Natalie’s Natural Water Hypnobirth

So I got myself together and headed to my appointment, still feeling inconsistent pains in my tummy. When I got to the acupuncturist I told her what I had been feeling and she said that coming in was probably the best thing and that the treatment would help to bring on whatever was happening.

I felt a few more pains during my treatment, one of which I found particularly interesting. As I was dozing off on the bed I woke up to the sound of a baby crying in the reception area and instantly felt my baby move and my tummy tightening once again.

After my appointment I met up with my dear friend Chloe for lunch. Still feeling the pains I had felt since the morning we were both chuffed she would see me one last time before the baby was born just as she had asked 6 days earlier when I saw her on my due date.

After lunch I went home to relax, lie down and watch some funny movies which was one of the techniques we learnt during our hypnobirthing classes. The movies of choice were The Change Up and Horrible Bosses.

Contractions started around 2pm and were happening every 10 minutes for the rest of the evening, all through the night and into Saturday. I didn’t feel like eating much for dinner so I had some avocado on toast and tried to settle in with a heat pack. At about 9pm I decided I would get in the shower which seemed to settle the contractions a bit and I thought I would be able to get some sleep but once I was out of the shower they just started back up again.

At about 10 pm I was starting to feel scared. Scared of the pain and what was to come during labour and birth and even once our baby was born. I called Chloe just to talk it out with someone who I knew had been through it before and she reassured me I was doing an amazing job and to just keep breathing through it. I then decided to call my midwife to let her know what was happening and how I was feeling. She also reassured me I was doing all the right things and to continue breathing through the contractions and to try and get some sleep and call her when contractions ramp up.

With my heat pack still on (reheated a number of times) I managed to close my eyes. We tried the tens machine but it wasn’t working for me. The only positions I found comfortable were leaning forward either on my knees leaning over the bed or the couch or standing, leaning over the kitchen bench. I managed to get some sleep between contractions but waking up every 10 minutes was hard. I let Daniel sleep so he would be more helpful in the morning.

No one ever told me how much I would feel this pain in my bottom and that was the hardest part for me because I hadn’t anticipated it at all. I couldn’t lie or sit down because it just hurt my bum so much and I couldn’t understand why. It felt like my baby was going to come out of my bum.

When the morning finally came I said to Daniel I wanted to call the midwife. Even though my contractions hadn’t gotten any closer than 10 minutes they got a hell of a lot more intense and longer and I was making much louder noises through them.

We agreed we would call the midwife at a reasonable hour as it still wasn’t “technically” time to call. Ellen must have read our minds and texted at 7:20am to see how I was doing. She offered to pay us a visit at home which I agreed is what I needed. She arrived just after 10am as I was mid contraction and could see and hear I was much further along than I was when I had called her 12 hours earlier.

In the meantime I had started to feel hungry but the only thing I felt like eating was berries and I knew just the person to call. I asked Daniel to text Chloe and ask her to bring me some berries because I knew she would understand what I was going through as she had been through it herself 4 years earlier. And of course she dropped everything to be by my side within 30 minutes. As I knelt there slumped over the couch Chloe and Daniel hand fed me berries and just kept telling me how well I was doing. All the while we had beautiful spa music playing and all the blinds closed.

Our midwife Ellen said to me she could do an internal examination if I wanted to and explained to me exactly what that process was. As I had now been having contractions for 20 hours I really wanted to know how far along I was. My contractions had gotten a little bit closer, about 7 minutes apart but still not as close as they “should” be at that point. After an internal examination Ellen could see I was 6cm dilated and said she’d be quite happy for us to start heading to the hospital if we felt we were ready.

So Ellen headed to the hospital to get the room ready for us and Daniel and Chloe helped me to get ready and pack the car. I put my sunnies on and continued playing the spa music through my airpods and crawled into the back seat. Having to sit down was the hardest part and I tried my hardest to breathe and not have a contraction in the car, however I did have 1 contraction on the way there.

We made it to the hospital around 12:30pm and made the long walk from the car to the birthing suite, with multiple contractions and multiple comments from strangers on the way. I kept my airpods in and my sunnies on and Daniel did all the talking.

