a towel around your waist and toga it to that delivery room and once you see the bed, you get on it and.. you push!!’
‘Can I have an epidural now please? I feel like I really need it.’ I naively ask.
‘Darling, there’s no time, your baby’s head is about to come out’
‘Right’ I scream ‘Well I’d like to give birth in the pool, I really need some hot water to lie in’ dreaming of the hot bath i’d left at home
‘It takes 45 minutes to run the pools, theres no time, you don’t understand, your baby is about to be born’
I get on the bed, suck the life out of the gas and air tube, and 15 minutes later, my baby boy Rafie was born. It was the craziest, most dramatic little entrance for our boy but I would now expect no different for his entrance into this world and it all sums him up perfectly.
3 years and 3 months later the day comes for me to give birth to my second and although the birth of my son was not the emergency c-sec trauma that many do experience, I was still nervous as i’d heard the second is faster, and i feel like i didn’t need faster, i just needed to be better prepared and listen to my body more.
This time my waters didn’t break first but my contractions started early hours of the 29th Jan. We called the hospital, and they told me to ‘run a nice hot bath’.. well you can understand our reaction to that.. not a chance was i getting in a bath at home!
We headed to the hospital at 4.45am. Walking into the most serene room, with fairy lights, music, lavender mist, and a huge birthing pool already full. It honestly did look like Champneys. I got into my bikini after being told i was 2cm dilated. When I was told I was only that amount dilated I was prepared for things to take at least a few hours to reach 10cm. However, as soon as I got into my bikini, I had some fresh blood. The midwife said this was nothing to worry about and it just meant I was dilating quickly (because your cervix is full of blood vessels it can bleed easily when dilation occurs)
Into the pool I slid, and when I say this there is no exaggeration, 3 pushes later and not a stitch in sight (probably shouldn’t be proud of that!!) my 9lb surprise baby girl came into the world… on my grandmothers birthday.. The most perfect birth.
I am so grateful for my experiences, and I just wanted to share my stories because if you’re reading this you may have been searching for positive birth stories on the internet and due a baby soon. If I can recommend one book to read (I read this whilst pregnant with my second child) it’s hypno birthing: Practical ways to make your birth better. Good luck!