We never expected to be delivering our own baby, let alone having a breech vaginal birth / Jenelle
I’d always felt afraid of birth. So much so that I wasn’t sure I wanted children. When our close friend began dating a midwife, our conversations became more and more about birth and pregnancy. Before long, it became all I thought about. I wanted to be a mama. She told me about hypnobirthing, as I already meditated daily and later told us about the midwife led Family Birth Centre. I am not a fan of hospitals, so this was very welcome information. Without that insight, I don’t think I would have known about a non-hospital based birth full of interventions, as those were the birth stories I’d heard. After a few months of trying without actually knowing when I’d be ovulating, I took a pregnancy test, having missed my period. I was six weeks pregnant! At eight weeks I applied to be part of the Family Birth Centre program and was soon accepted. From 6 weeks I had 24/7 nausea, which lasted my entire pregnancy. From week 10 I had Symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD). The most common symptoms are difficulty when walking and wrenching pain (as though your pelvis is tearing apart). Other than those, I had a gentle, low risk pregnancy. Nothing really phased me as much as I’d expected. I saw a chiropractor to make sure my pelvis was in the best possible position, avoided reclining, did a lot of research, read many books taking things that resonated for me from each. My partner Mario and I both listened to the Australian Birth Stories podcast, finding it fascinating and we signed up to take the Hypnobirthing Australia course through Renee at The Birth Space. Looking back now, that course was one of the best things we did. We both learned so much about birth, what kind of interventions are typically offered and of course techniques for a calm birth. Knowledge is power, so going into birth I wasn’t wanting to feel surprised by things I didn’t understand. From about week 34, I began listening to the hypnobirthing tracks, practising breathing techniques, sitting in a deep squat when I could, sitting/moving on the ball each day and doing things like light touch massage, acupressure points, perineal massage/trying to hand express colostrum a few times a week. I had my bag all packed with the preferences, partner cheat sheet, and so on. Mario and I watched the resource videos on the Hypnobirthing Australia website. I was aiming for as natural a vaginal birth as I could without interventions and I wanted to try a water birth. Of course, nothing can truly prepare you for birth, each is different, but I went into it all excited, calm and with as much knowledge as I could.
After more than 40 weeks, I felt pre labour surges around 10:30 pm, then went to sleep to try and get as much rest as possible. I woke up around midnight and noticed them feeling a little stronger but went back to sleep. I woke up to strong ones at 2:30 am, moved to all fours then tried lying back on my side in-between but couldn’t comfortably stay there when the next one came. I woke Mario to let him know they were more intense so he didn’t get a shock wake up call later on. He decided to get up and we tried all sorts of different labor positions, like being over the ball. We switched on my labour playlist of calm music tracks and hypnobirthing tracks. It helped, along with low lighting set the calm mood. We called our midwife around 4:30 am to let her know where the surges were at. I was feeling pain in my lower back and on one side of my groin. That was super painful, making it hard to talk. Basically, there wasn’t any relief in between those surges. Mario had been recording my surges and said they were between 3 and 8 minutes apart, so our midwife said to stay home longer. I remember thinking I was already further along than I wanted to be and felt I was ready to go in to the birth centre, so this was a little disappointing to hear. But I couldn’t articulate it too well and when I did speak to her, Mario said I down played the pain. Classic Jenelle. Mario was thinking he may have not have recorded every surge as it was hard to tell when I was having them. Essentially, as I was hypnobirthing, I was silent, taking slow breaths to get through the whole time. I did have the TENS machine on my back but we later saw that I had it set to about 5 or 6. I could feel a tingling but it wasn’t doing much. I pressed and held down the boost button during a surge to give myself something to hold on to all the same. I didn’t know how far the TENS machine went up to, not having tried it before, so I assumed it went to 10. I figured I should leave myself somewhere to go to with pain relief from it, so kept it low. Turns out it goes up to 80! So effectively sitting at 5, it wasn’t doing anything.
