Story by Meagan
Our little girl Genevieve Lois was born on 16th March at 3:48am, 3.33kg and 55cm. We were in prodromal labour on and off with intensifying contractions over about 3-4 days at home managed with breathing, warm baths, heat packs, massage and TENS machine and were more intense at night. We ended up having an induction as I was 41+3 on Friday, with waters broken then syntocin with stronger more frequent contractions. Pain was managed by breathing, visualisation, TENS, and gas closer to the end. We also found essential oil diffusion, and playing music was helpful during labour as it provided a distraction and a focal point during contractions, and for visualisations.
Since she had meconium in waters Dr decided to use vacuum to assist a quicker delivery. Initially we were tentative about having an induction and whether that may lead to further interventions as we wanted as natural a vaginal birth as possible within reason. But it was great to get things moving when we were already 41 weeks + 3 days for our little girl who needed a little encouragement to enter the world, as my husband called it from “the cosiness of her Mum”.
We really trusted our OB’s judgement as he never pushed any induction on us being fully supportive of our choice of as natural a birth as possible still knowing that things can change. This put us at ease that this decision of induction and the whirlwind end of the birth via vacuum after some pushing was well considered and was for the welfare of bub and myself considering the meconium. She was whisked away to be monitored after the birth and quick cord cutting and fortunately with the speedy delivery had not aspirated any waters into her lungs.
Although not everything went the way we had thought, we went into it having a mindset that we wanted a healthy baby and mumma from the birth and we were able to achieve this despite with a 2nd degree tear due to the speedy delivery but the Ob worked his stitching magic we fared well overall and were able to manage the pain well through labour with all the birth knowledge and calming techniques we learned in Calmbirth she was born healthy and we are thankful.