This week I’m joined by the lovely Sabrina from Taylor Made Birth, to talk about when your home birth plan looks like it’s turning into a hospital induction. Sabrina shares her personal experience of this scenario, along with 8 years working with pregnant clients.
You can find out more about Sabrina over on here website: http://taylormadebirth.co.uk/
Transcript
(Note this may contain errors as it’s automatically created)
In this episode I’m joined by Sabrina hypnotherapists and hypnobirthing practitioner. Sabrina shares her personal experience of changing location from a home birth to a hospital birth, a common theme with induction stories. She talks about the emotions and challenges related to this as gives us ideas of how to bring some positivity into the new environment. So get as, comfy as you can and enjoy.
You’re listening to the positive induction podcast, a podcast for those who have chosen to have an induction of labour or for those interested and how they can make induction a more positive experience. I’m your host, Jade Gordon, clinical hypnotherapist hypnobirthing teacher, and positive induction coach. As always. I want to remind you positive birth means different things to different people. For example, it may be about feeling in control,
being respected and informed. It does not mean perfect. My aim here is to bring you tips, inspiration and real life experience. So let’s get started today. I’m joined by Sabrina. We are going to be talking about when your homebirth Lusa gets tiring to induction that change in location, which is something that’s often a part of an induction. Sabina is a wonderful hypnotherapists has been working in the breast spot for more than eight years.
Haven’t you? Yes. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, it’s great to have you here. And this is definitely a topic that comes up a lot. I know you’re going to share a bit with us of your personal experience, but also of course, your eight years working with other people, preparing for breath as well. Yeah. When you think back to that time,
what was the biggest thing that you remember that change? Wow. So the biggest thing I think, so it was six years ago. It was my youngest daughter, 2015, and I had been planning to have her at home, but I had my first two at home. I’m a mom of three. And so I was very excited about the prospect of having a third home birth,
but she had other ideas as Babies often do As they do. Absolutely. She had other ideas. She didn’t really want to come out. Basically. She just wasn’t interested. My water’s released. And, and once your waters start to go, the clock starts to tick. Really doesn’t either the clock ticking in terms of the, the risks and how they can start to increase as the time went on.
And slowly but surely it became apparent that I was not going to be having my baby at home because it got to like day two. So 24 to 48 hours after my waters had released the midwives at the hospital is saying, well, actually Sabrina, you’re going to have to come in because this is what we advise. Do you need to come into hospital?
See how things go, but just be aware as well that we might be considering inducing you as well, because we want to obviously keep you safe and keep baby safe. And those, that was the kind of conversations that were being hard. How many weeks were you at that point? I was, She was born two days before her due date. So we was 14 weeks.
Yeah. Bang on really? Which is quite, which was quite normal for me in terms of my pregnancies. I’d had so far, one was a few days over and the other one was again, a couple of days over. So I didn’t want really go to about 14 weeks. That’s quite nice. Oh, when people ask the question like, oh,
is it the same? I, each time I had, you know, well, this pregnancy with the same and all of them were like, oh, you never know. You can’t see them. That’s funny that you were all three at the same time. Yeah. So it was say it was a big, it was a, there was a certain level of disappointment.
I wasn’t going to achieve this. This, this home fire was set in my heart. On my, my eldest daughter had created a beautiful space for me to put some lights around and in the room and had us this lovely little chalk board that said, mum, you’re so strong and all these lovely little things, you know, that my family cause you know,
they might have two other children and my husband, we’re all going to be together while we experienced this, this third and final baby arriving. But that wasn’t to be. And so there was an initial feeling of, I guess, initial feeling of failure that, oh yeah know, that’s why, why can’t my body working the way that I wanted to so I can be at home.
There’s a notice. She is the word achieved. Didn’t you achieve a home birth that I think would put so much pressure on ourselves sometimes to get cheap. This is a pass, right? This is the key. This is a good version when, of course like that’s not how it works, but it’s so easy to put that. Okay. Remember putting that pressure on myself,
this is the, this is the way I want to do it. Especially if you’ve done it twice before that way. It’s that extra change if like, oh, you know, these last two were here. What’s different this time. Exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, luckily for me, those thoughts were very, very fleeting because I did realize I do.
I did realize kind of quite quickly after that is the, okay. You know, all births are different. I do know this. I do. You have to remember the Sabrina that every single birth is different and babies will come in the way that they choose to come and you need to therefore adapt and improvise within that if that’s what’s necessary. Yeah.
