Stacey & Ross’s Birth Story: Staying Calm Through Induction Decisions

It was a complicated end to the pregnancy, the consultants wanted to Induce me on the 15th as he was measuring small and I said no as this was not something I wanted. I went back in around a week later for a Doppler scan and said his oxygen levels were now dropping quite a lot and I needed to go straight on the hormone drip and get him out now or have a caesarean next morning. So we went through all the questions, benefits, risks etc.

In the end I said let’s see if I’m dilated at all then we might be able to get it going more naturally… I was 1cm… so I decided I would come back in a few hours and you can break my waters and see if anything happens as I don’t really want any medical interventions with more risks etc.

It was really hard to have all those options thrown at us with not having much of a positive sounding outcome promised from any of them.

Luckily we managed to remain calm, go home see the children get organised, back in control and then head back to hospital to have a baby.

Once back we were admitted at 10pm and then had all the decisions thrown at us again and discussed all the absolute risk etc. This was again tough and emotional but we went ahead with the plan to break waters and reassess in 4 hours.

They broke my waters around midnight and we walked around the hospital all night, up and down the stairs and wrapped final Xmas presents for kids whilst on birthing ball and then after 4 hours I was ‘only’ 3cm so they started discussing other options again.

Between contractions, I had my bloods taken and cannula fitted by the anaesthetist and they asked him to talk to me about epidurals… by this point I was already in a lot of pain and just trying to keep breathing through he was asking me pain levels between 1-10 etc I ended up just replying to him shhhhhhh a few times and he left the room. I then tried to pee and couldn’t even sit down for long enough between contractions so then they were like hmmm maybe you are further along than we thought, can we check you on a contraction… which I agreed to and then they said on the next contraction you can start to push!

I could see a bit of panicking around the oxygen level etc so was like right come on focus and get him out. And he was born around 5am.

Ross was great and really calm throughout, he asked all the right questions and kept himself informed so to feel safe and keep me calm. He referred to a lot of things you taught us.

At the end the placenta was taking a while to come out again and Ross was like woah guys be careful please don’t pull it please don’t make her bleed and keep us updated on how it’s looking and if we need to go to theatre let’s go sooner.

It eventually came away and all was well with that too.

So not too bad of a labour all in all. Just some tricky choices to make and no birthing pool etc that I’d hoped for.

But I think we both coped really well and supported each other and my body made it to a happy ending with no medicine.