At 12am Monday night my waters broke, hoping for a nice relaxing labour staying at home for as long as possible. I went back to bed where I started having contractions every 5 minutes, 40 minutes later I had passed blood and was instructed to go straight to hospital. Doh! Unfortunately I was not allowed to be in a midwife led room, to have a waterbirth or even an active birth (due to constant monitoring) and the midwife kept turning the light on!
Besides all of this I remained calm and in control and my Hypnobirthing breathing exercises got me all the way to 9cm, gas and air to 10 and pushing. After an hour of pushing I was told that Arlo wasn’t in an appropriate position for a natural or assisted birth and I had to go straight for a C section. I was exhausted so very happy about this! Shortly afterwards my gorgeous boy was born at 11.19am on the Tuesday morning.
As he had meconium in the waters and I was GBS+ Arlo went straight onto the resus table and was there being checked over for 20 minutes. The longest 20 minutes of my life! This photo is the moment he got handed to me. We couldn’t do skin to skin and I couldn’t start my breastfeeding journey in the ‘golden window’ of an hour as due to further complications it took longer than normal to stitch me up.
I can’t imagine having gone through this without having to hand all of the skills that hypnobirthing taught me.
Having the Hypnobirthing relaxation meditations to listen to during the pregnancy, helped me stay calm and focussed throughout.
I had no fears going into labour and was super excited when my contractions started as I knew I could handle it and that my baby was in his way to me!