But there was a lot of work I had to do internally to really get my mind in the right space of, okay, I’m going to, I’m actually going to be going to hospital. This is, this has confirmed. I’m going into hospital to have my baby. And induction is on the cards. That is, that has been the discussion with my care providers.
Yes. And I think that grief almost that loss of home birth is quite, is very normal and understandable. And it’s good to acknowledge that, to notice like, oh, I’m feeling that loss, I’m feeling that failure or frustration or whatever it is. And then yes. To move on to acceptance of, yes, this is true that I am feeling this loss,
but also then now it’s time to move forward. And did you feel you, you reached a point of acceptance with that? Yeah. I think he was on, we were getting in the car to actually drive to the hospital. That was the moment. It was like, okay. You know, my home birth is over with, that’s not going to happen.
Let’s let me now kind of prepare myself for, for, what’s going to be the next part of this adventure basically of going to hospital and I’ve never experienced this. So this is all going to be very new to me. And this is going to be an, a kind of new terrain for me to, to figure out. And I’ve got my husband here with me,
we’re going to figure it out together. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. And that mindset shift often when we’re going from home birth to hostel breath, it’s normally like a short window where we actually have to kind of have that feeling of loss and that acceptance and that move on. Like it’s quite a short window of time. It’s not like,
oh, I’ve got a few weeks to get my head around this. It’s not, it’s like, okay, let’s go. Which is a challenge as well. It’s a challenge. And I guess the lucky thing for me within that situation was that it wasn’t, it wasn’t as if I’d started at home. Then I had to suddenly emergency, you know,
during leaper transfer in, I did have an element of time to, to kind of get my head around that, you know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t loads of time. It was maybe 48 hours or so kind of really get my head around the fact that this is, this is the new, this is the new path. This is how we’re going to be doing this now.
So I guess like, I can’t actually sound grateful, but I did have that little, that little bit of action to get my, get my mind in gear. Was it easy for you to make that decision? No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t easy at all because you know, I I’m, I’m a little bit woo. If that’s, if that’s and I kind of I’m into natural,
natural things and, and, and hospitals for me have never been a place that I’ve, I’ve kind of been overly comfortable in. And so, and that’s why I chose to have my children at home. And I remember when I had, when I first made that decision, you know, my daughter is 16, so 16 years ago, it wasn’t really done that much.
And I remember my mum saying, Sabrina, you know, like, you sure you, this is as safe as all of these things. So yeah, the decision to then go into hospital was, was really, was really hard. It was hard cause it, cause it goes against all of my, you know, I’m not, I’m not sick.
I’m I’m, I’m, you know, I guess I kind of, I know hospitals are places where people are made better, but often they go there because they’re not well, for some reason, that’s always kind of been in how I worked in my mind. That is the strange thing about being in lever. Like we go there to have the support,
if we need to, in case we need it. But a lot of the time we don’t actually need it. We’re there just for back or not. We’re not turning up saying something’s wrong with my body fix it. It’s this kind of idea of hospital that we’re, most of us are not used to. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I’m,
and I’ve kind of been avert the medicalization of birth anyways. So kind of, for me, the hospital almost represented a medical intervention that I kind of was, was feeling uncomfortable about, but also in the back of my mind, I’m aware that, you know, if it’s necessary to medically intervene, that’s, that’s absolutely fine too, because that’s, what’s necessary.
It’s that decision of making like, is this necessary? So what helped you make that decision? What are you juggling there? What are you weighing up? I’m juggling the fact that I know that my body and my baby know what they’re doing and I, I, I trust that. And then on the other side, I’m juggling the fact that the hospital has very clear procedures and policies around particular situations.
For example, if you reach a certain amount of weeks or if your waters are released, you know, that they have very strong advice in order for them to make sure that they are avoiding any risks, because it’s obviously very risk averse. And so it was trying to drug a lot that those two things trusting my body, but also trusting what the medical staff are telling me about what I should be doing.
