Jennie's story, Birmingham - home water birth using hypnobirthing

"Positive Birth Story – Home Water Birth using Hypnobirthing

Baby S born 7th April 2010 weighing 7lbs 15oz 

My due date was Thursday 8th April and on Tuesday 6th April OH had the day off work so that we could attend my grandmother’s funeral. Family members had 'joked' that the stress of such a day might trigger early labour. 

Having got through the service and wake feeling emotional but generally OK, I was having pretty regular Braxton hicks and we decided to take a short walk in the park later in the afternoon. We sat down to enjoy a cup of tea and a cake in the tea shop and I felt a different sensation in my bump which was more like a strong stitch. We took this as a signal to get home and comfortable, ordered a takeaway curry for dinner and caught up on my daily allowance of raspberry leaf tea. 

Lying on the sofa watching TV at about 11pm I felt a slight popping low down and to the front of my bump which felt like a little bubble bursting. I wondered whether this was my waters but couldn’t feel anything. Five or so minutes later I went to the toilet and realised that I did not have control of the fluid that was coming out. After sitting on the toilet for a few minutes I started to let myself believe that this was it and that my waters really had broken. 

I called the birth centre and the midwife on call said she would come out and see me within the next hour or so to assess what was going on. As we had planned a home water birth we had a pool to inflate and I had been anxious about the noise using the electric pump late at night so OH got on with inflating the pool while I relaxed in bed listening to the affirmations and rainbow relaxation CD (Hypnobirthing) on repeat. The midwife arrived sometime in between 12.30am and 1am and having checked my pads confirmed that my waters had broken, advised me to go to bed and get some rest and reassured me that for most women whose waters break early, labour starts within 24 hours. She also explained that if it didn’t, I would need to have antibiotics after about 18 hours and they would want to induce me after 24. She told me to call again when my contractions were coming every 5 minutes or so. 

With the birth pool inflated and the hot water boost on, we went to bed. I was listening to the affirmations and rainbow relaxation CD on my iPod when I experienced what I later realised was my first surge (contraction). The only way I can describe what this felt like was as if I was desperate for the toilet and had been holding it in for too long. I went to the toilet then got back into bed and dozed on and off for a couple of hours with the CD on my iPod and surges coming and going. 

By about 3.30am I found that breathing and relaxing whilst lying down during surges was becoming difficult and I was more comfortable moving around or sitting on the toilet so I was continually going back and forth to the bathroom. At about 4am I came into the lounge, lit some candles, put the affirmations and rainbow on the stereo and used the tens machine and birthing ball through each contraction. OH then got up at about 6am and started to prepare the room, laying shower curtains underneath towels to cover our (light cream!!) carpet and sofa and began to fill the pool as we knew this would take some time due to our small water tank! 

For the next couple of hours we continued like this, me leaning over the birthing ball and gradually increasing the power on the TENS machine as my surges got stronger. I was also timing my surges using 'Contraction Master' App. on OH’s iPhone. In hindsight, although this gave me something to focus on during this time, I think it did prevent me from fully relaxing and going inwards and I was always conscious of having an 'aim' of stronger, longer and closer together surges and checking my progress. 

During each surge I was trying to visualise a green balloon in my abdomen, inflating with each inhalation and having this to focus on was helpful although I did find that once each surge got stronger I had to breathe through my mouth rather than my nose and inhalations became more challenging. 

At approximately 8am-8.30am I called the midwife as my surges were now coming regularly every 5-6 minutes and were lasting anywhere between 30-90 seconds by my calculations. At this point I felt like I needed OH with me during surges and in between filling the pool with pans of hot water he came and massaged my back and pressed my shoulder (which had been a relaxation anchor we had learned and practiced at hypnobirthing) and reminded me of what we had been practicing in terms of breathing and relaxing. 

