A Calmbirth® story.
At 11:45pm on Tuesday the 5th of November 2019, I was nearly 40 weeks pregnant with my first baby. We headed into the hospital at around 1am to confirm that my waters had broken. At this point we were extremely excited and ready for our baby to make its entrance in what we thought would be the next 24hrs. But to our dismay, making a long story short, we got told that I could not go home to labour as I had always wanted as the doctor said that the baby was not yet engaged, and that if I laboured at home there could be a possible risk of the cord coming before the baby and causing complications. So I got stuck in hospital over night, and as a result, my contractions completely stopped by 5am.
I was really hoping to avoid being induced so we postponed any intervention as long as possible. I was allowed to try and get the labour started again and go naturally, but by Friday morning I had to be induced at 8am as too much time had passed, and the risk of infection was becoming to great of a risk for us.
I am so glad that we were able to complete the calm birth class as I really believe that it empowered my husband to be completely involved and confident in our labour to be able to help me overcome many obstacles and crisis of confidence as the pain became more than I could bear. Other than being induced, I also really wanted to avoid having an epidural, and I completely believe I was able to do this with the support of my husband, sister in law (photographer) lots of prayer and the tools that we learnt in calm birth and some amazing gas and water injections also didn’t go astray!
So at 2:55am on Saturday the 9th of November, 19 hours from the start of being induced ,our little baby Jim Joshua Griffiths made his long awaited entrance into the world weighing in at 8lb 15 and 57cm long!
If my husband and I did not have the knowledge that we learnt at calm birth, I honestly believe I don’t think I would have made it through without an epidural. Which would have definitely broken my faith in my body. And as painful as it was, I would do it all over again! All in all, I highly recommend calm birth as a vital tool to be able to embrace birth and all of the curve balls that it can send you.