Thought I would share my birth story after reading so many during my pregnancy!!

It was very quick water birth, 4 hours of active labour with just gas and air (didn’t have time for any other pain relief!) I was 37 weeks and 3 days.

So basically I noticed my leggings and knickers were wet before a shower about 6pm Monday night. Had some mild tightening and Braxton Hicks type pain. Called my husband upstairs and we were excited!! We rang maternity triage and they said to come in so they could see if it was my waters. They assessed and said that it was my waters but only a trickle, however because of infection risk if I didn’t go into labour naturally within 18 hours they would induce. Ideally I didn’t really want an induction so I went home (around 9pm) and tried to get labour going but also tried to rest/relax... so I watched TV (Game of Thrones!) whilst standing up, moving/dancing around etc. I tried to go to sleep but I couldn’t really rest as my waters continued to break, so eventually I just ran myself a bath (about 1am), contractions semi regular but mild at this point. After a while I got sleepier so I decided to try and sleep.

At around 5am I woke up to stronger and more regular contractions. This is when the midwives say active labour started. I tried to keep things active by going up and down stairs, but also stay relaxed and distracted by watching tv whilst moving around. Contractions started to pick up and get more painful but not to the extent that they were unbearable. At 7.30am my husband called my mum just to update her on how we were getting on. During that phone call contractions really stepped up, I wouldn’t say it went from 0 to 100 real quick, but it went from like 70/80 to 100 real quick! The pain became unbearable. I was suddenly saying we needed to go to hospital. So my mum came to take us. We arrived at maternity triage at 8.15am, I was in agony by this point. They assessed me and I was 8cm dilated! I was so happy I was so far along!! I was up in the birth centre by 8.30ish and started gas and air. I took one puff and screamed ‘it’s not enough!!!’ But I knew deep down it was probably too late for anything else. The midwives were amazing and calm and telling me everything was progressing well. By 8.40am I was in the pool and I relaxed a bit as it was soothing and warm. After 10/15 minutes his head was crowning and after another 10/15 minutes, my little boy was born at 9.11am!!

He’s now 3 weeks old!

Harley Raphael Flax

Born 16th April 2019

9.11am

7lb 14oz

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