Should these listeners. Yes, definitely. And so what else was helpful to you, that team? Did you use any resources where you’re discussing with your partner? Yes. So as a hypnobirthing practitioner, one of the things that I learned, one of the things that I’ve thought I teach or have taught other women is a brilliant, a brilliant acronym, which is a framework for being able to have discussions with your care provider and it’s,
and it’s the acronym is brains. And so that’s looking at what are the benefits? What are the risks? What are the alternatives, if any kind of, what are my instincts telling me, how do I feel? What happens if I do nothing at all as well. And the S is for kind of staying positive and kind of, you know,
not being adversarial with, with, with the medical care providers, but just letting them know that we’re all on the same page here. We all want the same thing. So using that framework really, really helped us. It helped my husband to ask the right questions and really get an understanding of the care that was being offered to us in those moments.
So, yeah, that was what, that was the main thing. And then secondary or not secondary, I guess one of the other things that I, that I used was my breathing techniques and taught in order for me to really stay calm. Cause it was, it could have been, I could have easily kind of got panicked and you know, those,
those reactions and, you know, the fight flight or freeze where your brain is like, oh, alarm bells are ringing. I really had to overcome that by breathing as deeply as I could and really remaining calm and knowing that if I can breathe and relax, then that will help baby to come quicker than if I just tense up and get worried and,
and scared. So those were the, the two main things I think that helped, that helped me. Yeah. The, the brain, our brains acronym is probably, and he did a very good job of him seeing them in the right order. See, I spell Brian. So that’s, let’s say supply and say, why do you remember Brian or Brian doesn’t matter,
whichever one works. But yeah, when I, when I get that in, we get all of those things are important. So you, that’s great. Like that’s knowing that you can ask questions as well. It’s ask what, like you see what the benefits are, what the risks are and taking that all into Kenya is really important and yeah, breathing,
oh, it’s coming back to breathing. Like it’s such a simple thing, but it makes a massive difference. She really does. It really does. And I think that the reason that, that, that, that, that framework helped us so much is because the, the team, once we arrived at the hospital were very keen to press forward with going down the induction route and kind of just let us get on with this.
Let’s just do this. And it was very much the pressure of, okay, Sabrina, your, you know, your, the hours are ticking by and the minutes are going and we need to just, we need to get the baby out kind of thing. But it was, it was good, especially the end part that do nothing really sort of saying to them,
well, actually, how about if we just wait for half an hour, what would, you know, what would happen then? And really sometimes I could see one of the midwives get a bit exasperated with us because we kept asking all these questions. But I think that we’re used to, you know, a couple that were just literally wanting to know every tiny thing in order to know whether or not it was right for me in that moment,
because that was the key thing what’s, whatever’s going on in my body. I want you to assess, assess that based on what’s happening for me, not just your generic policy or your, you know, your generic advice that you would give, just because I’ve reached a certain amount of weeks or what have You. Yeah. It’s taken that ownership back of your breath as well.
Like it being something that you’re doing rather than done to you. And I think often with induction, people feel like that’s harder to achieve. So it’s really nice to hear that you were asking these questions because it’s your breath and you’re making decisions. You need to have that information. And the more people that do that, the better for sure. Yeah,
Absolutely. I know you described your beautiful remote home and your daughter helping you make the chalkboard when you got to, I don’t know what it’s like for you. I have it where we are. The leave of word is the least inspiring place to give birth is so standard. Like quite pain gree bed in the middle of the room, maybe a chair.
I think it’s just, there’s no thought or positivity or even a splash of color, like paint one wall, a different color. I don’t know. It’s just very clinical and well, of course I understand the need to have like clean clinical environments. You can, you can do it. Doesn’t take much to make it a bit nicer. Does it?
No, there’s a lot more effort that can be made. So Yeah. So what was it like, what was the room like when you arrived? What were you one of the lucky ones that had like a pool and all of this? No, unfortunately not, no, it is very much like you’ve described. It was, it was, it was a large room with white walls and a big window and a bed and a little kind of a little door to the side that had a toilet and a,
Oh, that’s fancy. pretty bad, but that’s a good, exciting thing for me. I’m like, oh, you had an odd suite. This is like high level. I know, I think there were blinds at the window. I can’t quite remember, but I think there was a way to, to make the room slightly darker so that it wasn’t so bright in there.
