Rachel’s positive hospital birth

“This pregnancy had been very straight forward. Other than nausea in my 1st trimester, reflux in the 3rd and struggling with mobility towards the end there were no concerns. I was very lucky, still carrying a 2 year old around all the time and swimming at least once a week until 37 weeks, as well as going for walks whenever I got a chance…

We moved house 3 days after my due date and even my midwife had warned me that the stress of the move would likely either make our little girl arrive early or stay put, so I wasn’t surprised that she kept us waiting!

That said, I was very pleased not to go into labour on our moving day!! My 2 year old son was sent home from nursery with chickenpox on moving day too so I was equally glad that baby waited until he was over the worst of that!

The day before labour I’d noticeably slowed down and had a feeling things were going to start soon so in the evening we prepared ourselves just in case suspicions were right. We watched stand up comedy on TV whilst I built the pushchair and husband stayed up working after I went to bed just in case he started on maternity leave soon.

At 1.15am I woke up to more significant cramping than braxton hicks, watched the clock for an hour and worked out that contractions were every 5 minutes, so I woke my husband to discuss when we should drop our son off to his grandparents. I didn’t think we couldn’t wait until morning! The labour line team suggested sorting childcare arrangements straight away, getting some rest and calling back when contractions were closer together.

At 3am we called Grandparents and at 3.45am our son was dropped off. Husband got home about 3.55am at at 4.10am my waters broke! Checking the colour of my waters, they were green…not what I’d hoped for. All sorts of thoughts started running through my head about what this could mean for my preferred water birth but I did my best to stay calm and focus on the now.

Labour line told me to go to the hospital straight away but to go to the labour ward as I now wouldn’t be able to birth in the attached birth centre. There was still a pool on the labour ward but I knew it was unlikely I could use it even if it were available. I’d also already been told that there had been a lot of requests for pools that night so availability was questionable anyway.

On arrival at the hospital, a lovely midwife took us to a side room for monitoring to establish next steps. I requested wireless monitoring so that I could stay mobile, kept the lighting dim and sat on the edge of the bed using calm breathing to continue working through the contractions. We had a massive snack bag but all I wanted was water…not like me at all!

The midwife read my birth plan and adhered to it perfectly. I wasn’t offered any pain relief at any point but I agreed to a cervical exam. I was 9cm!

Drs kept an eye remotely (so I only ever saw the midwife) and said they weren’t happy for me to use the pool because baby’s heart rate wasn’t clear from the monitoring, but the midwife in the room could see on the screen that baby was fine. They asked if I was happy for them to put a “clip” on baby’s head for more accurate monitoring…I categorically declined and was glad that I was prepared with the knowledge and had the conviction to do so!

That said, there wasn’t time now to fill a pool!

There wasn’t an obvious “transition” feeling of hopelessness/fear that I’d heard about, but I knew that I was ready to push and felt grateful that I’d soon be meeting my baby.

I started pushing at exactly 8am and at 8:04 her head was born. At 8:06 our daughter arrived in the world.

We had delayed cord clamping and my husband was able to cut the cord before a physiological 3rd stage. We had to stay in for 24 hours for observation due to the meconium but all was fine during that time and we were discharged.

Considering how scared I’d been to give birth without a pool, I needn’t have been. In some ways the dry land birth was even more positive than my previous water birth, this one was much quicker and I had no pain relief. I actually feel very privileged to have experienced both of my very different positive births.”