I was obsessed with reading everyone’s birth stories when I was pregnant with my first, and I won’t lie, I’m still reading them every week!
I kept my birth story with our first little love short & sweet. I didn’t go into too much detail about how I was struggling with a traumatic birth, its effects on my body, and how breastfeeding was truly the hardest thing I had done. I regret that.
It wasn’t until many months later I realised it was okay to be upset with how my birth went. So many other women feel the same way, and that is okay!
I knew I always wanted my babies close in age. My partner and I discussed a two-year gap as he is 1 of 4 and just loves being close with all his brothers.
We found out I was pregnant when our first was ten months old, woohoo!
My pregnancy was pretty normal. The morning sickness with a toddler was hard. I went back to work three days a week which was a struggle, but I enjoyed it. I had a lot of help from family, which I’m forever grateful for.
I decided to go through hypnobirthing at 37 weeks with a lovely lady who I’ve seen for years. She agreed that it would do wonders for my body and mind as she could tell I had a lot of fear regarding labour and being induced from last time.
At 39 weeks, we brought our very first home! Just to add a bit more stress into our lives.
I was 39+4 and had a feeling all day I was going into labour. My back was hurting, and I just felt miserable. I thought it would be a perfect time to get the Bissell spot cleaner out and do the whole house + the carpet in my cars - rookie mistake.
I decided that afternoon to wash my hair, shave my whole body and put on a tan. Priorities right?! I climbed into bed to get some sleep, but my body had other plans.
At 9:30 pm, I started to get contractions. They were manageable, so I left my partner to sleep and carried on watching a bit of TV and walking around.
I started to get the ‘bloody show’. I called my midwife, and she assured me everything was okay but, of course, to go in if I felt something was wrong, or the bleeding continued, and there was more.
I managed to get some sleep around midnight as the contractions dropped off.
I woke up at 4 am, and we started timing them. We had a coffee & some breakfast while ‘younger’ played in the background.
My mum came over around 7 am to watch our daughter, and we went to the hospital. We got there around 8:30 am, and I was 4cm I had tested positive to GBS (group B strep) again, so I knew I needed to have antibiotics for 4 hours.
There was another woman in the birthing suite next to me who was very vocal. She terrified me. I won’t lie. I kept thinking to myself, ‘can someone help this woman?! Is she dying?’ Little did I know a few hours later, I would sound exactly the same, haha.
My contractions started to become very close and intense, so the midwife filled the tub up and told me to hop in to get some relief. I’m unsure what time it was when I asked for the gas as I felt like I was in agony, we didn’t know at the time, but our little babe decided to switch positions and became posterior.
Around 12:30/1 pm, I started to get very emotional. I was balling my eyes out, begging for an epidural. I was yelling at my partner to get me out and jab the needle in my spine. I needed some sort of relief I wasn’t catching a break between contractions.
My student midwife, who was following along quietly, said to my partner (thank god I didn’t hear her) I don’t think she’s getting that epidural. She’s nearly ready to push this baby out.
Then suddenly, my contractions stopped, and I got this overwhelming urge to push. My body just took over. I tried to push leaning over the edge of the tub, but after a while, my midwife got me to flip onto my back with my feet up against the side.
It was a surreal experience watching our babies head slowly being born & trying to slow down so she could come out on her own.
My midwife had a very curious look on her face when her head popped out face up and with her waters still intact! My waters never broke the whole time!
At 2 pm on Monday the 19th of April, our second daughter was born Avaliah weighing 7pound 6ounce.
Her sister is so smitten with her little sissy she’s fit perfectly into our little family.