The midwife arrived sometime between 9am-9.30am bringing a student with her. She asked me some questions about the timing of my waters breaking, etc. and observed me during surges for about 30 minutes, feeling my bump and assessing how I was progressing. At this point she said that although I was having 3 in 10, I was not in established labour yet and told me that the surges would get a lot stronger than they were at that point. She said that they were going to leave me to it and to call her once I was regularly having 3 in 10 surges that were 60 seconds long. I asked her when I could get into the pool and was told that I needed to stay out of the pool until I was in established labour and there was a midwife present. In the meantime she said that I could have a bath if I felt that I would benefit from it. 

As soon as the midwives left I felt the need to move so I went and sat on the toilet. From this point the surges seemed to get quite intense and I was calling for OH to massage my back each time. I had started to tense up and OH was pushing my shoulders down with each surge and reminding me to breath. I stayed sitting on the toilet for about 30 minutes while OH filled the bath. At this point it felt like I wasn’t getting much of a break in between surges and they were feeling quite intense. As soon as I was able to, OH helped me into the bath and although the heat of the water was soothing in between surges, almost instantly they became much stronger and I felt a pressure pushing down which was uncomfortable whilst lying or sitting so I was lifting myself up with each surge while OH massaged and poured water over my back. In total I remained in the bath for about 30 minutes and during this time I first started to feel my body pushing. I told OH that it felt like my body wanted me to push and we both felt like I should be trying not to do that and to just focus on breathing. 

During the whole of my labour, this was the only point that I doubted myself and my ability to relax and have a positive experience. Not because of the sensations I was feeling but because I was remembering that the midwife had said that I wasn’t in established labour yet, that the babies head was only 3/5 engaged and that I would probably have a while to go yet. Had I realised that I was actually in transition at that point and that I was nearly there, I am sure I would have felt differently. As it was I was experiencing very intense surges and thought that I would have several hours ahead of me with worse to cope with. 

At about 11.30am I told OH that I needed to get into the pool despite having been told by the midwives that I shouldn’t. I just knew that I needed deeper water to get more comfortable and as soon as I had the opportunity I did just that. Getting into the deeper water so that I could lean over the edge of the pool and still have my bump and lower back submerged was a huge relief. At this point OH was calling the midwife, boiling water for the pool and simultaneously trying to massage and pour water over my back. He told the midwife that things had progressed quite quickly and during the time he was on the phone, the midwife was able to hear me during a surge and said that she would come over straight away. In terms of the noises I was making, OH described it as a “wail” I certainly wasn’t screaming or shouting and I don’t think I had any control over it. I never panicked or felt like I couldn’t carry on, just had to keep moving with each surge and I was still really benefiting from having water poured over my back and OH massaging me. Although my surges were very intense at this stage and I could feel my body pushing the baby down, I still wouldn’t describe this as the agonising pain that most women talk about and I think this is due to the fact that I was not at all scared and I was just letting my body do what it needed to do. 

The midwife arrived at 12 noon still with the student and has later told me that she was very frustrated that I was already in the pool when she had told me not to get in until she got there. She was also concerned that there wasn’t quite enough water in the pool and I could hear the panic in her voice as she looked down, saw the baby crowning and called the second midwife on the phone and told her to come quickly. I heard her saying to the student “this baby is coming now” and telling OH to get more water. She asked me whether I wanted her to order any gas and air and I replied yes as this was what we had discussed previously although I don’t honestly think that I would have used it, even if it had arrived in time! 

As the baby was on his way out, the midwife was struggling to get me to stand up to monitor the heart rate and surges were coming thick and fast. She was fantastic as although I had never spoken to her in detail about hypno birthing and breathing the baby out, she never once asked me to push, she just kept telling me to breath and to let my body do what it wants to do. I kept remembering the J breath and although I wasn’t able to do this quite as quietly and calmly as I had practiced, I did find it incredibly beneficial to breath in very quickly then blow out the exhalation as slowly as possible. Doing this and being guided by the midwife, the baby's head came out and stayed out at either 12.12pm or 12.15pm (I can’t remember exactly!). I could feel that the head was out and the midwife told me to just relax and wait for the next surge so his body could turn. With the next surge his body slipped out, the midwife guided him through my legs and helped me to sit backwards so that I could lift him out of the water in front of me. He was born at 12.17pm no more than 17 minutes after the midwife had arrived back at the flat! The second midwife arrived at 12.25 while I was still in the pool holding baby S who was alert and looking around very calmly at this point, turning his head when he heard either mine or OH’s voice (adorable!).

