Labour felt like it went really quickly, I started having surges that felt like mild cramps on Tuesday 10th December, 9pm that night the surges were about 11 minutes apart. As soon as I went to bed they started to feel more intense and I lost my mucus plug. At 11:30 I sat on the toilet and focused on my breathing whilst I timed the surges. I would focus on not tensing my face or body and trying to be as relaxed as possible during the surges.
By 12:45 I was having 3 surges in a 10 minute period for over an hour so that's when we called our midwife and made our way to the hospital. We arrived at the birth centre at 1:30am, I tried a few different positions but nothing was feeling comfortable except for sitting on the ball and focusing on deep breathing throughout each surge. I had a cervical exam at 4am and was 4cm dilated.
After that I sat in the shower and ran hot water over my body during each surge. They were starting to become very painful so I tried the gas but I didn't feel that it did anything for me so I then had a shot of morphine. Once I had the morphine I went and laid down in bed as I was so exhausted, I was able to have mini naps between each surge. I'm not sure how much time passed whilst I was on the bed but I assume it was only an hour or 2. The pain was becoming unbearable and so I asked to have an epidural.
We made our way to the birth suite of the hospital and as soon as I got to the room I had the urge to push, we told our midwife who then checked my cervix and said this baby is coming now.
Its all still a blur from this part on for me, but I believe the baby's heart rate dropped as she came down the canal so quickly. A couple of doctors and nurses then came in to assist with the birth as they needed to do an episiotomy and put a suction cap on babies head to help get her out. After 4 pushes she was delivered at 6:51am.
It all happened so quickly and it definitely didn't go as planned as I wanted to be either in an upright position or on my knees for the delivery but all that matters to me is that she is here and she is healthy.
The breathing techniques definitely helped me a lot during labour, I was able to relax my body and breath deeply throughout each surge. I kept repeating in my head "relax & let go". Josh also did a lot of the soft touch massages and acupressure during my surges which helped me relax a lot too.
Her name is Freya.
Breastfeeding was a bit hard at the beginning as Freya wasn't latching properly. We had a lot of help from the nurses in the hospital and also our amazing midwife's Jasmine & Hannah who came out and did home visits.
By day 4 Freya was latching perfectly and has been breastfeeding perfectly ever since she had her 1 week old checkup at the doctors a couple of days ago and has already put on 300 grams!
Thank you for all your help and knowledge, it made such a positive impact on the labour and delivery of our little bundle of joy
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