Bally's Story

Our beautiful baby boy was born on 24th April and like most mums I had an idea of my perfect birth. I had decided I wanted a water birth with little or no pain relief. Our due date of 14th April came and went, I rocked on my birth ball and squatted to try to coax the baby out, I went on walks (or waddles) every day but to no avail. Our chances of a natural water birth were slipping away. I used the breathing techniques that Nerissa had shown us to try to manage my emotions.

When I was 41 + 1 weeks I had an appointment with the Community Midwife for a sweep. I was very apprehensive as I knew that if this didn't work I'd be booked on for an induction a few days later. On the morning of my appointment I woke up to a bloody show when I went to the bathroom, however the blood looked greeny so I thought that perhaps it was meconium, the community midwife felt the same and so I was sent to the Maternity Assessment Unit..

Upon arriving at the Maternity Assessment Unit, whilst it was decided that the green blob was not meconium, my waters broke. I therefore was told I was going to be induced the next day.

When we called the hospital the following morning, we were told that the ward was shut and to try again at lunchtime, however it was still shut. We weren't offered an alternative so we just sat tight. By 8 pm we were finally allowed to the hospital where we were given a pessary to get things moving. This however did not make any difference to my cervix which was only 1 cm dilated.

The next day after a lot of walking and rocking to try to speed things up, we were given the hormone drip. This sped up my contractions from every 8 minutes to every 2 minutes. I was offered pethidine however I did not want this as it passed through the placenta, I was also keen to stay mobile as possible and pethidine would not allow this.

Whilst I was on the drip, I was unfortunately unable to be very mobile as the hospital did not have portable heart monitors, therefore i was unable to do a lot of the positions for labour shown by Nerissa, however I was still able to hold on to my husband and rock which I continued to do. When I got tired my midwife changed the position of the bed so that I was seated in a supported squat.

Throughout labour the one thing that really kept me going, in fact if was the one thing I couldn't have done without, was humming. It focused my mind onto the contractions. In my mind I repeated the mantras ?each contraction will end? ?we are one step closer to our baby?. At this stage i was offered gas and air (in fact I was repeatedly asked about this) and I eventually accepted, however after one puff I felt that it was putting me off my breathing and humming. The midwife seemed amazed and kept telling me that usually by this stage people are shouting for any pain relief they could get, she kept calling people in as she was shocked at how calm I was.

Unfortunately after about 60 hours of my waters breaking I was still not dilated enough, the Consultant was called in and we were asked if we wanted to continue as we were for three hours or to have a Cesarean. We were told that even if we waited, the likelihood was that we would still need to have a section. Again at this point the breathing was invaluable, it helped us to make a calm and rational decision based on the safety of our baby. Whilst I was very keen to have a ?normal? birth, the end outcome was the same, we had s beautiful baby boy. I feel that the sessions I had with Nerissa really helped throughout labour.