Indigo Whispers: The birth of Holly

On Thursday the 9th of Feb 2012 at 1am I started to feel what I believed were mild contractions.

By 4am they were slowly getting more intense but I managed to fall asleep. I woke at 8:30 am and they had gone! Come 11ish am they were back!! Yay! We had an appointment at the birthing centre with my midwife and also a scan booked in as I was 5 days overdue and our midwife wanted to check all was well in utero. Which it was. I then went on the ctg and I was in the early stages of labour, contractions were every 5-8 minutes lasting about 40 seconds. The pain was mostly in my back.

After our appointment we decided to go and stock up the house with food so we wouldn't need to go shopping for a while. Not long after we got home at 3:30 pm my waters broke, they were murky green, at first I didnt think anything of it but then I remembered watching an episode of 16 and Pregnant where one of the babys had poo'd and got meconium aspiration so I called our midwife and she came to our house to check bubs heart beat. We were given the option to birth at the main hospital rather than the birthing centre due to possible complications if bub had swallowed meconium. Seeing as the scan was fine and the heartbeat was good we decided to continue our plan to birth at the birthing centre and our midwife was happy and confident that this was safe to do. We made plans to meet at the birthing suite at 8pm for ctg monitoring to check and to work out if I would still be able to deliver at the birthing suite or if I would need to go to the main hospital.

By 6:30 pm my contractions were getting very uncomfortable and I had run out of hot water by having hot showers (which worked really well for pain relief) so Michael called our midwife and told her I needed to come in earlier.

We arrived at the birthing suite at 7:20 pm and had an internal and I was 5cm's dilated and our midwife pushed me to 6cm. I then had 2 sterile water injections in my back and jumped in the bath. The hot water was amazing but it wasn't long and I wanted something else for pain so got the gas and air. For an hour or so I was apparently 'as high as a kite' but it didn't last long and I started begging for an epidural, of course I couldn't have one as I was at a birthing suite so our midwife told me to get out of the bath and she would take me to the hospital knowing I wouldn't be bothered to get out of the bath! So after a few hours of screaming, swearing, kicking, thrashing around, begging for an epidural and throwing the wet washers Michael kept putting on my forehead our midwife suggested I get out of the bath and sit on the toilet to help me push. I wasn't on the toilet long when our midwife said I needed to either get back in the bath or go on the birthing stool as my baby was on her way! I got on the stool (it was closer!) with Michael supporting my back and 15 minutes later and 2 pushes my beautiful daughter Holly was in my arms. Michael was crying, I was just in shock and loosing a fair bit of blood so I got an oxytocin injection to get the placenta out of me and then Holly and I jumped into bed for cuddles and a feed. I was feeling really weak and cold but the feeling soon passed and Holly started to breastfeed.

Holly Grace was born at 11:06 pm after 12 hours of labour. She was 3.1kg, 33.5 cm HC and 49cm long and absolutely beautiful. 1st degree tear and a graze that didn't require sutures. Pain relief was sterile water injections (9 in total) and gas.

"Looking back I am really happy with how Holly's birth went. I was able to do it in the birthing centre without an epidural which was something I was really hoping to avoid. I do have a few things I want to change for number two and that is how agitated I got. I remember feeling really scared and alone despite having wonderful support. I didn't trust my body and desperately wanted an epidural. I know that if I had decided to go to the main hospital I would have definitely had one! I plan to read up on calm birthing and hypnobirthing techniques for next time. I have also decided that I would love a home water birth. I want to be surrounded by candles, my belongings,peaceful music and my amazing husband. I also want a lot of photos of the labour and birth as I have absolutely none of Holly's until we got into bed together. Next time I will hopefully have faith in my body's ability to naturally birth seeing as I have now experienced it".