Lindsay’s Birth story
Lindsay attended one of my first ever online group hypnobirthing workshops, a birth planning session back in the summer of 2021. Lindsay gave birth to her baby girl Auryn in the labour ward at The Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, after transferring from the Edinburgh Birth Centre.
By my calculations, I believed that my baby’s EDD was 5 days too early so when I was offered a sweep the day after my due date I decided not to have this, instead I said to my midwife ‘if nothing is happening by this time next week I’ll consider it’.
After the birth planning workshop with Claire I really understood not to be fixed in how I wanted my birth to go but also not to just go with the flow. At the latter stages of my pregnancy I felt like I had considered most eventualities and was feeling prepared and quite relaxed about it all.
I spent the rest of that week going to bed every night hoping something was going to happen (I’d read somewhere that things are more likely to start overnight and that had stuck with me).
I didn’t get to the end of the week! On Tuesday morning at 4am I had been up to the toilet, like I had been every night at 4am for what felt like an eternity and not long after I got back into bed my waters broke.
I called the hospital around 7am and they asked me to go in to be checked over. I got to the hospital at 9am and was sent home while things progressed.
I bounced on my birthing ball watching back to back Grey’s Anatomy while my waters trickled away throughout the day. It wasn’t until the early evening that my contractions became stronger and increased in frequency. I was managing them well at home, practicing my hypnobirthing techniques
and when it got to around 11pm I was experiencing three contractions in ten minutes so we called the hospital and they advised to take some paracetamol for the pain and stay at home as long as I could.
Within the next hour the contractions increased in intensity and I was vomiting with the pain. We called the hospital again and they told us to come in. We got to the hospital around 1am and were taken into a room within the birthing centre. I was given an anti sickness injection, examined and told I was 2cm dilated.
It transpired that my baby had turned back to back for a while so I continued to experience a lot of pain between contractions. To help with the pain I was offered to get into the birthing pool which I did and the heat of the water seemed to help but it also slowed things down. I was examined again at 6am and was still at 2cm dilated.
As it was over 24hours since my waters broke and therefore there was an increased chance of infection, I was advised I would have to be moved to the labor ward and given the hormone drip to help things along. I knew that if it got to this stage that my plan would be to ask for an epidural, which I did.
I was moved to the labour ward at 7am on the Wednesday morning and continued to breathe through my contractions until the anaesthetist came at 9:30am and I was given the epidural. The next few hours I dozed on and off and we had some good banter with our midwife and student midwife who were with us throughout the day. I was able to manage my epidural myself by pressing a button when I felt the pain relief needed to be increased.
At 3:30pm the student midwife examined me and told me I was 4/5cm dilated - I was very disheartened as by this point I was ready to meet my baby and thought the whole point of the hormone drip was to speed things up. However, then the midwife then examined me and told me I was actually fully dilated! and that they would start me pushing around 5:30pm.
I found it very strange pushing but not actually feeling anything. This part was different to everything I’d practiced. I was told to hold my breath, put my chin on my chest and push down with every contraction, instead of just breathing through them. I ended up pushing for just over 2 hours. Towards the end the pain relief was waring off and I could feel each contraction coming and the movement of my baby with each push which I found so empowering.
The midwives and my husband were so supportive and encouraging throughout. Our beautiful baby was born at 7:46pm and my husband announced to me that we had a girl. I was overcome with emotion, pure joy.
It felt like no time atall before my husband was sent home and I was taken to the post-natal ward. My baby girl had been swaddled and was in the cot next to my bed which somehow didn’t feel right. The first time she wriggled out of the swaddle I pushed the button for assistance and asked to be shown how to swaddle her but the assistant just quickly did it and left. My baby very quickly wriggled out of the swaddle again so I picked her up and put her on my chest and covered us both up.
Despite being exhausted, I stayed awake the whole night in awe of her, I just didn’t want to put her down. When my husband returned the next morning at 8:30am I told him to get his top off and give her skin to skin while I slept.