After a few more minutes of skin to skin in the water, I was helped out and onto the floor, propped up by lots of cushions and pillows to deliver the placenta. Baby S stayed with me during this time as I wanted the cord to stay attached until it had stopped pulsing. After 30 minutes or so, it had stopped so the midwife clamped it and cut it (OH didn’t really want to do this) and the placenta was delivered naturally shortly afterwards. 

The gas and air arrived at about this point and the midwife decided to keep it in case I needed stitches but when I was examined it turned out I didn’t need any. 

The midwives cleared up everything except the pool, even asking where I keep the cleaning products so she could scrub up a spot of blood off the carpet! They did their initial checks on Baby S, weighing him etc then left us to it. OH had some time with him skin to skin before I moved to the bedroom and got comfy. OH spent the next hour or so clearing everything away and putting all of the furniture back into place then we had a few hours in bed, just the three of us, relaxing, having lovely skin to skin cuddles with Baby S and talking about what an amazing experience we had just had.

Unfortunately later that evening Baby S started to show signs of being poorly and we did end up taking him into hospital but we were so pleased to have been able to give him a calm and relaxed water-birth at home and I personally felt rather proud of the fact that all my hypno birthing practice had paid off!!!

Having spoken to the midwife since, she said she couldn’t believe that this was my first baby and how well I had coped with the whole labour. She said that when she had seen me first that morning, the fact that I was so calm during surges was one of the reasons that she felt I was not in established labour and because I had not had an internal examination we would never know whether I was much further on than she had thought at that time or whether I had just progressed very quickly from that point onwards.

Although I didn’t have as calm an experience as we had witnessed on the DVDs in hypnobirthing class, I had an incredibly positive experience. It was very intense at times and I couldn’t say that it was totally pain free but it certainly wasn’t the agony that I had initially feared. I was in control throughout and I attribute this to the positive mindset brought about by regular practice and listening to the affirmations daily. The breathing techniques, massage, water and support from OH were all I needed in terms of pain relief."

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Anon's story, UK - overdue home waterbirth

"I'd had to fight to keep my homebirth because I was past term + 14 by scan dates, although that was a week ahead of where I was by LMP & ovulation (so according to the scans I was already a week pregnant when I started my last period!) and I have a strong family history of "late" babies. Had to see the consultant at T+15 (Monday) and the one I saw basically bullied me into a hospital birth, which left me me very upset (mainly because I dreaded the thought of being strapped up to monitors the whole time, which he told me I'd have to be because I was now "high risk"), but then I went home and researched my position and the risks involved. Basically the NHS claim that the stillbirth rate trebles after 42 weeks is based on very dodgy - not to mention old - data, and more recent research shows that the risk only really begins to rise significantly after 43 completed weeks. (In fact at 42 weeks the risk is only about the same as at 38 weeks!) So I wrote a letter to the Supervisor of Midwives (based on the one on www.homebirth.org.uk but with some personal justification added) saying that I was continuing with my plans for a homebirth. Handed it in at the antenatal clinic when I went for monitoring on Tuesday, and also showed a copy to the nice mw who was doing my monitoring, and she took it upon herself to make a phone call and put a copy of the letter in my file to make sure that the message got through. I'd been booked in for induction on the 11th if he hadn't appeared by then; considered backtracking on that too, but decided to stick with it in the end.

