A Positive Birth Story
My husband and I are overjoyed with our little Ellery.
I’m really happy with how the birth went. I started pre-labour around 5am on Tuesday it was a bit irregular so I just kept busy at home and by 12ish it all sort of stopped. A few hours later I had some more contractions. I was already booked in for an induction that evening so we went to the hospital around 8pm. By this time I was using a few breathing techniques I had learnt from yoga classes. I used the idea of breathing out through a straw and it really helped. I counted odd numbers on the in breath and even one the out up to 10 then started back at one again (no idea why, just seemed to work).
I was having regular contractions all night but they were not progressing. By 4am I was still only 2cm 🙁 They offered my morphine but I was trying to avoid drugs if I could so I declined. I remember trying to visualise a flower opening to relax my self and my body which I learnt at one of the yoga classes run by the midwife (Sharon?).
By 8am on Wednesday, I had my waters broken and I had absolutely no energy left. At 11am I was going to be put on the drip to bring on the contractions and that is when I decided to have an epidural. I just had nothing left in the tank to concentrate and focus.
The epidural was exactly what I needed as I went from 3cm to ready to push in 2 hours! And at 1:02 our little girl was born, 50cm, 3.54kg.
Even though I had intended to go through the whole thing without the drugs/epidural (I was more scared of it than labour) I am actually more content and proud of myself with how it turned out, as I was able to be open minded and make a difficult decision at the time.
I am so happy with what I learnt at your yoga classes, I had never done yoga before and I found it so valuable during the pregnancy to take some time out of my busy life and focus on my body and mind. I learnt valuable skills on how to relax and breathe in stressful situations.
I am looking forward to joining your postnatal classes in a few weeks!
Thanks very much,
Claire
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