Vaginal Birth in the shower, Antibiotics in Labour, Induction - Sarah

HIND WATER LEAK/ TENS MACHINE/ FETAL SCALP ELECTRODE MONITORING/ SHOWER BIRTH

The Birth Story of Bloom

Born Sunday 6th Feb 2022 at 4.05am

I got up at 1:30am Friday morning to go to the toilet and when walking back to my room I felt something run down my leg, I wasn't sure so I went back to the toilet to check as I thought maybe I hadn't finished lol
Went back to bed and laid there for about 20mins and keep checking but everything had stopped so just went back to sleep.
I woke up in the morning and the same thing happened so I jumped in the shower and popped a pad on and called my midwife.

We went into the birthing centre at 9:30am to see what was happening. My Midwife confirmed I had a slow leak and to go home and wait for contractions and if nothing happened I would have to come back at 7:30pm to start antibiotics.
So we went home and we tried everything to get the contractions started.
However unfortunately nothing happened so we headed back into the hospital to the induction ward where they did my first lot of antibiotics. They let me go home and come back at 1:30am for my next lot.

When we came back at Saturday morning I ended up staying overnight.
My partner got back first thing in the morning and we started walking laps around the hospital and I found every set of stairs I could find, but still nothing.

We finally got a room at 1:30pm Saturday. Because of everything I was now no longer able to birth in the birthing centre as they wanted to induce me.

We got into our room and a midwife checked me to see if my water had actually broken before we started the induction. At 3pm they started me on the drip.
The first few hours I was good just had the tens machine on and we watched a movie and had a nap.

As the surges became stronger I became more mobile and my partner was giving me massages & light touch, affirmations, I was building my props out of the furniture in the room and I had my playlist on repeat.

The surges really started to increase that night and I had always wanted water in my birth so new it was time to go into the shower.
I was in there for a bit with both shower heads on sitting on a chair, but Bloom kept moving so they were finding it hard to monitor her so the new midwife suggested that they attached a monitor to her head that way I can be in the shower and they will be able to see how she is going.

And lucky I agreed to that as when the midwife went to attach the monitor she realised my water hadn't broken!
So she called the doctor in and they broke my waters. It was the best feeling, following after, my surges got a whole lot stronger.

3hrs later I was at the point where I wanted to give up, which from the Hypnobirthing Australia™ Positive Birth Program I did with The Birth Nest, I knew I was close.

My partner was amazing, reassuring me I could do this, even though I really felt like I had nothing left.

I asked if could move to the floor in the shower, so I ended up on my knees and arms on the chair.
After an hour of pushing (slow and steady) my beautiful baby girl was here 💜💜

It didn't go the way I planned, however I still had a very positive experience and would do it all over again.

The course really helped with knowing what was happening when and my partner knew exactly what to do which was amazing and he was confident in what I wanted so he could talk to the midwives when needed.
I even overheard the midwifes say that we didn't really need them because he was so hands on, which is exactly what I wanted. I really loved that he was so involved and just knew exactly what I needed.

Before the course I was honestly so scared to birth my baby and then was able to have a positive drug free ( except the induction) birth.