My dd was 30th June 2021 with a planned home birth. At 4pm on 29th June 2021 I was sitting on the floor with my toddler and I felt the baby’s head push down inside me and break my waters. I ran to the loo and as I sat down an egg white substance fell onto the floor. I didn’t know what it was but I now know it was my plug. I called my husband who was on his way to his dad’s to watch an important football match and told him to turn round and come home. I also called the hb midwife who said I will most lilkely go into labour over night and I should call when things ramp up. I then called my mum to come and collect my toddler and packed a bag for her.
After my mum left with my daughter, my husband put the pool up, we went to m&s to buy my labour snacks, we put a film on and I sat on my birth ball thinking of happy things to try and get the oxytocin going. The film finished so we went upstairs and laid on our bed and looked at pictures of my 2.5yo to try and get the oxytocin flowing. I decided to try and get a few hours sleep, fully expecting to get woken up by contractions in a few hours. I woke up at 0830, highly disappointed that labour had not started. I called the midwife again and she said it was odd that my labour had not started so she booked me into the MAU for monitoring at 1pm.
We went to the MAU expecting a bit of monitoring and then to go home (I knew they would offer induction due to my waters breaking but I had done my research and had no intention of accepting it). When we got to the MAU the baby’s baseline heart rate was 180 which is high. The doctor recommended I have an emergency c section. So I signed all the forms and my husband dressed in scrubs and we had a chat with the anesthetist. Then they watched the heart rate for a bit longer and it started to come down. So the c section was cancelled but the doctors wanted me to be monitored throughout the labour so they suggested an induction. This was one of my absolute worst fears throughout my entire pregnancy. The thought of going into artificial labour did not sit right with me. I discussed my concerns with the doctor and my hb midwife on the phone and they both said that as my waters had broken and I was 1cm dilated it is likely that baby is ready to come & I will only need a small amount of syntocin to get labour started. The HB midwife also said that no-one knows for a fact if anything is wrong with the baby but waters breaking prematurely and high heart rate are two red flags and it might be best not to ignore them. She also said that healthy baby’s cope well with labour but poorly baby’s don’t so monitoring during labour might be beneficial. I wanted to make sure the doctors weren’t unnecessarily over medicalising my birth but after speaking to my MW I was happy that this was not the case, they were just taking an appropriately cautious approach. So I agreed to the induction.
My husband went home to get some things & the drip started at 3pm. I had my birth ball, I pulled the blinds down, I had my snacks and my aromatherapy machine with frankincense in it and I even asked the MW if she could turn the volume down on the heart rate monitor so the beeping wasn’t so intrusive. I used these things & my hypnobirthing techniques to get through relatively unscathed. My next exam was arranged for 10pm but at 9pm the contractions changed and I knew I was in transition so my husband fetched the MW who examined me and said I was only 7cm dilated and baby’s head was not well applied to the cervix. This made me feel so deflated as I could literally feel the baby starting to descend at the top of the birth canal so I didn’t understand how I was only 7cm. However then everything happened at once. Within a few minutes my body started involuntary pushing and at 9.31pm on 30th June 2021 baby Abigail was born.
I felt really empowered by my birth story. I hear real horror stories about women’s experiences of maternity services but felt I was able to make informed decisions throughout and I never felt pushed into anything. My MW’s were fab.