And there was a white board. I remember really clearly the whiteboard, because I used that to write up while I was kind of in between and waiting. And while people would go on, the midwives would go off and get some advice and come back. I was using the whiteboard to write up my affirmations. So one of the other things that I,
that I teach and what I learned through hypnobirthing was affirmations and how powerful they can be. So I really helped, I really used that to help keep me kind of level really, I guess, and made me keep my emotions in check and just to remind myself why I’m here and I am strong and my body can do this. Like I wrote them all up on this board and put lovely little colors,
colored, like use the different whiteboards, whiteboard pens. They kind of wrote them up and put bubbles around them. And it was a great distraction. It was really a way to distract me The rest of the room. Yeah. The medical, the medical environment as well. Yeah. Nice. So what advice would you have for someone or what hadn’t some texts,
would you give people who were in that position now by the ponder home breath of the beautiful room and yeah. There’s talk of induction and that emotional, emotional change as well as the logistics, what would you say? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is, it is going to be an emotional roller coaster. It is going, you are going to feel all sorts of different feelings because of the fact that you don’t really have as much control over,
over it as you, as you may want to. And so I think the advice I would give or the, the advice that I gave myself was just to remember that I can only control what I can control within this and everything else I have to just let go of. So the things that I could control was how I was breathing and what I was thinking and,
you know, kind of keeping myself hydrated and keeping active. I use the birth ball. There was a birth ball in the room, which was good. And I use that to really kind of make sure that I was doing what I could do to help baby along safely. I think the other thing that helped me was the decision-making process of going through the emotions and then get it to the point of,
okay, there’s some options I need to consider here now and talking through with my husband or talking it through with a loved one, or just talking it through with your doula, just somebody that can be there to just talk things through with you was something that really helped me in that process. You know, because you know, something in my husband said to me,
I remember he was like, you know, Sabrina that we want baby to come here safely. And it’s okay that we’re going to be in the hospital. It’s fine. It’s not, you know, it’s not the end of the world. And it was like, it was good to be reminded in that moment, but actually, yeah, it’s fine.
It is going to be okay. I think it’s so easy to get lost in that decision-making and thinking about where and what we can do and how we can do this. And then you actually forget, well, you’re going to be babysit. Like this is the star of this adventure. I think you used the word adventure. This was thinking about that end as well.
You know, we’ve got a whole baby at some point. We are. Absolutely. And I think that, that, that when it came to talking about the introduction and the faults of feelings that came up around that, especially when you hear sometimes you hear quite negative stories about people that have experience in induction. And so sometimes the, the elements of that was also playing on my mind.
It was also really important to, to kind of remember that induction is, can actually still be a positive and that doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be about, or, you know, I’d experienced that, that is a verse. It can be something that can still go well. So really reminding myself of that as well, you know, kind of in the run-up in my pregnancy,
I was, you know, I like to read staff and positive birth stories and, you know, yeah. Just to kind of remind myself that it’s all. Okay. Yeah. Nice. Thanks so much for sharing with us. It’s great to hear what worked for you, because I would never have thought of the idea of writing things on a whiteboard or writing even on paper or wherever.
When we talk about what to pack for induction off people ask, what else can I pack? So actually some nice color marker. Isn’t a pad of paper might be quite fun way to pass the time, especially if you’re waiting for things to get started. And you’re thinking, oh, what can I do to focus on the positive? It’s clear next week to do it.
Yeah. Thanks so much for sharing with us. Okay. It was, yeah, it’s good. It’s I like thinking about that birth because it was so different. All my others. That was great. Thank you for letting me talk about it today. Thank you so much again, to Sabrina. Here are a couple of points that stood out for me.
I want to highlight firstly, the taking note of the language you’re using around birth and the birth environment. It’s quite common to use the word achieve. And if you’re hoping to achieve a home birth and then you move to hospital and that environment changes, you can feel like you failed. So firstly, taking note then reflecting on whether there’s a reframe here,
whether there’s a different way, you can describe that or speak to yourself or others about that to help bring more acceptance around the change in venue. Secondly, I love the Sabrina shared how much the ask questions as a family. This is your birth and you only get to do it once. It’s good to ask questions. You have a right to know the answers.
Finally, as Sabrina mentioned, it’s so important to focus on what you can control. That’s where listening head over to the show notes for this episode@positiveinduction.com forward slash episode three, where you’ll find links to additional resources. And of course the positive induction course, the hypnobirthing course especially created for induction. Thanks again for being here with us today and do get in touch.
If you have any questions, you can email me jade@positiveinduction.com or famous on Instagram, that positive induction. I hope you have a lovely week.