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10 Aug 2019
Positive Induction Birth
Wow, do we have a birth story for you!
Waters broke at 5.30am Thursday morning. I pottered around all day waiting for contractions to start but no sign of anything. We went to the meadow birth centre at 5pm to get checked and my cervix was nowhere near viable, the midwife couldn’t even do a sweep.
As you know they then booked me in for an induction on Thursday which really set me back. I was struggling with the disappointment of a drug induced labour and how it would affect our birth experience. But the links and videos you sent of positive induction births really did the trick!
As we were waiting for a bed on the delivery suite to become available (it was crazy busy!!) contractions started of their own accord on Friday afternoon, and some were quite strong, so I was hopeful of not needing an induction after all.
But then they slowed down and stopped completely overnight. We didn’t get a bed in the delivery suite until Saturday morning at 8am. I was already tired and dreading the syntocinon drip, but I listened to the positive affirmations, re-read the birth stories you’d sent, and Jude was amazing, reassuring me all the way that I had this.
We decided to give the drip a go without an epidural, even though a friend of mine who’s an anaesthetist had said ‘if you get induced, get an epidural straight away as it’s like labour on steroids’ I thought I owed it to myself to at least try and manage my comfort levels myself.
Well, I totally bossed it! I went from 3cm to fully dilated in 10hrs with my hypnobirthing techniques and tens machine! My midwife (who was lovely!) could not believe how calm and relaxed I was, just using my wave breathing and tens machine through the drug induced surges which were pretty strong!! I felt like superwoman and was the talk of the ward!
When fully dilated, I then got on the gas and air and thought ‘I’ve got this’. I ended up pushing for 2hrs in all sorts of positions, but she just wouldn’t come. Her heart rate started dipping and I was rushed down to theatre whilst signing a consent form for a forceps delivery/c-section. This was my worst case scenario, but at this point the plan was just to get her out safely. I used my calm breathing whilst they prepped me in the theatre (which was very chaotic!), and again whilst they put the spinal block in (which I was dreading but actually wasn’t at all bad). Jude then joined us in the theatre and I was told to push whilst they used the forceps to ease her little head out. Two big pushes and an episiotomy and she was out and in our arms. The feeling of joy was overwhelming and tears streamed down our faces. Our little girl is perfect in every way, a bit battered from the forceps.... but we can’t stop looking at her. Without Anna, her guidance and the hypnobirthing techniques there is no way we would have got through those 3 days. Despite everything that happened, I still feel that we had a positive experience and can’t believe how well I coped with it all. I feel like a warrior! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.