By around 4:30 am the midwives later guessed I’d have been at least 4cm dilated so they counted the active labour from 4:30 am. The part between 5 am and 7:30 am was the worst. Navy must have had her feet pinching on a nerve in my groin and I had really bad back pain. I just kept thinking to myself “my body won’t give me more pain than I can handle and my body and my baby know what to do.” We went into the shower for ten minutes to see if that helped with pain relief but kept it short so as to not stall the labour. At 7:30 am Mario called the midwife back. I remember thinking it must have to be close now, because it had intensified so much. While they were talking I felt myself say “I think I feel the urge to push” which I hadn’t even thought before. Our Midwife said come in asap, saying it would take her 30 minutes. Then I heard Mario say it looked like it would take us an hour in the morning traffic. My heart really sank. I knew it would be hard in the car at all but I couldn’t even fathom being in there for an hour or sitting in traffic in this much pain. Nevertheless, I made my way to our bedroom ensuite thinking I should try to pee if I was going to be in a car that long. I could not even sit to do so. So I walked back out of our ensuite and got two steps towards our bed when my water broke in an explosion, with meconium. Hunching over the bed I managed to call out “Mario where are you?” as he was coming back inside from putting my bags into the car. He rushed in and instinctively got down behind where I was squatting over the side of the bed and went to catch some of the water coming out. Then I heard him say he could see something white sticking out. He described a white line that could be the umbilical cord and called our midwife back. She got him to call emergency services on the other phone and stayed on the line. I could hear panic in her voice. Then Mario said he could see it was toes, at which point we heard concern in the emergency service officers voice. He began to talk Mario through, warning that this would be difficult and to stay as calm as possible. I was feeling the urge to push or bear down, so I was doing so, but listening to the officer advising us and Mario describing what he was seeing. Next her foot came out, then after a pause her other foot, which was a huge relief. Given her head wasn’t coming out first, being the largest part of the body, there is a chance that the head, or the head and arms, may not follow easily, once the body is born. Essentially, the emergency services officer advised Mario to take a hands off approach and let gravity do its thing, as she descended through the birth passage. I could feel more of her body moving down. At one point I could feel her legs moving outside, then she came out more and I could feel her feet touch the floor, so they got me to squat up higher, since I was squatting too low. Her body came out quickly after that, her hips, then her stomach but Mario could not see her arms, as they were up by her head. That was one of the longest parts. Her arms then popped out with the umbilical cord at the same time, which was wrapped underneath her arm so Mario moved that out of the way as it was holding her up. Her body quickly flipped from the side so her face was facing Mario. I paused bearing down and held her in that spot. She was out up to her nose but Mario could see through the stretched skin to see the rest of her face.
I asked if it was okay to keep bearing down and after that her head popped out along with the placenta. When she came out she was blue, floppy, slippery and covered in stuff. Mario had gotten her by the time I turned around and got down with him onto the floor. We rubbed on her chest to try and get her to come too. It was the most scary moment, seeing her like that. It felt like such a long time but I thought, I know I felt her moving earlier and she’d been so active in the womb. I concentrated on thinking of that and not panicking. I repeated “it’s okay Navy” and then she let out a cry and we knew she was okay.
We heard a voice at the front door which was still open and the ambulance officers came in, we directed them into the room and the guy rushed in and rubbed her with a towel. They checked her over, she was crying but fine. There was no need to delay cord clamping because it was already white, and she was covered in meconium etc so there wasn’t a chance to preserve the vernix. At that point I wasn’t as worried about that! The whole birth part went so fast, it was over in five minutes. The ambulance officers got me up onto the bed, and gave Navy to me to hold onto my chest, she made her way to the breast and began to breastfeed. After checking us out, I got up to shower in the ensuite, and all four ambulance officers watched as I scrubbed the blood off of my legs. (Two ambulances arrived within six minutes of our placing the call, we were very lucky). They wrapped up the placenta to take to the Birth Centre, I put on my robe and walked down the stairs and up into the ambulance.
That was a long ambulance ride. Navy began breastfeeding towards the end of the journey and was still feeding when they wheeled us in through the front door on the gurney. From there they transferred me over to the bed and we stayed at the Birth Centre until 4:30 pm that day doing checks on both of us. Navy weighed 3.065 kilos. I had one stitch but it was only a first degree so even then they weren’t sure I needed it.
They could tell that Navy had been in a good position but must have turned to be breech in the last week or so. She had been in an engaged position early on, but the week prior they weren’t sure of her position from feeling, as she had changed, so maybe it was around then that she turned. If I had have gotten into the Birth Centre earlier during the birth and they had found out she was breech, they would have rushed me up to King Edwards hospital and performed an emergency Caesarean. I would have had no control, no say and a hugely different birth experience. We had midwives visit everyday at home for six days to check both of us.
Both Mario and I got so much out of doing the Hypnobirthing course. We never expected to be delivering our own baby, let alone having a breech vaginal birth but the practice and techniques all helped immensely to stay calm, breathe through the pain and not allow fear. If anything, Mario has said he wished he had joined me more in the weeks before she was born in practicing some of the hypnobirthing mediations. Navy is such a chilled, happy baby. We were SO lucky, I count it as a miracle we both made it, and am just so grateful to be here with her now. I can’t wait to tell her the birth story one day.
