The Birth Story: Welcome To The World, Indiana!

My best friend, Kate the day after Indi was born: “So are you going to do that thing where you write up your birth story and put everyone off for life?”

LOL. Apparently that’s my thing, remembering negative experiences in minute detail that should best be left forgotten.

But it’s ok, my birth story isn’t totally negative. It isn’t totally positive either but I want to be real here and write about my experience of childbirth. As ever, this is my diary and I want to remember these huge life-changing events, you know?

Plus, when I was pregnant (so weird saying WAS), I ate these blog posts up. I wanted to know the full spectrum of childbirth stories, not just the dramatised ones on TV. So here’s my two cents. Everything that happened that lead to my beautiful daughter Indiana entering the world on Friday 11th January 2019.

It’s crazy long and I’ve left out no details so scroll to the bottom if you just want the cliff notes.

Indiana’s Birth Story

The Build-Up To The Big Day

I was expecting my baby to arrive earlier than her due date. I think just because those few weeks leading up to it involved Christmas and my birthday and it just felt like sod’s law for her to arrive then! But I made it to my due date – 9th January – still very much pregnant.

I did have some regular contractions on my birthday evening (8th Jan) that were half an hour apart, so I thought she might actually arrive on her due date. But alas, I woke up on the 9th and they had disappeared. This is apparently a common and very annoying thing that can happen in early/latent labour.

I then spent the 9th and 10th on Operation: Get This Baby Out!

Now, this mainly involved old wives tales so it probably doesn’t mean anything, but I did use the Lush bath bomb with clary sage (it’s ironically called Sex Bomb), went for long walks, bounced on the birth ball and had a curry for dinner. And I went into labour the next day. Coincidence? Probably. But I thought it was worth putting it out there that these things may have worked for me!

Labouring at Home With Mad Hypnobirthing Skills

The real deal started just after midnight on the 11th January. I woke up with the same contractions I had been feeling in the lead-up, only this time they were noticeably closer together. 8 minutes apart to be exact and lasting about 45 seconds.

I think if I hadn’t done a lot of research and prep before the birth I would have been up and wide awake with these. But I knew it could take a while and wanted to get some rest. And I didn’t want to wake Josh right away, I figured he should get as much sleep as possible while he could! So I just used the breathing techniques I learned from hypnobirthing to get through the contractions, kept an eye on how far apart they were and just tried to relax in between.

Contractions at this point were like bad period pains, so y’know, it was fine. Not a day at the beach, but manageable. But by 2am they were getting quite annoying and I wanted to try out the TENS machine I had hired, so I woke up Josh to help me get it on. It’s just electrodes that stick on your back and block the pain when you have a contraction. It’s not magical pain-relief but it takes the edge off, so it did help me. And Josh was really calm about everything which I really appreciated. Part of the whole hypnobirthing thing is staying calm and relaxed and creating a nest you feel safe in, so I was really happy with how this part of my labour went.

Although it was way longer than expected.

We actually called the labour ward at 3am as my contractions were 5 minutes apart, but they said we needed 3 in 10 minutes before we could go in. And that took a long time to achieve.

By 6am the contractions had gone backwards to 8-9 minutes apart and me and Josh made an effort to try and nap between them. Every contraction I’d press the button on the TENS, do my breathing and Josh would rub my back or stroke my arm. Then we’d snooze until the next one.

But it got to the point where they were too painful to lay through and I tried to get up and move around with them. Staying active definitely made them feel more manageable.

At 8am Josh popped out to get us McDonald’s breakfast (which later turned out to be a terrible idea…), then at 9am I decided to try taking a bath to help with the pain (it had ramped up quite a bit by now and was not so cute).

This is where I really appreciated the hypnobirthing stuff I’ve been going on about. I no longer had the TENS machine on and was laying in one place so the first contraction involved me thrashing around like a shark. But I put on my hypnobirthing tracks and breathed and visualised and noticed a massive improvement in them. I stayed here for an hour, pretending I was on Monterosso beach with a glass of rosé, and ultimately felt good about everything. My labour was in full swing but I felt in control and calm despite the surges.

This is what I want to highlight here. The rest of my birth wasn’t exactly a hypnobirthing dream, but my labour at home was greatly improved by my hypnobirthing practices so I would really recommend looking into it if you’re pregnant. (I recommend Your Birth Your Baby by Hollie de Cruz.) It definitely felt like a positive experience.

I was finally at that 3 in 10 point so called the labour ward again at 11am. They said I could come in if I wanted, but warned me I could be sent home if I wasn’t as far along as I needed to be. So I didn’t rush in. I took my time getting dressed and had some more contractions being as active as possible. But I was also very sick at this point (goodbye hashbrowns). So y’know, not fun. I headed to the hospital at midday, 12 hours since my labour began. YES, TWELVE.

Like I said, I’m really happy with this part of my experience and can totally see why people choose to labour at home. It is much more comfortable and you feel a lot safer, especially with those nifty hypnobirthing practices

But yeah, it got a bit tougher from here.

