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Our preparation is what got us over the line to have the most amazing birth experience we could have dreamed of.

I went into spontaneous labour at 5pm and had planned to relax….sleep and listen to my hypnobirthing tracks…..but by 5:30 I was already having surges 2 mins apart! Simmo came home from work – but as we were adamant not to go to hospital too early – we tried to chill at home. By 7:30 I was having surges for almost 60 seconds so we rang the hospital to check the St John of God birth suite was available – it was :). We explained we would be doing hypnobirthing and that if we came in we didn’t want to be overly monitored etc.

The midwife was fantastic and made me feel at ease to head in without fear of the “clock” starting. We stayed at home for a while longer but both felt the need to get to our birthing space and ‘set up’ so we headed over and by 10pm I was checked in (all handled by Simmo so I could remain focussed) and was getting my initial examination. Simmo requested that only he be told of my progress….but I stupidly asked “but am I definitely in labour”? and the midwife said “not really”!!!!!! I was really deflated, thinking – how can this be?? I was contracting so heavily!!! This made me worried that I might not be able to “do this” as I figured things were going to get a million times worse and that I must be days away from actual birth! But I pushed that out of my thoughts (and later talking to Simmo he thought the exact same thing but never said anything) and remembered that people can regress on entering the hospital and that all body’s are different – and that I can totally do this.

Simmo ran me a bath and set up the room. I lay in the bath and used my breathing and focussed on nothing but softening and relaxing my cervix and envisioning oxygen getting where it needed to…”

It was just me and Simmo for the next 2.5 hours – him by my side, doing light touch and affirmations. My body (of its own accord) suddenly did a MASSIVE surge where I lost my breath and either my waters broke or my mucus plug came (unsure) and my urge to push was uncontrollable. Simmo called the midwife back for the first time who told me not to push as it was too early – and I knew that pushing too early would distress bub…so I tried to breathe and blow and yell through it but my body was in control! The more senior midwife came in and did an examination and said…..”let’s get you on the bed”. Both me and Simmo were alarmed as we wanted to stay in the bath for as long as possible (knowing we couldn’t actually BIRTH in the bath) – Simmo said as much and the midwife said – yup – it’s time!

So between surges I got up and got instinctively on all fours. The midwife starting directing me to push (even though Simmo had requested they not say “push” haha) but I really didn’t need it…..when a surge came – my body was doing what it needed. I was listening to Simmo who was directing my breathing and reminding me to breathe between surges where I was forgetting to focus.

Within about 15 mins I was holding our little baby in my arms. I was crying but he wasn’t! He came out completely chill with an almost perfect APGAR score. At this point Simmo had been having a bit of a confrontation about the oxytocin injection – the midwife was about to give it too me when Simmo said “no”. She said it was “life or death” and that she had no choice. Simmo held firm and said that we wanted to wait for the placenta to birth naturally – but she said she couldn’t go against hospital policy!!! Lucky for us, my obstetrician Simon Turner walked in at that moment! Saying he had gone through 3 red lights to get there and missed the finale haha. He told the midwife we were doing delayed oxytocin and chord clamping and wanted to birth the placenta naturally!
So he focussed on getting the baby to suckle and placenta came out 5 minutes later. No need for any injection!

In conclusion – we know we were very lucky to have this experience but we also know that our preparation is what got us over the line to have the most amazing birth experience we could have dreamed of!
A shout out to Simmo – he was amazing and was my guide through the entire labour – and my advocate when I needed it – I couldn’t have done it without him. He also snapped some amazing birth photos (not sure how he was doing everything at once!!) of Sebs head emerging and me holding him for the first time!

Sebastian is a calm and happy little boy – already back over his birth weight and feeding amazingly.
Thank you again for everything!

Lots of love
Sara and Simmo

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