My waters broke at home on the Sunday while I was isolating for being covid positive, I was quite unwell and it really couldn’t of came at a worse time. I called the maternity ward and they wanted me to come in straight away, this made me quite anxious as I was hoping to labour in the comfort of my own home for as long as I could. Once we arrived to the hospital Ben set up the room to make it as homely as possible, he set up fairy lights and made the bed up with my blanket and pillow and sat positive affirmation cards around. At 5pm they confirmed that my waters had broke, I wasn’t having any contractions at this stage and they explained that they wanted to get things rolling as I was covid positive and also positive to Strep B and the longer that baby stayed put the higher the risk infection rate was.
They started me on pitocin straight away, our original plan of me labouring in the bath/shower had changed as I had to be constantly monitored, my emotions were really high and everything was happening so quickly but I was so lucky to have Ben to ground me.
I bounced on the exercise ball for hours as the contractions got stronger and closer together, it got to 4am and I was so exhausted and struggling to catch a break between contractions so we decided to do an examination, I was only 2cm dilated which was disheartening to hear as I had hoped to be more after 9 hours, Ben and I discussed a plan and decided I would try for another hour and see if I had dilated further and re asses our plan. At 5am I had another check and was still only at 2cm, I decided to get an epidural to allow me to rest for a bit between contractions. Ben was an amazing support through this time, making sure I stayed hydrated, holding my hand, reminding me to breathe, using the fan to cool me down, showing me affirmations, all things that he learnt in the partners tool box in Cherie’s class.
At around 9am the epidural stopped working on my right side so I was feeling the contractions all on my left side. I had a check and was at 5cm dilated and continued to labour throughout the day, it was such a long day but I kept on top of my breathing techniques that I had learnt at calm birth, this really helped me through the contractions.
This whole day feels like I blur, it got to 3pm and I was 9cm dilated and stayed at that until about 5pm. The doctors were concerned as I wasn’t progressing to 10cm and felt as though I needed to push. We then discovered that the baby was in a posterior position and his head was stuck in my pelvis, the doctor had said if in 1 hour I hadn’t progressed we would have to do a caesarean, this terrified me and after being in labour for 24 hours already I just wanted to finish what I had started and get my baby here. I tried some different positions on the bed on all fours and on my side with the peanut ball to try and encourage him to come down but he just wasn’t budging. After an hour I was still at 9cm so they prepared me for a cesarean.
At 7.12pm we welcomed little Hugo into the world, it was an absolute roller coaster getting him here but our hearts were instantly filled with so much love as soon as we saw him.
We are both so glad that we did Calmbirth, as even though my labour wasn’t what we had planned we were able to overcome the challenges we faced with optimism & confidence.
Thank you so much cherie