Sawyer's Birth Story, June 2021 - A second time Hypnobirthing couple.

Here is a gorgeous and honest birth story for you from a lovely second time mama who did amazingly after some concerns towards the end of her pregnancy. So proud of this strong, loving couple and feel so honoured to have supported them for their first and second baby.

Carys xx

"For some context, the midwife led unit had to close due to capacity issues and I have an allergy to local anaesthetic meaning without the option of water on the midwife led unit, my pain relief options were limited to gas and air only, or reluctantly pethidine. Leaving me pretty anxious.

We came in for a planned outpatient induction (Dilapan-S) at 41+5 at 5pm on Sunday evening. I was happy with this as a non-medicalised induction method. After baby was monitored for 30mins (whilst having conversations with a very helpful anaesthetist about my allergies), the midwives thought I was in labour due to fairly strong contractions that were picked up on the CTG machine. The contractions were not painful and I had been having them for weeks so assured them that I was not in labour.

At 7.30pm I was assessed prior to having the Dilapan-S rods fitted, to find that I was already 2-3cm dilated and almost completely effaced, meaning it was possible to break my waters, removing the need for Dilapan-S.

By 9pm the Doctors were keen to put me on the waiting list for Delivery Suite to break my waters and get labour started. Since I was postdates, they did not want me to go home to see what happened naturally. Going home would have been our preference and we would have considered self-discharging, however....

Meanwhile, whilst waiting for the Doctor, my contractions had started to pick up in intensity and I wondered if it was the start of something or if the hospital environment was causing some kind of exaggeration - I didn't want to get my hopes up.

By 10pm I was pretty sure labour was starting and the midwives very kindly gave us an available private room, after letting my husband stay way beyond his 6-8pm visiting slot already! I thank my lucky stars for this as I can't imagine having to make these decisions alone! We took a rainy walk to get the hospital bag from the car. When we got back to our room we put on the TENs and watched a comedy movie.

I asked to be assessed. To our delight I was 5cm dilated and able to go to Delivery Suite.

At 11.30pm we made our way up to Delivery Suite and from then contractions were very strong, just like with my first baby - but this time with gas and air, instead of just TENs. I must admit this time felt stronger (but that's probably not true) and I was frightened that I couldn't keep going for much longer without more pain relief.

However after a quick changeover of midwife we were lucky enough to have the head of the homebirth team in with us and she was wonderful, was encouraged by our birth plan and kept everything dark, calm and positive. She also reminded us to put on our music which really helped.

At around 1.10am the sensation changed, I felt sick and felt the need to push, the midwife agreed and gave a knowing nod to Josh after apparently I made a sound that can only be described as farm like...

At 1.15am and with 2 pushes, a tiny but pretty obviously overdue Baby Bird was born, waters breaking as his head emerged.

All mixed in with the last moments, the midwife asked Josh to press the emergency call button after seeing meconium in the waters. He couldn't find the correct button and I knew something was wrong but tried to stay calm.

Thankfully baby was absolutely fine and soon in my arms.

Placenta came shortly afterwards and our lovely midwife spoke us through her assessment of it - which was fascinating. You could easily see the areas that had degraded, possibly from delivering a postdates baby, but plenty still to keep our baby boy well and cosy inside ready for his speedy arrival into this crazy world."