My waters broke 11:30am, bang on 39 weeks. We were out and about running some last minute errands.

When we got home we decided to go on a short walk as so many people had said it would take a while for things to get started. 10 minutes into the walk contractions started coming thick and fast, around every 3 minutes.

We just about made it home before the contractions became too intense.

We quickly rigged up the tens machine and started timing contractions on the Freya app.

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We decided not to go into hospital even though my waters had broken first, they were clear and the contractions had started quickly afterwards.

I laboured at home until around 7:30 pm. Contractions had continued to come every 2-3 minutes, lasting between 45 second and 1 minute the whole time.

I put on my playlist and used the tens machine and down breaths the whole time and my partner was there for me the whole way through.

I found a position that suited me on the bed and remained calm.

We chose to go to the hospital when I knew that the surges would be too intense soon for me to get to the car.

I kept the playlist on for the car journey and was was wheeled into the hospital.

We arrived at 8pm and were told I was only 1cm dilated, I couldn’t believe it.

Anyway - I got in the pool for a couple of hours but was unable to have gas and air as it was attached to the bed.

The surges were getting more intense and I was starting to lose my cool in the pool so requested another examination at 10pm. My partner managed to help me back into the zone by talking me through the breathing.

Upon examination I was 7cm just 2 hours after arriving at hospital - this gave me the motivation I needed to power through, I stayed out of the pool and requested gas and air, I found it helped me to keep my mind focused on breathing.

By 11pm I was 9cm and pushing and before we knew it our little girl was born at 01:07am. 

 

We did skin to skin immediately and the midwives let us discover the sex. My partner cut the cord once it went white and they helped me to deliver the placenta, then we were left alone for the golden hour where she latched on straight away. She was then weighed, we dressed her and were taken to our room. 

 

I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. Having completed Romany’s hypnobirthing course I felt informed, empowered and prepared. We had our baby in France and as we don’t speak great French yet, this was even more important. I had made my birth plan in French & English and we stuck to it completely with minimal intervention from the midwives meaning no communication difficulties. Everything was perfect.