Guest post – my birth story, Wendy Butler, PR for UNE Beauty and Bourjois
With our resident blogger away on maternity leave (our founder Jules!) and enjoying being Mummy to new baby Sacha, we’ve invited a few “guests” to share their birth stories with us.
Introducing Wendy, PR for Une Beauty and Bourjois and baby Wren:
If you’d asked me five years ago I’d have said a c-section was the only thing I wanted, but once discovering we were pregnant a hypnobirth was my dream birth. I had this perfect, drug free birth in my head, and was convinced this would be what would happen.
How wrong I was. At 30 weeks we discovered our baby was lying in a transverse position, and as I had a heart shaped uterus the consultant at our hospital decided a planned c-section was the only option as there was no way I could have a natural birth. It took a few days to get used to this but I knew I had to accept this was the safest option. I felt cheated that I would not get to experience a contraction or know what it was like to have my waters break, but my sister kept telling me I was not missing out on anything!
So, I was booked in for a c-section 10 days before my due date as they wanted to avoid me going into labour. My c-section was booked for the Monday, however the early hours of Sunday morning I started experiencing contractions and we drove to hospital with the contractions being six minutes apart. I sat hooked up to the monitors and listened to the hypnobirthing tracks feeling a bit of discomfort but nothing too severe. The registrar decided after about 45 minutes she’d do an internal examination to discover I was fully dilated. There was a sudden rush to get me into theatre and my planned c-section had now become an emergency one.
We were so excited we’d shortly be meeting our new baby. In reality I didn’t get to hold her until 16 hours after she was delivered as she did not breathe for 15 minutes and was whisked straight off to the Special Care Baby Unit to be put into an incubator where she’d be monitored for the next three days.
I didn’t get to breastfeed her for at least a day and they had her sipping from a cup but four weeks later I’m breastfeeding her successfull. There is a real sense of closeness and I do think we have a strong bond now.
I lost over a litre of blood and spent seven hours in recovery. Those 15 minutes of not knowing whether she’d survive or not were the longest we have ever had to wait, and my husband was planning in his head how he would tell me we’d lost our baby. Wren is now four weeks old, and keeping us up every night!
However much planning you do, it may not to go the way you want so expect the unexpected.
Thank you Wendy, for sharing your story with us, and welcome to the world baby Wren!
Amoralia x
If you would like a chance to win some Mama Tea for pregnant or breastfeeding mamas, pop over to our facebook page here.
Oh! And we’d love you to vote for Amoralia in the Prima Baby Fashion Awards too, we are toooo excited for words to be nominated for Best maternity swimwear, Best maternity lingerie and Best maternity sleepwear.
click here to vote http://www.babyexpert.com/Prima-Baby-fashion-awards-2012
Tags: guest post, labour story