The Birth of Emma

The birth wasn’t ‘to plan’ as I had a big bleed after a stretch and sweep which didn’t stop. This led to induction and meant a water birth wasn’t on the cards. Hypnobirthing was a godsend – I managed to let my body overtake the induction process for the first part at least and do things itself. I’d been very active and cracking on with paracetamol and the TENS machine for the first bit.

The staff at Jimmies were so supportive with keeping the atmosphere as we wanted it and keeping me mobile for as long as was possible. But unfortunately for various reasons (baby hard to monitor and heartbeat dropped, moved back to back which buggered my slipped discs, sciatica and stopped the surges, etc) I ended up with the synthetic oxytocin and an epidural.

I was really upset at the time because I felt I’d “failed”, and wanted so much to keep active and minimise interventions. But my hypnobirthing helped me refocus, let go of the things I couldn’t control and hold onto those I could, and it turned out to be a fabulous experience. Not as zen as I’d hoped, but a right laugh!

Once the syntocin and epidural kicked in and took the sciatica stuff away, I “let go” of my disappointment and upset and had a word with myself (with the help of some breathing and headphone time).

After that the rest was SUCH a laugh. We had a lot of banter with the midwives whilst we waited for the syntocin to do its thing, and then when I was ready (very shortly afterwards, because I was so relaxed I think), we had such a giggle with the midwives. It was like a comedy sketch!

All very relaxed and no sweat was broken! A right laugh all round. The midwife said to take a deep breath and then push, and I corrected her and said I wasn’t going to push I was going to breathe her out. She laughed and said no love you’ve got to tense up and push. I ignored her and breathed as we’d practiced, and at first the midwife was like ‘no, you need to push harder than that, really grit your teeth’ etc, but after the first push she apologised and said no, you just do whatever you’re doing because it’s working I can see the head!! And in between contractions I was teaching her how to coffee plunge breathe – we were having so much fun that we almost missed the next contraction – luckily there was a student midwife in who spotted it!!

Baby Emma was born 6 lb 11 oz

Louise and Kathryn, Leeds