Empowering, connected and amazing is how I'd describe the experience I had delivering my second born.Seventeen months ago it was the complete opposite and I was left feeling weak, powerless and out of control. When I found out that I was pregnant again my initial reaction was that I needed to get into hospital at the first sign of a twinge and get as many pain killers as possible . Thankfully I went down a different path.
About four months into my pregnancy, I started to become open to the idea of a natural birth and started to read and talk to mums who had had great birth experiences. Instead of dismissing them as being just what happened to other people, I started to believe that it could happen to me too. The difference this time around was that I knew it could only happen if I had the skills and knowledge to make it happen as opposed to crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.
I was all set for a home birth and was feeling really positive about the whole thing. But on my due date, the midwife called and told me that she was devastated to let me know that the lab had found Group B Strep in my urine. This would mean I would need to be given IV antibiotics as soon as I was in established labour and that I would need to be in hospital.
It was incredible how I went from being so clear about what I wanted to do, to being compliant to what the experts wanted....I then reminded myself of everything that I had been working on for 5 months and started to talk to lots of different people...all of who had very different opinions on my situation. But it still meant that I could make my own decision.
In the end I did make that decision - to go in straightaway if my waters broke. And if they didn't, to go in when I was in established labour.
So the twinges started at around 2pm, I ignored them until 4ish and then told my husband to come home. I remember at 5pmdisappearing into my toddlers bedroom, which was dark, quiet and cool and just hiding there. I was able to breath and wiggle through the contractions. They felt really good, like each one was a step closer to meeting my new baby. It was so different to last time that I just kept going with it, thinking this is going to go on for ever and get so much worse so I just needed to relax.
By 7pm, I thought they were getting quite intense, but still totally manageable. I knew I needed to be on antibiotics for 4 hours pre-baby so I thought I should go in. We got to the hospital at 7.30pm.I had a few contractions on the way up in the lift, the midwife asked me to go and wait in a side room to be assessed...at which point my waters exploded over the floor and I started pushing.
I was told to stop pushing - which was pretty impossible to do, and waddled to the nearest delivery room. Six pushes later, my little boy was born - at 7.51.
What was amazing about the whole experience was that I felt so connected to what was happening, every time I pushed I could feel the baby move. It was hard but a really good pain and I felt so amazing when he came out.
Needless to say, no antibiotics were needed and in fact nobody seemed concerned in any way about the Strep B. I had to stay in 24hrs for monitoring but that was it. They told me that the hospital had recently changed it's policy and no longer gave everyone antibiotics. It meant I could have had a home birth after all. It's frustrating that the messages I received were contradictory but in the end I made the decision based on the information I had and was still able to have the delivery that I wanted.
It was an amazing experience....