Established Labour Ain’t No Joke

We arrived at the labour ward at 12.30pm but they were very busy so I didn’t actually get checked over in triage until just before 2pm. And thank sweet baby J, I was a “generous 4cm” dilated so didn’t need to be sent home!

But the midwife told me it might take a while to get my delivery room ready so I should go for a walk around the hospital to get labour moving and get baby into the right position. She also suggested lunch to get my energy levels up, which lead to me having pretty bad contractions in the middle of Costa whilst trying to eat mac and cheese. Definitely got some funny looks.

This walk was a game changer though because everything turned up a level and I was really struggling with the contractions. We had to stop every few minutes to breathe through it and for Josh to rub my back, and I was very much ready for some pain relief at this point. We still had a wait for my room though so I didn’t actually get in there until 4pm. And it wasn’t the lovely room with a pool in the MLU. So no water birth for me. But that’s ok, I didn’t have my hopes up, it just would’ve been a lot nicer I think!

It’s also at this point I was sick again (goodbye mac and cheese). But like, violently. I really hate being sick so this was a lowlight of my birth story, the fact that I just kept throwing up. I hadn’t expected that at all. So yeah, lol at all those snacks I packed in my hospital bag.

But hey it’s not all bad because HELLO GAS AND AIR. It made me a little loopy and I did keep thinking my midwife looked like Bugs Bunny, but it took the edge off which I really liked. Our hospital has one-on-one care so the midwife stayed with us the whole time in that room, monitoring me and baby, suggesting positions and offering support. (Big up MKUH.)

I had planned to have an active birth because I knew that being upright leads to a quicker and easier birth when you’ve got gravity on your side. But in reality it wasn’t so easy to do. It’s just so difficult to move when you’re hurting. And I was seriously considering more pain relief.

I waited until 6pm when I was due to be checked to see if I could do it with just the gas and air. But when the midwife told me I was 7cm I decided to ask for more. Shit was getting real. So I had an injection of pethidine. Again it makes you feel a little out of it, which is the reason I didn’t want to have it beforehand, but it was just too much. I needed all the relief I could get.

The pethidine means my memories are a little blurry here but I know it wasn’t long before I was moaning “is it too late for an epidural?!” I’m such a cliché aren’t I?

My midwife said she would check me again if I wanted so I could make a decision based on how far along I was. And I was 9cm with the baby’s head right there. I think this was that ‘Transition’ phase where mamas freak out and ask to go home or want more drugs. It’s just so hard and at this point I had been labouring so long, I just wanted it over. Don’t worry, it nearly was.

Push It Real Good (Or Not)

Until this point my waters hadn’t broken naturally (it’s not like TV, folks). So when I started feeling the need to push, it wasn’t really working for me. Like I said, I was a bit out of it but I remember the midwife making a cutting motion to break them for me. Josh said it was a massive gush but I don’t really remember.

What I do remember is the pain. Yeah, there was no breathing through this bit, it hurt. And I panicked. I was the crazy woman on TV screaming that she can’t do it. I made sounds I’ve never heard come out of my mouth, like proper horror film screams. It was not the one.

It was also not working. I just wasn’t pushing enough, I was exhausted and I wasn’t in a great position.

I remember the midwife telling me she had to press the button and more people would be coming in. Suddenly there were about 10 people in the room, I was screaming, Josh was a mess, and I was getting an episiotomy. That’s the fancy way of saying I was cut to help get the baby out. Ouch.

It was scary for sure. I’d learnt from NCT classes that each person in that room had a specific role to play and I know each of them told me what they were doing, but it all just felt like a lot.

But despite the drama, it was just a few more pushes until Indiana arrived into this world, born at 8.02pm and weighing 7lb 2oz.

A Summary Of This Long Story

I feel like my birth story is two very different extremes of childbirth, all at the same time. It was a 20 hour long labour in total and the first 12 hours of this was a very calm and comfortable labour at home. I used hypnobirthing and breathing techniques and felt very confident about things.

I’m glad I waited as long as possible to go to hospital so I didn’t get sent home, and I think I dealt with the middle part pretty well despite the pain levels ramping up.

But I’d go as far as to say that the last part of my birth was traumatic. I want to be super positive about it but if I’m honest those last couple of hours were more intense than I had imagined. I totally panicked, I didn’t do things how I thought I would and didn’t exactly have the calm water birth surrounded by LED candles that I wanted. I gave birth with my legs in stirrups, had a big ol’ cut to get the baby out and was surrounded by lots of people moving around the room pretty quickly.

But after everything, I stand by what I said when was pregnant. No matter how you birth your baby, it’s only a day. It’s one day and then you have a lifetime of happiness with this kid. It’s always worth it.

And I mean, just look at this little one’s face. I’d do it all over again for this pickle.

Thank you for all of your lovely messages on social media. We’re winging it with this parenting thing but loving every minute.