Welcome Zara!

On Monday 7th, I had an acupuncture appointment at around 9am. It wasn't to 'bring labour on' but who knows!! I then met my Mum for a coffee at the Nightcliff Foreshore Cafe and was sitting outside there when I felt my 'membranes release' (awkward)! Luckily, I'd had a little fear of waters breaking in public so was prepared with a towel and a wrap. Made a quick escape to the car and drove home.

Surges didn't start until 8pm that night so we had a very low key afternoon, just relaxing. Just before 8pm, I went to bed and turned on some music and listened to one of the guided sessions. Surges started having some intensity behind them and we called the CMP midwife at around 10.20pm and she was around at our apartment within 10 minutes. She did my obs and had a bit of chat with us. We were really relaxed and calm. I had clary sage and lavender on cotton balls, Mick was using acupressure points during my surges which was really useful, I was concentrating on my 'surge breathing' and we had the Hypnobirthing music playing. The midwife said that she thought that I had a bit of time before I went into the birth centre but offered me an internal examination to see how far dilated I was. I agreed because I did feel that the surges were strong and that it would be good to have an indication of where I was at. She then said 'this is where hypnobirthers sometimes trick me' - It turns out I was 9.5cms dilated and it was time to make our way into the birth centre, with the midwife saying if I 'felt the need to push in the car on the way, pull over and call an ambulance'...haha!

We made our way into the birth centre - hypno music still playing and me breathing through the surges. I laboured in the bath, the bed and a very short stint on the birth stool. The bearing down part was pretty hard going as Zara had her hand up at her head. I needed to have an episiotomy which then meant that Zara was very quickly able to be born - at 0232am! I ended up giving birth on the bed whilst lying on my side. Zara was born 3.55kg (7.86pounds), 51cm long, 36cm head circumference and with a full head of hair!

Slight complication was that I tore as well and initially they thought that the tear was quite significant and they took me up for surgery at around 6am where I was given a spinal. It turns out it was nowhere near as bad as they thought and I was taken to the ward afterwards to wait for my legs to work again. We were in the ward for the morning and home on the same day by 2.30pm.

Overall, an amazing experience and absolutely what I had hoped for. It truly was awesome that we had so many skills to use if we wanted to. Although I didn't use any of my photos for visualisation and any of the affirmation cards I had made, the process of making these prior to the birth was very useful. I also didn't listen to the affirmations track during labour but I had listened to them most days (at least once) for a number of weeks so was able to think about them myself which I found comforting. I also found a heat pack really useful during my surges for my lower abdo area.