Sometimes Birth Plan A turns into Birth Plan C...

I was so happy when a recent mum reached out to tell me about her recent incredible birth experience. She had attended a group hypnobirthing course in the early stages of her third trimester. I had shared all the aspects of hypnobirthing tools that can be used in your birth.

My focus in teaching is on having lots of tools that you pick and choose and then become absolutely key to you when you birth your baby. In terms of you birthing your baby, to me, it really doesn’t matter how they arrive, as long as you have felt fully informed, in control, confident and safe.

Hypnobirthing means that when your baby arrives, you hold them, feeling empowered, like you made all the right decisions along the way and that you had an incredible and empowering experience. We are all entitled to that.

Mum has been generous enough to let me share her lovely words and these words really do demonstrate how important it is to allow for plan a (the ideal), plan b (the what-ifs) and plan c (Caesarian)…. birth is ALWAYS beautiful.

“Contractions started at 10pm Wednesday, I had had zero sleep all night, bloody show midday Thursday and lots of vomiting all day and pain not subsiding between contractions. Our preference A was a Homebirth and the Midwife came over at 6pm to examine (I wanted to know my rate of dilation and was told I was 3cm dilated) and she gave me pain relief and an anti sickness injection so I could have a sleep and regain energy to carry on. I had a 3 hour snooze (feeling wonderful) and woke up and continued vomiting and feeling pain.

The midwife returned at 10.30ish, when I was 4cm dilated so I was no longer advised to have a pain relief injection. Instead, I took some tablets and tried to rest for a while before she asked me to get up and move around to get things moving. By 2am I struggled and the contractions weren’t progressing in terms of developing a pattern etc. I asked my options - she said I could have gas and air at home and see how I find that or if I wanted to go into hospital, we could do that too. I chose hospital because I was running so low on energy by this point (28 hours after first contraction and with no food / drink staying down and no sleep).

We arrived at hospital at 2.30/3am and I had an epidural at 5am (still 4cm) and the midwife broke my waters to see if that would help. There hadn’t been much progression by 10.30 so I agreed to the hormone drip. I did try to be as upright as possible as my movements were now limited

4 hours later, I was 6cm dilated and this was also the same at my next agreed VE, 4 hours later. I did feel truly exhausted and quite fed up by this point and the midwives were thinking my baby wasn’t in a ideal position which was why the labour was taking a while.

I asked what I could do next. I was given options to wait out another couple of hours on drip or speak to dr about a caesarian birth.

My husband and I decided on a caesarian birth as we felt that after so long giving it time to progress I was very unlikely to shoot to 10cm anytime soon and was also running out of energy for pushing stage if and when that would come! So 48 hours from contraction 1 to birth in total!

We both feel very positive about everything though as we used the hypnobirthing tools to get through, breathing and asking questions and knowing our rights.

Everything we did was our choice and we knew our options! Had lights dimmed, delayed clamping, immediate skin to skin and our music playing during the birth.”

My biggest congratulations to this first-time mother and father welcoming their baby and a huge thank you to her for sharing her experience.