Calmbirth Birth Story - Annie, Jonny and Baby Sunny - "I was thoroughly excited about birth, I have never felt so powerful!"

I was gardening when my waters broke at 36 weeks, 4 days. This happened to my top oxytocin inducing activity that I wrote on the board at calmbirth!

At 4pm my waters broke, but it wasn't that dramatic so i wasn't convinced it was my waters. So I carried on gardening... then I started feeling some heaviness and aching in my pelvis so went inside to the bathroom and it seemed i had also lost my mucus plug! I called the midwife feeling more convinced that I actually might be in labour.

She said just go about your day for now and keep her posted on how things progress. Within an hour contractions were intense! Jonny ran me a bath and I thought maybe I should time the contractions...they were 5 in 10 minutes.

This was 2.5 hours after my waters breaking. I hadnt yet packed my hospital bag so Jonny was running around doing this, so was I between contracrtions...I don't recommend this!! I spoke to the midwife again at 7.15 and she said we should go to hospital.

We arrived at 8pm and it was such a relief to be there with our lovely midwife, now I could relax more and let things unfold as quickly as th let needed to and I was in safe hands. Brooke, the midwife could see I was already having the urge to push during contractions. I had gas and air which didn't do that much for the pain but was very helpful in keeping me breathing in and out deeply.

At 9pm Brooke did a vaginal exam and I was 10cm, fully effaced so she suggested I could start pushing now. I tried various positions to push and found it felt most natural and productive standing up leaning over the bed. Jonny was holding my hands on the other side of the bed. It was amazing when Brooke told me to feel between my legs and the top of Sunny's head was in reach!

This was all the motivation I needed to give it everything i had from there. The ring of fire was intense...but so exciting! At this point Jonny was there watching Sunny emerge and when her body slithered out he caught her, lifted her between my legs and I lifted her up to my chest. It was absolutely magic and as soon as she was out there was zero pain, just floods of love and gratitude.

I have never felt so powerful. It was beautiful to have Jonny so involved, he was helping through active labour by massaging my hips between contractions and holding my hands through the pushing stage. Then to have Jonny catch Sunny was just perfect and we love to reminisce about this epic moment.

I thought being my first baby, labour would be a marathon not a sprint so when an hour in my contractions were that intense I was starting to worry about how much more painful they would get over the day and night!

Things didn't go so smoothly with the birth of the placenta which involved a very big bleed (3.3litres) and some retained placenta, meaning I had to go to theatre for general anesthetic to remove the remaining placenta.

This was only an hour after Sunny's birth and I was gone for 4 hours. We were so glad we had talked about this scenario at calmbirth. We had already discussed that if I had to be separated from baby, Jonny would stay with her and do skin to skin and feed her colostrum if we had it until I got back.

This is exactly what happened and it was such a relief to have already had these conversations before the event. We both felt calm and clear about what was best for everyone. Jonny knew his role and I knew they would be fine together til I was back. 

Given how our birth and post birth unfolded we were so glad we had brainstormed what we would do in the event of unforseen circumstances arising like being separated from the baby after birth.