Everything is going really well with Phoebe, we are so madly in love. She is a real milk guzzler and feeds in about 20min! She sleeps like a log – 3-4 hour stints! Nice to be getting good stints of sleep so far 🙂
Here’s how our birth story went:
My waters started breaking on Friday night (1 November) and so we wanted to leave it as long as we could without heading into hospital, in the hope of labour starting naturally. By Sunday morning we had to go get checked out because labour had not started and that’s when we had to say goodbye to our home/water birth. Felt disappointed but this was quickly replaced by excitement that our bubba was on the way!
I had a sweep at the hospital and then a few hours later we were in active labour (doctors were knocking down the door wanting to give me syntocinon but we held them off!) I listened to the affirmations and practiced the breathing techniques for a few hours when the surges were mellow and listened to beautiful ‘yoga’ music.
Lane and I spent the next few hours in the shower as the surges became more intense and balloon breathed through them. Lane was absolutely my rock. He was amazing. He knew what to say and when, and helped me through every minute.
Pretty soon we were 10cm dilated! Then we spent about two hours trying to breathe our baby out with the J breath. Our baby was JUST there! But when the pushing stage wasn’t bringing bubba any further, we were advised we’d need to have help from the doctor because her head was in a funny position. She was never distressed though, which is why the midwives were doing everything in their power to try and get her to come out without the doctors help. In the end we had an epidural, which by this point was my new BFF because not being able to push when that’s all your body wants to do is quite hard work!
Then I was able to breathe her out with the help of the doctor’s vontouse. What a moment when she came out! Wow. I felt her head come out which was great because I thought maybe I wouldn’t after the epidural. She was calm when she came out and totally content.
In the end it was about an 8 hour birthing and we both felt really proud to get to 10cm naturally, with hypnobirthing! There is no way we would have done it without the strategies we learnt.
She was born 6 pounds 11 and 49cm long. She’s the most amazing thing we’ve ever seen and we’re pinching ourselves every day that she’s ours to keep!
Thank you SO much for everything you taught us and for helping shift my fears about birthing.