Saturday Birth Inspiration from Epsom hospital ..
Beautiful first time mum – Michelle
from Epsom who birthed at Epsom Hospital
*with permission to share*
Michelle ‘s beautiful Hospital birth story to Sophia from December 2015
“Her birth went beautifully. I woke up in the morning after a restless night and insisted on making an omelette – nothing would deter me from making this omelette 😀! The surges started late morning but I thought they were practice ones. We had family staying and we all went for a walk in the park at about 12pm. I could feel the surges but they weren’t painful. When we got home I asked my husband Jason to start timing them, his first reaction was compete surprise as he hadn’t realised anything was going on. We keep it between ourselves and they were about twelve minutes apart at this point. My mum wanted to go shopping so off we went! I patted Jason’s hand every time there was a surge so that he could time it but other than that everyone else was none the wiser. I called the hospital when they were seven minutes apart but when they heard I was out shopping they told me to carry on as I had a long way to go. So we carried on shopping! I bumped in to my best friend in a shop and was having a conversation with her whilst in the middle of a surge and she had no idea! We then went for tea and cake, and the surges felt more frequent.
When Jason checked the app we were using to time things it showed that the contractions were four minutes apart and lasting 45 seconds. I insisted on going in to M&S to buy dinner for everyone, I really did feel so relaxed and thought I had a long way to go. It was about 4:30pm when we decided to head home.
I then told my family and asked my sister to help with getting everyone out of the house so that Jason and I could focus on the relaxation techniques. Whilst she was doing that I packed the last few bits of my hospital bag. At this point surges were every three minutes and lasting more than a minute. We called the hospital and they suggested that we run a bath and wait another hour. Jason ran a bath but I really felt like the baby was on its way and Jason was then very keen that we went to the hospital! If I had got in that bath it definitely would have been an impromptu homebirth! We decided to head to the hospital and rang ahead to ask them to prepare the birth centre.
When I arrived at the hospital at 6:30pm we went straight to the room and settled in. The midwife examined me and announced that I was fully dilated. She mentioned at that point that she had been careful not to rupture the membrane when examining me but I didn’t really register that my waters hadn’t broken yet (I think that is also why I thought I had a lot longer to go). Jason asked if he had time to move the car and she told him to run!
I got straight in the pool and it felt amazing. I asked Jason to put on the Rainbow Relaxation and focused on my breathing. The midwife that we had teaches hypnobirthing so she knew exactly what to do and followed all of our birth preferences despite only having about a minute to read through them. It came to the end of her shift but she told us that she wanted to stay and a newly qualified midwife also joined us.
As our baby was moving down the midwife was monitoring the heartbeat every so often and said that our baby was incredibly relaxed. I only asked for water in between each surge and didn’t even think to ask for any type of pain relief as it was all completely manageable through the breathing techniques.
Jason told me that he could see our baby’s head and after three or four surges the midwife told me to look down. I saw our baby’s face through the amniotic sac and watched as they turned their shoulders to come in to the water and be caught by Jason. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen, I just stopped and all I could say was ‘Wow’.
When Jason lifted our baby out the amniotic sac burst and we found out that we had a little girl. We came out of the water and were left to bond together as a family. Those first special moments are something Jason and I will treasure forever and it was exactly as we had imagined. We spent the night together holding our daughter skin to skin and had the same music we used to practice the relaxation techniques to playing in the background. All of the staff commented on how calm it made them feel when they came in to the room. When friends and family saw photos of Sophia and I after the birth they couldn’t believe how relaxed I looked and my mum now tells anyone who will listen about how amazing hypnobirthing is!
We are both so glad that we did the classes and we are very grateful for everything that Leila taught us. Sophia is incredibly calm and very alert, and I am sure that is due in no small part to hypnobirthing. Thank you!”
