Rachel and her partner booked on to a hypnobirthing course with me for the birth of Rachel’s third baby. Having a bit of a gap between babies, and being an older mum, she was keen to learn techniques to cope as well as advocate her wishes confidently. Here’s her birth story.
Our birth story
01:54 19th January 2022
Baby boy
4600g
40+5 - spontaneous labour
Textbook physiological homebirth
3rd birth experience
No tear!
As some of you know, I had been in prodromal labour for over two weeks but...after some acupuncture and yoga yesterday, things started to move forward into active labour!
Our amazing HB midwives (3 including a student) and our lovely doula arrived at around 10:30pm last night, whilst the pool was filling up. I got straight in when it was ready as the surges were super intense and close together.
After about 1.5 hours, I agreed to a VE which showed I was 10cms dilated and my forewaters broke shortly after that. A while later when things had slowed a bit, I got out of the pool again to enlist the force of gravity, at which point my hind waters broke and everything accelerated!
I never made it back into the pool and ended up giving birth on our bed! I used Entonox (although I'm not convinced it does anything for me in labour, other than distract me with its funny noise) and I had long ditched it by transition.
After my gorgeous baby son had got all the stem cell goodness from the cord, I birthed the placenta naturally in about 20 mins. This then went off to be cleaned and stored (we are having it encapulated). I also put a piece in my cheek and had some Shepherd's Purse tincture to mitigate the risk of PPH.
After all the checks, the team left us during the quietness of night around 4am. He was already suckling on the colostrum by this point.
It honestly couldn't have gone better for us. It was beyond our dreams and desires to have such an experience. This should absolutely not be the exception. It should be the norm!!! It was so fantastic not having to go to a hospital! Thanks so much to this group for helping me push back and have the confidence to wait for our time (yes, thanks Dr Sara Wickham too!)
We are euphoric and in love!!!
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