A beautiful birth to welcome Eleanor

Eleanor Redway arrived the day after I saw you at the birth centre at 9.06am and she is beautiful! My waters broke around 5pm that night and then my contractions started a few hours later. We had dinner and watched some tv before I went to lie down and got Pete to help put the tens machine on.

I lay in bed trying to rest and listening to the hypnobirthing affirmations and focusing on my breathing. The combination of hypnobirthing and tens was fantastic and was the only pain relief I used throughout the birth.

In the meantime Pete went to the airport to pick up my parents who flew in at 1am from Hobart. Around 3am I asked Pete to ring the oncall midwife and by 3.40am we were at the birth centre. They couldn't have planned a more eventful evening to arrive in Darwin!

I ended up lying on my side for most of the birth, including the pushing and delivery which surprised me. I thought I'd be moving around or squatting or something but when the time came that's all I wanted to do.

Overall it all went smoothly but I found the pushing stage harder than I anticipated. I never really felt the need to push and had to work out how to do it myself as nothing was happening or moving. Officially I was pushing for 2 hours on the hospital paperwork but unofficially it was closer to 4 hours - the midwife let me keep going on my own as Eleanor and I were doing fine but just not moving very quickly.

Eleanor's birth was an amazing experience and I was so proud of myself. The midwives at the birth centre were amazing and incredibly supportive. The hypnobirthing techniques we learnt were sooooo useful and could not have managed it without them. I was definitely louder than the ladies in the videos we watched- I found it useful to hum on the out breath during contractions and I think there was a swear we'd once when she was crowning 😜 Pete was a fabulous support for the entire 13 hours and also found the hypnobirthing information and techniques extremely useful.

Eleanor is now 4 weeks and 5 days old. She sleeps reasonably well and has taken to breastfeeding like a champ. She's now 4.06kg which is almost a kilo up from her birth weight of 3.1kg. Pete and I are biased but we think she's perfect 😊