Rebecca's Story

The yoga and breathing really worked for me again so I thought I'd share my birth story. Feel free to use it as a positive induction story if you'd like, as I know there are far more horror stories than positive ones. Ok, so here's my birth story. I went into hospital on Monday and after a lot of waiting around, I eventually had the pessary given at about 9pm Monday night, there was no dilation and cervix was high and hard (So didn't feel like good conditions for it to work). I went off to the ward to see if anything happened. I was told that the pessary would be in for 24 hours, (if it didnt work it could potentially be left for a further 6, then I could have a dissolvable pessary for 6 hours, after which I'd need a c section if it hadn't worked).

I didn't want the c section if possible so on Tuesday I set out to try and get my body to respond. I paced the hospital corridors and did about 6000 steps, the staff were laughing at me as it's a fairly small ward and I just kept passing the same people. I also did some stretching on the yoga ball and squatting to try and encourage dilation. Throughout the day I started to feel increased tightening but wasn't sure if was anything as very similar to Braxton hicks. At 5.30pm I was connected to the monitor to check baby and monitor contractions at which point midwife confirmed they were proper contractions and about 5-7 minutes apart. She examined me and I was only 1cm. I had some dinner and literally everything stopped! All day I'd used the movements sheet and tried to stay as mobile as possible.

So at 8pm I decided to go for a bath and added some of the labour oil (purchased from you) and at just gone 9pm I had a knock on the door to tell me the delivery ward had asked me to go up as they had room and my pessary needed to be removed. It was totally unexpected I thought I was staying put. Anyway I grabbed my stuff and made my way upstairs and suddenly the contractions kicked in.....

The pain was mostly in my back and I used a ball for a bit and when possible was on my knees. I kept getting asked if I wanted gas and air and I said no I was happy to use my breath. I did have my TENS machine on but it didn't do much. I had to go on the monitor again and I started timing my contractions and suddenly they were 45-60 seconds apart, they were relentless!

 I rang Stephen and told him to make his way in. My blood pressure was sky high and everyone seemed concerned so I had to stay on the monitor to check baby was ok. They examined me again and I was 3cm dilated and they told me they'd find a room and then break my waters. I carried on breathing, but I was at reaching my pain barrier. They carried on monitoring and babies heart rate was rising too so I was given a canular in my wrist to give me fluid and that did slow her heart rate down but my bp was still very high so they wanted me to have pain relief. They said it was going to get more painful when they broke my waters so I asked them if having an epidural was going to lower my blood pressure and make baby more comfortable and they said yes, so I agreed to have an epidural. However as things were moving so fast i did sort of feel like i was just buying myself some time and hopeful that by the time they arrived, I might be too far along. This did work as due to there being 2 emergency c sections the anaesthetist never arrived and I just carried on using my breath. ...eventually they let me go on all fours and within about 3 minutes I lost my plug and my waters broke on their own.

Unfortunately at that point the monitors seemed to stop working properly and they tried to attach a clip to Megan's head to track the heart rate, that didn't work so I ended up back on the bed on my back!! I just focused on the breathing and then push, push, pushed. As I got closer to giving birth, Megan's heart rate started to drop so I had to put my legs in supports a bit like stirrups to make my pushes more effective. I'm pretty certain if they'd let me get upright it would have been quicker but they wouldn't take the risk. At 2.37am Megan was born with the cord wrapped around her neck, that's why her heart rate had dropped and they needed to get her out quick. They unravelled her and she cried immediately and we had skin to skin straight away. I had no tears or blood loss this time and no stitches needed. It was all very quick, a bit dramatic and much more intense than last time. But I managed a second drug free natural labour with just the breathing.

Sorry it's so long!

Thank you for the wonderful support you offer in your classes, I imagine my birth experiences would have been very different without it.