My birth story

At 8 weeks post-partum I finally feel recovered and confident enough to share my pregnancy and birth story with you all. Overall, I would consider myself very lucky and this is definitely a positive story but it also wasn’t without difficulties. I dedicated time and energy to prepare which undoubtedly helped. I was pregnant and gave birth in the Netherlands. I hope by sharing this you feel inspired as did I when reading other birth stories.

I had a low risk pregnancy however I still had plenty of symptoms. I suffered from morning sickness from week 6 to week 23 and at around week 27 I developed pelvic girdle pain which was very debilitating. Luckily I was assigned to a great manual physio therapist and my symptoms of this became a lot more manageable. My mental health was fine, however I did struggle with my confidence and the body changes, which resulted in me coming offline for most of the year.

I focused on prepping my mind and body for pregnancy, birth and recovery from the very beginning. I had never really had a challenge like this before and I enjoyed looking at what I could do to give myself the best possible outcome for how I wanted everything to go.

I managed to stay physically active up until my labour, have a positive birth and the recovery I had hoped for.

I was convinced I was going (hoped!) to give birth early but as is usual with the first child this was not the case! I was eating 6 dates daily from around week 30 (luckily I love to snack on them anyway) and drinking raspberry leaf tea from about week 33 (didn’t enjoy this as much!). Honestly, I’m not sure if either of these had an effect on my birth. At 41 weeks I decided to go for a sweep as I had tried everything to get things moving and nothing seemed to be working. I also wanted to avoid being induced at 42 weeks.

Sunday 10th November 41 +3

00:30
My contractions started and I tried to sleep through the first three or four but they were already too intense to stay in bed. I knew this was the real thing! I went to the living room and started to time the contractions that were now 4 minutes apart which I wasn’t expecting.

I got on the exercise ball and started doing circles and gentle movements for an hour or so before Sam woke up. He started timing them for me and we decided to ring the midwife at 02:30 as it felt like things were ramping up quickly (they weren’t haha). Our midwife Anne joined us at home around 05:30.

I had my first check and was 3 cm dilated. Anne checked I was doing ok and if I was happy for her to leave as I was doing fine and she knew it would be a while longer before I dilated to the next stage.

At 0930am the midwife came back and we did another check; I was 4cm dilated which felt disheartening after what felt like a lot of work to get to that point. I laboured for a while longer at home and then decided to go to the hospital around 11am so that I could use the birth pool as my contractions were definitely getting more intense.

I arrived at the hospital and got straight into the birthing pool. The weight of my body supported by the warm water felt comforting and relaxing but did not provide me with as much relief as I was hoping!

At around 1245 I had another check and I was 7cm dilated. My contractions felt stronger and back to back by this point. I really felt like I wasn’t getting much of a break but I remember thinking at this point too, that I was so close, and that I could do this!

At 14:30 I was checked again, I was finally 9cm dilated which was a massive relief to me, now I really knew I could do this. But it was still really intense and I wanted something more for the last bit. My midwife offered me gas and air but it meant I had to get out of the water, which wasn’t my original plan because I wanted a water birth. However, I was ready to try something different. I got out and onto the bed for the gas and air. I found this really helped take my mind off things but I could still feel every contraction so still felt in control.

After a few contractions on the bed I could feel everything start to push downwards without my control. I was told to come off the gas and air for the pushing so that I could focus. I was reluctant to do this but was then told I had been off it for the last 10 minutes anyway.

I had been using my hypnobirthing breathing techniques for the whole labour so far but when it came to the pushing phase I sort of went blank! My midwife then helped guide my breathing whilst also guiding me through the critical phase of getting his head out which meant I tore as little as possible. After 30 minutes of pushing Felix was born. His arm did get a little stuck so I had a little help from the midwife to release this.

Once Felix was born, he was brought straight to my chest for skin to skin and he was able to stay there for at least ten minutes which allowed for the blood to flow through the cord and for it to turn white. This was something that we really wanted to happen. At the same time we were trying get my placenta out as I was losing more blood than usual. It was here we realised that my placenta wouldn’t disattach, I had serval injections but nothing was working. I was also starting to loose a lot of blood, they decided I was going to have to go into surgery to have it removed. Before I knew it around 5 doctors were in the room getting me ready for surgery. I had to leave Felix and Sam for a few hours to be put to sleep to have the operation. I lost 1.7L of blood which was one of the hardest parts of my recovery. I had 3 internal stitches at the same time as my operation and a couple of hours later I was back with Sam and Felix.

Even though my birth was different to what I had planned and expected, it was still a positive birth for me. I am super grateful for our lovely midwife Anne who was with us throughout my pregnancy and the birth and also to Sam for being an amazing husband.