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Claire Saunders’ Story

“My beautiful baby boy arrived on Tuesday 7th February at 13:18, he was 3 weeks early so a lovely surprise but a little bit of a shock as he is my first baby and you always get told you’ll be late!! Oh yeah and nothing was organised to how I had wanted it to be. He weighed 7lb 4ozs and is a little star.

My waters broke at 5:30am on Tuesday and I contacted the delivery suite who advised me to take my time coming in, have breakfast and not to bother bringing my bag in just put it in the car to save doing it later as they would just check on baby’s heart rate and send me home. We got to Arrowe Park around 8:45; I had started having mild contractions which were completely irregular. This is where my golden thread breathing came in use.

I was put on the monitor for 30mins and by the time I had finished I was having contractions every 3 mins so the midwife examined me and I was 3cm dilated. I had wanted a water birth as I had been suffering with pelvic and back pain from 33 weeks and was only able to get comfortable in the bath or on my ball. Unfortunately there was one pool out of use and the other engaged so I had pethidine to take the edge off as the gas and air made me sick twice and would have needed IV fluids if I was sick again. Chris my husband had come to the birthing partner class with me and was doing the massage and synchronised breathing techniques with me which helped alot and also made the experience shared rather than me just tooting on gas and air.

By 11:30 I was fully dilated and started to push at 12:00. Baby’s heart rate had dropped so they had to put a probe on his head to monitor him. Unfortunately I had an episiotomy as they then discovered his cord was loosely wrapped around his neck; due to the fast labour and needed to get him out asap.

The midwife had kept Chris informed of what was going on but I hadn’t really taken anything on board as I was too busy focusing on pushing and just kept visualising the moment by baby arrived. When he was delivered the midwife didn’t need to tell us he was a boy as a fountain of wee hit her.

All in all I had a very quick labour and delivery and actually didn’t get much chance to do anything I had planned, however I wouldn’t have managed with so little pain relief without the golden thread breathing, visualisation and Chris massaging my back. I also now realise how important it is to do your pelvic floor exercises which thankfully I was doing before. So my advice to you all is make sure you do the pelvic floor exercises regularly each day and get into a routine as you’ll need them post birth.

Thanks Ann for all the advice xx “

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