A Calmbirth story

At around 5 pm on Wednesday night, I had what I thought were more Braxton hicks. 
I had only seen the midwife the day before and was grumbling that I wanted to not be pregnant anymore and can she magically induce me without actually touching me. 
I had declined the 3rd offer of a stretch and sweep as I wanted this baby to come when she was ready and don’t believe stretch and sweep’s necessarily cause labour anyway. 

So I put the contractions in my timer app, which said to get ready for the hospital. Silly app I thought, I’m definitely not in labour yet. So I trudged through 2 more hours and then thought “Gee they really are relentless tonight” and put the contractions in the app again. “Get ready for the hospital,” it said again. Still, I refused to believe it might actually be happening. By another 2 hours later at 9 pm I got the same message in the app so I told R but prefaced it with “I’m sure it’s nothing, but the app says to get ready”
R went into minor freak-out mode and insisted we pack the bags for the hospital and contact my mum to get ready to have our son. All over the top in my opinion 😆

We got ready for bed and at around 11 pm, our son was awake and unsettled which resulted in R in his bed with him to get him to sleep. I soon realised these contractions were the real deal as they were consistent and painful. The main thing I was trying to do throughout them was keep my face soft and unclenched and do my breathing through each one. I soon realised that the deep noises naturally come from you when you’re focused on keeping and soft face and breathing! 

I spent most of the night in and out of the shower and bouncing on the ball in the lounge room. I tried resting in bed on and off but found that pretty hard as the contractions weren’t allowing any sleep anyway. By 5 am I got R to put the tens machine on me and we started making calls to let the hospital know we’d be there soon and get our son picked up. At this point, I really thought that birth was still something so far away because I still had a lot of doubt that I could get so far through labour without pain relief from drugs and primarily on my own. I also got upset thinking that I was now tired from being awake all night and was worried I didn’t have enough left in the tank to make it naturally and without interventions. 

We arrived at the hospital at around 7.30 am and they put us in a room without a birth pool as I had said I wanted an epidural when I was on the phone to them and went through a contraction! 😆

Luckily R stepped in to ask for a birth pool and I begrudgingly followed the midwife and R to another room while still not fully mentally committing to going much further without pain relief. 

At this point, the contractions were probably 2-3 mins apart but I still did not register how imminent the birth would be. I had 2 contractions in the new room while waiting for the bath to fill, both of which I yelled for an epidural, only to then have some major back and forth in my head about it once the contractions were over. I asked the midwife to check how dilated I was thinking that the result would make my decision for me about whether to continue on or get the epidural. 

I was 6cm dilated, fully effaced but my waters had not broken. I found this so disheartening because in my mind I thought 6cm was still ages away from actually pushing, and too far for me to continue in the state I was in. 
I got teary and asked for an epidural thinking my mind was made up. The very next contraction I felt my waters gush out. The midwife said “Why don’t you just try to get in the bath and see if that helps” and I honestly thought she was a bitch for suggesting such a thing when I was clearly in so much pain! 🤣🤦‍♀️
I’m hindsight now I realise that this was my transition moment and I’m so glad she encouraged me to try the bath. Not that I would have been able to get an epidural at this rate anyway seeing as each contraction was so close together now. 

The moment I got into the bath I felt my body start to involuntarily push! I started yelling “I’m pushing! I’m pushing!” Again, I doubted the moment thinking “I’m only 6cm, I can’t push yet cos I’m not dilated enough!”
The midwife encouraged me to let it happen and push if that’s what my body was telling me to do. Again I thought this woman was crazy. The next lot of pushing had me completely lost, R said he felt like he was most scared from this part because the noises I was making were animalistic and there wasn’t much he could do but watch me at this point. 
Finally just before the fourth lot of pushing the midwife said “I think you’re going to get the head out on the next push”
This was a major statement for me. It was like someone shone a light in the darkness and I suddenly went inside my head instinctively for the next lot of pushing, completely focused on where my baby was and what my body was doing. I’m pretty sure I went into complete silence, or else I just simply heard complete silence at this part. 
The midwife was right and as I felt her head pop out it was instant relief. I think maybe even the first time I opened my eyes as I knew the head was the biggest hurdle and had a lot more confidence that I could get her body out with only 1 or 2 more pushes. 

I lucked out and she was born on the next contraction at 8.04 am Thursday morning!
R had taken a photo of me when I first got in the bath and the time was 7.50 am. So from that moment to having my baby E, on my chest was a mere 14 minutes! 

I was so proud of myself for finally getting a water birth and managing to get through it all without the epidural. I’m very grateful that I had R and the midwife there to gently encourage me to stick to my birth plan and be that voice prompting me to keep going when I started to doubt myself. 

I think everything went so quickly that it was probably hard for both R and myself to fully process where we were in the birth process so one helpful thing that we missed would have been if someone were to remind me about the transition stage when I was going through it. Once I realised the head was so close I was able to see and feel the birth completely differently, much calmer and it was complete dedication that it was on me and me only to birth my baby. I feel like it’s easy to get lost in the pain and fears and thoughts and something as simple as a reminder of transitioning or that the head was almost there is enough to keep going. 

One of the many great things I took away from your Calm Birth class was that even when I thought I wanted the epidural, I was also at complete peace with that decision. 
I wasn’t viewing it as a failure or weakness, simply that I was going to do what I felt I needed and that was ok. There was obviously still a big part of me that wanted a water birth without the epidural and that was something I had wanted since the birth of my son. I’m glad I got that and proud of myself for getting through it but I would not have walked away with the same feeling of failure as I had with my first birth if that makes sense. I was telling my friend about the birth the other day and said how there were so many moments throughout the labour that I was angry at R for not being there while he was with our son, but that I also didn’t want to wake our son so I pushed through on my own. She said to me “Don’t you realise how badass that is?! You basically got through all of that on your own and you did it!” And she is right, I do feel badass now when I think of it like that. 
If someone had told me that I could get through the bulk of labour on my own and only go to hospital with 30 minutes to spare I would not have believed them! 

Thank you so much for everything you taught us, it really did come into play for this birth and gave me such a sense of calmness for so much of the labour. The breath-work played a major role and just focussing on swaying and unclenching everything was something I never did with the first birth and rarely do in life so it was even more evident how much of an impact this alone can make. R and I have both been practising our breath-work a lot since the birth as there’s definitely been some stressful times with a newborn and a toddler! I’ve also been utilising this for a lot of the after-birth pains and with breastfeeding as it’s been quite painful this time around. 

Having birthed two babies now, it seems completely insane and surreal to me to see how different birth can be when you have the tools and knowledge to face it. I don’t want to say that I regret anything from my first birth as ultimately I got my son and the first real love of my life. I’m just so grateful that the second time around I was able to experience birth feeling so much more confident and walking away from it without any trauma to heal from. 

So Thankyou again Kathy! We are so grateful for your knowledge and feel so much more supported through this experience having done the work and knowing we had so many tools in the toolbox to pull from if we needed it.