Birth story - Gail and baby Aria

Pregnancy:

🤰🏻Low anterior placenta at 20 weeks, moved at 35 weeks

Query small for gestational age (SGA) at 35 weeks, resolved at 37 weeks

Negative Glucose tolerance test (GTT) at 30 weeks due to BMI

Mostly active through out pregnancy

Labour:

Monday 20/11/23

Had some mucus plug discharge and period pain cramping as well as back pain in morning. Got on with my day.

Went to the loo and came back to the couch. Went to get up again and felt a gush of liquid between my legs it was 2:15pm. I had put on a pad just incase that morning.

Waters were clear. Texted my husband who came home from and we called the home team labour line. Someone came out to us at around 6pm to review if waters had gone and how I was doing.

Would call tomorrow after waters had gone for 24 hrs due to infection risk.

Had surges regularly 1 in 7/8 minutes lasting for a minute or so through out the night.

Tried the TENs machine and whilst it helped, the stickers kept coming off which I found annoying. So unfortunately that got abandoned early.

Tuesday 21/11/23

Labour still wasn't established but surges were still regular. I was nibbling and staying hydrated.

We hit the 24 hrs for waters breaking. The home birth team phoned us and asked us what we would like to do. They'd recommend going in for a CTG just for longer monitoring to check baby was ok.

Using the BRAIN framework, we decided to decline this. Baby had been moving regularly and I felt traveling in to the hospital and having the monitoring would disrupt our oxytocin bubble and therefore labour.

They came to our house to do some monitoring and discuss our plan from there.

Monitoring was all good.

From there I went into established labour around 9:37 pm. We phoned the home birth team at 10:45 who advised us to wait a couple more hours, as it was my first time labouring and if it was still regular they'd come and check me over.

So I continued in established labour for 2 more hours and my husband prepared the birth pool area.

Just to say he had been by my side through all of this every surge counting for my up breathing and supporting me in everyway.

Wednesday 23/11/23

After this the midwife came out at 2:06 am. I had a vaginal examination (VE) which showed I was 4 cm dilated and all my, and babies, observations were normal.

So the pool could be filled and I could get in it, yay.

My midwife did inform me she had gas and air but if I could manage then I should to delay using it so it remains more effective.

From here on the timings are unknown to me.

The pool was filled and I got in. It was hard to know how to get through the surges without my husband there, literally by my side, but we found ways to make it work.

My surges were longer and further apart in the pool, so I was able to cat nap in between surges.

Then transition started I could feel a difference between the types of surges.

It was not pleasant but I was able to breath through and my husband was there helping me through with affirmations and breathing etc.

After 4 hrs I was offered another VE but as I didn't want to get out of the pool and there was enough change visually in how I was labouring that the midwife and I were both happy I was making progress with labouring.

I continued to labour and the pressure around my back passage until I felt baby's head move into the vagina.

I did my down breathing on the surges and felt to see I was right and I could feel her in there!

I told the midwife, who was shocked, she was preparing to hand over to the day midwife. So she quickly had to get ready for babies imminent arrival.

Luckily I didn't have the fastest 2nd stage so she had time to prep and for the second midwife to get there. Babies head kept bobbing up and down but although it was frustrating, she kept making good advancement during surges.

Down breathing was soo useful during this stage. If I felt the surges becoming tense I would think I need to give my uterus more oxygen and so instead of fighting the surges I just needed to supply them with what they needed.

I experienced "the ring of fire" whilst baby was crowning. As she moved back up I knew I would experience it again so, to stop my anxiety causing fear and adrenaline, I called to my husband. I told him that I needed affirmations and he held my hand and repeated my affirmations, with which, I was able to continue my down breathing and baby was born at 8:34 am

No blood at delivery.

We were able to have uninterrupted skin to skin where Aria was able to establish breastfeeding and the midwifes were superb. I had a 1st degree tear which didn't require stitching. I wasn't able to pass urine 4 hrs after birth so I had to go to triage for a catheter as I was in urinary retention but that was easy to manage.

We've just been at home since enjoying the newborn cuddles and kisses.

Our birth was our ideal outcome and thanks to the PBC hypnobirthing course it gave us the tools to be able to achieve that.