We made it to the birthing suite just in time! Almost immediately it was full steam ahead. I felt the urge to go to the toilet and then Daniel and Ellen had to convince me to get in the bath. The contractions were so close together at this point, they were practically constant. I struggled to get up the steps and into the bath but finally made it in which gave me a brief bit of relief.

It wasn’t long before I said to Daniel I needed something to help with the pain. At first he let me carry on without it because he knew I wanted to have as natural a birth as possible. After looking him in the eye and begging him for something for the pain he asked Ellen to get me the gas. This helped with the pain a lot and I was able to continue to breathe through the contractions.

Daniel Knelt by the side of the bath the whole time. He hand fed me sips of water from our sippy cup and had a washer in a bucket of cold water by his side to wipe my face with. I had my hands on his shoulders and would wrap my hands around his neck during contractions.

As we had been told throughout my pregnancy I reached the point I said I couldn’t do it any more and someone needed to pull it out of me *insert crying laughing face* This is when I instinctively felt the need to push. It felt like I was pushing forever and on every push I thought to myself surely this is the one, the head must be out now.

I was in another world and so intune with Daniel’s voice, I couldn’t speak or even think of asking for anything else for the pain. I was just going with it.

As I was trying to push I could hear Ellen and Daniel trying to explain to me how to breathe to help with the pushing. Ellen asked me to take the gas out of my mouth and take 2 big breaths in and let out 2 big sighs. I didn’t realise I was hyperventilating. Ellen explained I needed to take long deep breaths in with the gas and push my breath down not out through my mouth which is what I had been doing. Once I got the hang of the breathing I only needed to push a few more times. I instinctively felt the need to turn my body around with my back to the bath’s edge and my hands gripping the edge. I seemed to be in some kind of spider man pose and I remember hearing Ellen say, that’s it, that’s your position.

Ellen had said to me a couple of times to reach down and touch my baby’s head to encourage me. In my mind I thought this would mean the head was almost out and I would feel the whole shape of the head on the outside but to my disappointment I could only feel the head still inside me after I thought I had been pushing so hard.

On the final push I could hear Ellen say this push will be the head and there will be one more push for the body but I had other plans. I knew I could not push any more! So I gave it one last push, the hardest, longest push I could possibly manage and shot my baby out like a rocket! Our baby was born at 3:33pm on Saturday the 29th of October 2022.

I had planned to receive my own baby but at that point I was so exhausted I just slumped over and sank into the bath. Ellen fished out our baby and helped me get them to my chest. After about a minute Ellen asked if we wanted to see the gender but I told her I wasn’t ready yet. I needed to catch my breath and come to. A few minutes later we decided we were ready to check the gender. Still in a daze I couldn’t figure out if it was a boy or a girl and Ellen confirmed it was in fact a baby girl. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

Once our baby girl was born and was safely on my chest I needed to move to the bed to birth the placenta. The midwives wheeled the bed over to the side of the bath so I could easily move on to it and then they wrapped us up in warm blankets.

We waited until the umbilical cord had stopped pulsating and had turned white before Ellen helped Daniel cut the cord. At this point it had been about 30 minutes since our baby was born and Ellen suggested giving me something to speed up the birth of the placenta. Just as she started to turn away I said hang on, I can feel something and as I said that the placenta shot out just as quickly as our baby did.

After birthing the placenta we needed to wait for a doctor to arrive to assess my tear so Daniel took Eloisa for some skin to skin time. The doctor arrived and told me I had a second degree tear and needed stitches and a catheter overnight so would need to stay at the hospital for the night.

Once the stitches were done we headed up to the maternity ward for the night. We had a lovely midwife called Ash look after us over night and she helped show me how to breastfeed Eloisa. We called on Chloe for her help again and she went and fed our dogs for us.

We left the hospital around lunchtime on Sunday and headed home for the first time with our new baby girl. As traumatic as it was, I am so pleased and proud of myself for sticking to my birth plan. I think both Daniel and I felt very prepared and had been over the plan many times leading up to the labour. He seemed to take his role very seriously and did an amazing job. All the midwives and hospital staff were incredible and we couldn’t have done it without Chloe’s help.

I am so in love with my baby girl and I can not wait to watch her grow into a beautiful woman.