Georgia and her Fiance came for an all day Birth Preparation & Hypnobirthing course; I absolutely love Georgia's story of how she felt confident in having made all of the decisions around labour herself. One strong mama!
"On the afternoon of January 4th 2020, 4 days before my babies 'due date' I decided to have my second cervical sweep with my midwife. I was already 2cm dilated, but wasn't yet having contractions. After that I went to work at the gym which I co-own with my partner, and worked until about 9pm, with some period type pain, but nothing major.
The next day I was awoken at around 4pm with intense lower back and period type pain, which quickly turned into contractions every 4/5 minutes. By 7:30am they were every 2 minutes, and lasting around a minute each time. My partner and I made the decision to head to our chosen hospital (Cramlinton/ NSECH). We got there around 8am, and on examination I was 4cm dilated.
I had decided that I wanted to avoid an epidural if I could, and so I opted to stick with my breathing techniques which we'd learned in class, and also some gas and air. By lunchtime I had dilated a further cm, but I decided that I wanted my midwife to break my waters - which definitely caused the contractions to gear up a notch!
I had made the clear decision that I did not want to be offered pain relief, but that I was to ask for it if I felt I needed to. I decided that I wanted to use the diamorphine, and so did - which definitely helped me but did make me feel nauseous.
By 6:30pm I'd had a second dose of diamorphone, and felt the urge to push; the contractions were so intense, and I had a moment of doubting myself and asked for an epidural, however it was too late - baby was coming!
I pushed with my contractions, however after about an hour babies heartbeat wasn't picking up as quickly as the midwife would have liked after each contraction. At this point several doctors came into the room, and I began to feel overwhelmed, worrying that something was wrong - however my fiance reminded me of everything we had learned on our course, which helped me feel calm.
I decided that I wanted some assistance with helping baby out, and so we opted for the kiwi vacuum, and happily our daughter Frankie entered the world weighing a chunky 8lb13oz.
I couldn't have done this without my fiance Ross, our amazing midwife Annabelle& the knowledge and techniques I picked up from Jess's course - it really helped when we needed to make decisions and allowed me to have control over each stage. I found the breathing techniques were particularly helpful in the earlier stages of labour when I was at home to help keep me calm and focussed.
