Adalynn’s Birth Story

If you’ve followed my pregnancy journey thus far through my monthly updates, you’ll know I was ideally hoping for a low-intervention, water birth at a midwife-led birth centre, preferably with no or low pain relief medication. You’ll also know I had a fairly regular and easy pregnancy. That is, until the last few days, when both these things went flying out the window…

Check out my video update from Month 9 to see it all unfold, but the short of it was: At 40 weeks and 1 day pregnant, my Fundal Height was measured at my midwife appointment to find I was measuring slightly behind, and was sent for an emergency growth scan the next day. At the scan the next day they measured Ada (who we didn’t know was Ada yet, we’d decided not to find out whether we were having a boy or girl) and compared her size at 40 weeks with the 40 week projections they made at my 20 week scan. They found that her size was below their prediction by more than 25 centiles, and in cases such as this, due to risk of stillbirth it is hospital policy to induce labour as soon as possible. This also meant I would not be able to give birth in the birth centre as hoped, but instead would need to be in the regular delivery suites hooked up to monitors for the majority of my labour.

I won’t lie, this development upset me and stressed me out, naturally, but on the other hand it was nice to know that we’d be meeting our long-awaited bub so soon.

I asked for, and was given, a stretch and sweep before I left the clinic after the growth scan, in hopes that labour might still naturally start before the induction, and I was booked in to the hospital the next day for a 3pm Induction.

It was just before 5pm the next day when I finally got to my bed in the pre-labour/induction ward. The pessary was inserted at 6.50pm, at which point I was 2.5cm dilated (the same as I had been when I had the stretch and sweep the day before, so it turned out the membrane sweep didn’t help). So my hopes of that process kickstarting things turned out to be futile.

They put me on the heart rate monitor to check baby’s obs, and because it was her regular “most active” time of the day, she kept setting off the alarm and they had me on the monitor for almost two hours waiting for her heart rate to drop below 130 more constantly.

I begun getting tightenings regularly during this time which probably made her more active too. At 8.40pm we finished the monitoring and Dan went home to get a good nights sleep because it looked like nothing was going to happen that night at least, according to the midwives.

However, at 11pm, whilst lying in my hospital bed listening to my Hypnobirthing meditations, I realised my contractions were becoming regular, and so I began timing them on my phone app. By 11.30pm it was saying my contractions were 1 minute long, 3 minutes apart and the app was telling me to “go to hospital” so at midnight I alerted the midwives and they put me back on the monitor for an hour. At this point the contractions were fairly strong and I was actively breathing through them, but they were still quite manageable with my Hypnobirthing breathing techniques.

At 1am following the monitoring they examined me and found I was STILL 2.5cm dilated, despite the ramped up contractions. So they discussed with the delivery midwives the situation and came back and told me I was going to be transferred to the Central Delivery Suite when the next room became available and that my waters would be broken, so at this point (1.15am) I called Dan back to the hospital.

At 3am I was put into the Central Delivery Suite and at 3.45am my waters were broken. Instantly the intensity of my contractions went from 1 to 100, and at 4am I asked for the first level of pain relief, which was Paracetamol. After another hour, at 5am I was still struggling so much with the intensity I began on the Gas and Air to take the edge off during the contractions themselves, as it felt like the paracetemol was doing nothing to help.

The intensity of the contractions, my slow-progressing dilation and the fact that I’d (in my head) “given in” to using pain relief when I’d hoped to use none, had my morale dropping quickly during this time, and I began struggling mentally as well as physically.

At 8.30am I was examined to find I had only progressed another 1.5cm to reach 4cm dilated, at which point they said they’d assess in another 3 hours and if I hadn’t progressed “significantly more” they’d put me on the synthetic oxytocin drip. This news was even more depressing to me, as I felt like I was struggling so much and not getting anywhere.

I really struggled with the pain over that next stretch, and was so sure because of the slow progression that I wasn’t getting much further. My morale was so low at this point and I began to think that I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t be in any other position than on my side on the bed because of the monitors – each time I tried to try a different position the monitors would slip out of place and wouldn’t be recording Ada’s heartbeat, so bed it was which didn’t feel ideal, (but on the other hand, did mean that I was able to rest between contractions using my breathing – I think I even fell asleep a few times!) and when they had to do the examinations and I had to be on my back it was almost unbearable.

I was fully prepared to hear at that next check that I had only gone another cm, and in my head was highly considering asking for either pethidine or the epidural. Apparently I kept saying to Dan during the contractions that “No, I can’t do this”. 

However, when they checked me at 10.40am (A bit early, because I kept having super painful sensations in my bottom at each contraction and was SO sure I needed to go to the loo, so they wanted to check me before letting me go sit on the loo) we were all surprised I think to find I was fully dilated! They told me that when I had the urge to push I could start, so I stopped on the gas and air and began trying to “breathe her down” using our Hypnobirthing techniques.

However during the next hour of trying that, my contractions spaced out longer and baby’s heart rate lowered a little, and we realised “breathing her down” wasn’t working for us. The midwives suggested trying a more classic pushing style could help get things going again, which was important as Ada obviously needed to come out and soon. So I began pushing with all my might, and we started getting somewhere again. Her heart rate evened out, the contractions went back to how they were before and I started to feel like progress was being made.

Near the of that hour of pushing gung-ho, Ada’s heart rate dropped again and they put a monitor on her head once it could be reached. The midwives told me that if I didn’t get her out in the next few contractions they may have to do an episiotomy to help her out. That motivated me and through some more intense contractions pushing like no tomorrow, Ada’s head began to appear. A touch of her hairy little head gave me the rest of the motivation I needed, and I pushed her head out down to her ears, where it stayed for two whole contractions (!!) before the rest of the head came out. In the following contraction, Ada’s body followed, with our little bundle of sunshine officially being born at 12.45pm in the happiest moment of my life so far.

When it was clear she was a girl, it just felt so ‘right’! Both Dan and myself had a feeling since the beginning of my pregnancy that we were having a girl. No reason behind it, just a gut feeling. It was also lucky she was a girl, in the end, as we still hadn’t decided on a boy’s name yet! We had already had our hearts set on Adalynn as the name if baby was a girl. So there was almost a sense of relief that she was a girl, because we didn’t have to keep debating a name for a boy!

I ended up with 2nd degree tearing, and lost “more than the average” blood, but all in all things in hindsight went as good as they could have gone.

Initially, especially during the labour itself, I felt quite downtrodden, because things hadn’t gone how I had ideally hoped in my head, but soon enough I realised that I’m actually really proud of how it all went down – how I pushed through when I felt hopeless, how I adapted to change, and how I brought a baby into this world – no matter the way in which it happened, that’s an amazing feat! The woman’s body really is a amazing thing.

While yes, I’m a bit sad still that I didn’t get my medication-free water birth at the birth centre, I am so grateful for the birth I did get in the end, and I’m so thankful to all the midwifes who aided me – they were absolutely phenomenal – and of course, my fiancé Dan, for being such an incredible support through it all too.