On Tues night / Wed morning I got up for my customary 3am loo visit and things felt a bit wet, so I put in a pad and went back to bed. Contractions started at 4.10am, about 10 mins apart and lasting 45-60 seconds. I was feeling them in my back to begin with, and had had no back pain at all up to then, so that was how I knew they were the real thing starting. Around 5.40 I called the hospital (having been told to call early in labour since it was a homebirth) and at 6.30 the on-call mw came round. She established that I was 2-3cm and "nicely effaced" (I'd had 4 sweeps, the last one at T+13, and each time was 1-2 or 2cm but with cervix still long & posterior, so it was a relief to hear that I was actually progressing, especially as the trickling seemed to have petered out by then) and stayed for about an hour. I was coping fine by breathing through the contractions - using HypnoBirthing techniques - so after that she left me to wait for the community mws to come on duty. The lead mw arrived around 9.40 and was very impressed that I was on the Internet in between contractions right up until I got into the pool at 4cm! She told me that because I was beyond T+14 my case was outside their normal protocol and so they had to have a third, supervisory, midwife present for the birth, and they also needed to listen in to the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler every 15 minutes. That kind of monitoring was no problem at all! The second mw was my usual community mw, so it was nice to have someone there whom I already knew, and the supervisor (consultant midwife) was delighted to be asked to attend a home waterbirth because it's something she hardly ever gets to do in her current role.

At 11.40 I was starting to groan through the contractions (though I was still getting a decent break in between - I think the interval was about 7 minutes, and I don't think they were lasting more than a minute or so) so I was examined and told I was 3-4cm and could get into the pool when I wanted to. I pottered around online for a little bit longer then decided it was time to get into the water. Almost as soon as I got in, contractions started to pick up and I had two without a break in between - though apart from that they never really got to the stage of coming too thick & fast to give me a breather. Started using gas & air at 12.30 and was soon bellowing my way through the contractions (DH said I sounded like a moose!). The hardest thing was not being able to make a single out-breath last the whole contraction, and having to stop and inhale. I'm not sure how much the gas & air actually helped but I wasn't about to stop using it to find out! The mws were great, very encouraging but respecting my request to be left to get on with it as far as possible. I started to feel the urge to push at 12.48 (according to my notes) but it still took a while after that: my waters went with a big "pop" at 1.32, the mw had a quick feel at 2.12 and said the birth was imminent, and Xander was born at 2.19. I fished him out of the water myself and within a few minutes he latched on and started to feed. We noted that he still had loads of vernix on him - not post-mature by any means! 

One mw estimated his weight at about 7 1/2 pounds but in fact he turned out to be a whopping 9lb 7oz when weighed! Not only that, but I realised later, when I looked at his charts in the red book, that he had an enormous head - just short of the 99.8th centile line for boys and would have been off the scale for girls - in other words, if you were to line up 300 newborns in order of head circumference then he'd probably be the biggest!

We were left skin-to-skin for nearly an hour and I could feel the uterus contracting, but after nearly an hour the placenta hadn't yet come out (I didn't realise I had to push it out!) so I was asked to get out of the pool so that it could be given a gentle helping hand (I had asked that the cord not be pulled). I managed to stand up but couldn't lift my leg over the side of the pool, but gravity, a bit of bearing down and some very gentle coaxing by the mw got the placenta out intact within a minute or two. Left the pool water rather red though!

Blood loss estimated at 350-400ml, and I had a 2nd-degree tear - with hindsight, it was no wonder given the size of his head! - but it was left unstitched as suturing would have required a trip to hospital. (It healed up OK.) The after-pains were a lot worse than they were with DD, but I gather that's normal for 2nd & subsequent babies - and they did seem do their job very effectively, according to the mw when she visited the next morning. Was told by the lead mw that I shouldn't take ibuprofen if breastfeeding, which was news to me (and to my normal mw!) but the paracetamol wasn't helping so I looked it up online and the NHS site said that small amounts get into breastmilk but it's unlikely to harm the baby, so I went ahead and took it anyway.

Incidentally, it turned out that both of my children were born at T+10 by my dates - if that's not consistent then I don't know what is!"

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