Meeting Freddie
When I found out we were expecting a baby in December, I hadn’t planned on doing a hypnobirthing course. I actually knew very little about childbirth and assumed I’d be able to just avoid thinking about it. I expected my waters would break dramatically in a restaurant somewhere and to have to hot foot it to hospital and deliver my baby. I worked out fairly quickly that this probably isn’t how it would happen and a friend recommended that I join The Positive Birth Project’s September course.
From the first session with Katie, I knew that I needed to take control of my baby’s birth. I needed to own the process, and feel prepared and empowered. Labour didn’t have to be this big scary event, it’s something magical and at the end of it, I’d get to meet my baby. So I spent the next few months preparing for my ideal birth. I wanted to labour at home for as long as possible, listen to my favourite music, spend some time in the bath, and most importantly, be with my husband.
This all changed when I was 35 weeks and I got a call from my midwife. I had been experiencing horrible itching since about 30 weeks and struggling to sleep at night, so I’d been in for some blood tests. Turns out, I had obstetric cholestasis, a condition some women develop during pregnancy which affects liver function. I was moved into high risk and very quickly told that I’d need to be at the hospital twice a week for monitoring and twice a week for bloods. I was also told that they wouldn’t like me go full term and I’d probably need to be induced at around 37/38 weeks. Given that we were living through a global pandemic and I was high risk, that meant I would be induced and then I’d have to stay at the hospital without my husband, waiting for my labour to progress.
Preparing for this was key and I used a lot of the hypnobirthing skills I’d learnt to ensure I was in a positive mindset going into it.
I managed to go until 38 weeks when they decided to induce me. I had three rounds of the Prostaglandin gel before my cervix had dilated enough for my waters to be broken using the amniotic hook. I then moved onto the Syntocinon drip for 24 hours before my beautiful baby boy, Freddie, was delivered.
My induction was very long - I’m sure Freddie just wasn’t ready to arrive yet - and at times it could have been very painful and lonely. I had started having contractions from the moment the first Prostaglandin gel was inserted and so by the time my boy arrived, I’d been ‘in labour’ for 65+ hours. I held off on using any pain relief for 48 hours and laboured on my own in a hospital bed for that initial period. The breathing skills I’d learnt on the course were invaluable during this time, and I spent most of it taking myself to my ‘happy place’ - a skill we’d learnt on the course.
Despite the circumstances, and not getting the labour I wanted, I really enjoyed it. I felt like I’d taken control of a situation out of my control, and most importantly, I felt like superwoman at the end of it when I got to meet Freddie.
