LYDIA & BABY 3

 

Here is my birth tale of baby number three, written, as he lies on my lap only a a day old! I’m happy to write this story down now even if it is more rambling than a coherent story, as I can already feel the magic of his birth slightly fading. We haven’t decided on a name yet, so I will just have to call him baby!

 

So on paper his birth was around 2 hours, but of course that’s established labour, which doesn’t recognize all your hard work behind the scenes in the lead up! This birth was a little more stop and start than I’m used to, which my midwife explained - in the nicest possible way, is actually quite common with third births and she described them as sometimes being unpredictable!

 

My older children go to nursery two days a week, so rather sensibly my body decided that labour should start Friday morning –which is a nursery day! So around 4am I started waking up with some tightening’s. I went downstairs around 5am and just watched TV before the kids woke up. Then I got them ready for nursery and my husband Patrick dropped them off. The plan was for them to stay with their grandparents after nursery. Their overnight bags were already packed so I just needed to add in all their other essentials, cuddly toys, drink bottles, sleeping bags etc so I still had a few things on my mind! We then tidied the house up a bit together!

 

I was expecting things to just ramp up from this point, but labour pretty much stopped for the day with only a few sensations on and off. In the back of my mind I was probably thinking about the kids being collected from nursery and getting to grandparents - so I wasn’t completely relaxed at that point!

 

Things then picked up again Friday night, Patrick went to sleep and I attempted to but I wasn’t comfortable lying down. So I sat on the birth ball by the side of the bed, balanced some pillows on the bed, listened to my hypnobirthing tracks with headphones and nodded off in between surges. I’m pretty sure I had the tens machine on by this point as I wanted to make sure I started using it early on in labour.

 

Early hours of Saturday morning I made my way downstairs and the pacing up and down started. I started walking back and forth from the dining room to the front whilst visualizing I was walking barefoot along a sandy beach. The fairy lights were on by this point and I was already using lavender oil on muslin, which I had used in my previous labour and always used when I practiced my hypnoBirthing. I also had a birth ball upstairs as well as downstairs so this was pretty useful.

 

I woke up Patrick about 5.30am as I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I worked through the surges focusing on my breathing. By 6.30am we thought to call the birth centre and let them know we were booked in for a home birth. The midwife told us on the phone that the midwives changed shifts at 8am so we needed to decide if we wanted someone over there and then or to hold on to 8am. I felt like I wanted to have the midwife there, but Patrick wisely said lets hang on so we avoid the midwife changing and having to have the interruptions which would have affected me and slowed things down.

 

So, midwives arrived at about 8.15am, Kat & Laura. Laura was the midwife that had been with us at home for my son Bax’s birth- so that was amazing! I was really unsure as to whether I wanted to have a VE as I just didn’t want anything to throw me off and I thought if I’m ‘only’ at the beginning how would that effect me emotionally. But, I was undecided at that point and I later changed my mind when I felt like I really did want to know. So I had my check and at that point I was 7cm, I then felt happy to get in the birth pool!

 

Things progressed pretty much straight away after I was in the pool and I just started to feel this incredible urge to push. I thought surely this is too soon and I even asked the midwives - of course because they were brilliant midwives they both said ‘listen to your body’ so that’s what I did! I felt myself really pushing at one point and I just needed to slow down, as I wanted to breathe the baby down rather than push. So, I tried to just breathe and take it easy which helped hugely and I believe that’s why I didn’t have any tears even with baby making an exit with his arm up by his face, just like Superman as Laura described!

 

I’d put in my birth proposal, which was pretty short and sweet, that I wanted to be the first to catch my baby and for my midwives to help me. So that’s what they did and I managed to sit up reach down and guide baby up to the surface once he was born!

 

I wanted to get a photo of the baby with the placenta and to watch the cord run white so I knew all the blood was back in the baby and again this was on my birth proposal. As I was planning to get my placenta encapsulated so my midwives made sure I birthed it onto a clean towel and helped pop it into a container after its photo shoot!

 

So baby boy was born an hour after the Midwives arrived at 9.20am weighing 8lb 2oz. As I’m writing this I know it sounds a bit all good to be true, and I know I’m very lucky, but I’m not brushing it off as no big deal. It was incredibly powerful and pushed me to my limits and more. Afterwards, it again reminded me how incredibly powerful women are, however they birth their babies. What helped me was my birth partner, hypnoBirthing, birth pool, lavender oil and my Tens machine and feeling supported by my midwives at home in my familiar environment.

 

So yep, that’s about it and afterwards Patrick was happy as it was in time for the world cup match and I was happy as he went to get us a Mc Donald’s for lunch -which I devoured and washed down with a large chocolate milkshake!!!