Hi Hannah,
We have been meaning to message but haven't found the time!
River was born at 7.20pm on 9th September. He decided to be 10 days overdue and eventually made it out through an unplanned c section after a 48 hour labour. Honestly, it wasn't the birth any of us planned for but Bee's positive mindset and dedication to staying calm throughout was incredible to watch and we have you to thank in part for that.
Bee had lots of false starts in the last few weeks of pregnancy after his head engaged at 36 weeks. Unfortunately he got a bit muddled up and engaged in the OT position very far down very early so all of Bee's hard work getting him far down ready for birth wedged him in further. We got to experience it all - Bee started proper labour late on the Sunday night, by lunch on Monday we went into the birth centre at Winchester (no home birth midwifes avaialble) but came home again as despite being 3 in 10 Bee was only 2cm dilated with a super thin cervix. Monday night the home birth midwifes came to us and Bee laboured with them for a few hours at home but the midwife knew something wasn't quite right so blue lighted to the labour ward in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Bee was given pethedin to have a break as we were already on the second night of very intense labour, but afterwards Bee got stuck at 6cm and waters had been broken for 24 hours so the oxytocin drip was administered. Bee is my hero, even at this point they were still breathing through contractions without gas and air!
At around 5pm on Tuesday Bee went into second stage but the midwife took a final look and found that Bee was only 6cm, despite being able to touch his head, he was completely stuck on the wrong side of the cervix and had brought it down with him. The only way out was back up so in we went for an unplanned section 2 hours later. Honestly, knowing what we know now he was always going to come out that way, we just didn't know it.
I think 3 weeks later we are beginning to recover and settle into things. Bee is full-time pumping at the moment as he failed to latch after all the drama, but we are getting there every day. There is some healing to be done, but the birth was, despite all the drama, a generally very positive experience and hypnobirthing saved us on many occasions throughout.
Here's some photos to show you some of the story and how he is settling into life on the outside in our family of 5.
Indy xx
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you again for our hypnobirthing sessions, the techniques were invaluable and I feel it would have been a very different experience without them, certainly more anxiety provoking and as a result probably moremedicalised.
I hope sharing the story will help others to get a sense of how hypnobirthing helps.
Bee xx
