A Calmbirth® couple story.
Here’s our little story… Adeline’s Calm Birth Story .
Our due date for the birth of our little girl was set for April 16 so by the time we were reaching April 28, there was talk of induction within the next few days. Luckily for us, Adeline decided that at 12:45am on April 29 she would kick things off. I woke to some contraction pains and when I went to the bathroom, I noticed that my waters had broken. After timing some of the contractions we rang the hospital and was asked to come in as we live a little bit away from the hospital. When I arrived, it was clear that I was in beginning stages of labour but my contractions weren’t consistent and the labour wasn’t progressing so I started a low dose of syntocinon to help things along. At about 12pm, it was deemed I was in active labour with contractions coming in regularly and growing in strength. To manage the pain, I really focused on my working breath to breathe through every contraction. I also used strategies from a Birth Skills book that I connected with and used movement and sound to distract from the pain. Basically I tapped and breathed through every contraction, with the tapping growing stronger to match the pain. As I was progressing into the 2nd stage, I had a lot of pain in my back so I chose to have sterile water injections which completely blocked the pain instantly in my lower back. That was enough to help me get through to the pushing phase and Adeline didn’t take long to arrive after that. In fact, she decided that she couldn’t wait for too much longer and shot out at the end… head, shoulders, body all at once. My hubby said that it was lucky the midwife was even able to catch her in time. I ended up having minor tears and had to have some stitches but all in all, not really a bad run considering the haste in which she arrived at the end. As she was born at 4:34pm, it was quite late by the time we were finished up so we spent one night in the hospital and was on our way home before lunchtime the next day. I am so grateful for our calmbirth journey and the skills I learnt to help me connect and manage during labour. The combination of that and the skills I used from Birth Skills, has left me feeling empowered about our birth experience. At times when the pain was overwhelming, I was able to focus and stay in control rather than giving in to the pain. It is healthy pain after all, which I constantly reminded myself throughout the whole labour. Thank you Cherie for taking us through the calmbirth process. We’re so happy to have our little Adeline here and be able to talk about our positive birth story!