My Beautiful, Empowering Forceps Birth of Neo

You read that right. I had a forceps delivery with my first son and it was a beautiful, wonderful experience of meeting my son, that I look back on with JOY!

After hearing about The Positive Birth Program™ at work as a midwife I completed the course with my husband. We both found the information to be very helpful in preparing for the birth of our first baby. So here’s my birth story:

I started having some mini-surges for a while every evening from 39 weeks, especially when I would do some antenatal expressing of colostrum. At 40+2 we went out for the evening to buy a baby monitor and walked back and forth around the homemaker centre. Then went home and my husband set up the monitor while I did some expressing. I had the usual evening surges and as usual, tried to ignore them, but when I went to lay down in bed I found they were very uncomfortable if I tried to lay down. I went back out to the living room and told my husband to get some sleep just in case. I spend some time on the birth ball, rocking my hips and on all fours, breathing through the surges. After a while I went down to have a shower. My labour started hard and fast, my surges were long, strong and close together from the start. This was probably the hardest part of my labour. I decided after some time in the shower I wanted to go to the hospital, so my husband, slowly got things ready and phoned the hospital. We took our time and made our way in. We played the relaxation tracks in the car and this was the best. It helped me to calm my mind and focus on my breathing.

From there at the hospital I used the birth ball, leaning over the bed, walking around the room and using the shower throughout my labour. Eventually, I asked to use the gas at a really low dose and I found this really helpful. It made me feel pretty spacey, so I would just sleep between surges. My husband was a great support, reading affirmations, doing light touch massage and running a shower hose over my belly during my surges.

I started feeling pressure and, unfortunately, a bit too much of my hospital training midwife brain kicked in and I started thinking I needed to put lots of effort into pushing. After not much was happening my midwife and I discussed an examination and I found out I still had some cervix. We discussed and I agreed to have my membranes broken.

I got back in the shower with the gas and breathed through my surges until the pressure really increased.I breathed through for as long as I could, but my body began to bear down on it’s own, there was nothing I could do to stop it. I continued to bear down as I felt for quite some time, in the bathroom and then we heard some decreases in baby’s heart rate, so I agreed to have the CTG monitor on. I was able to stand next to the bed and then kneel on the bed to continue bearing down. Initially I could feel my baby moving down but after quite some time I didn’t feel like I was moving him anymore. My midwife and husband were great, with so much encouragement. I asked the midwife about assistance and she assured me baby’s heart rate was doing good and there was no reason to rush things. After a while more of bearing down, with some position changes but no significant progress, we discussed and asked for the doctors to come in and assess. The doctors were also fantastic. They didn’t rush anything, explained everything to my husband and I and we made decisions as a team. We decided to try the ventouse, so I was given some pain relief locally and got positioned in a nice upright position with my feet supported by stirrups. They tried the ventouse a number of times but it kept losing suctions, so we discussed and changed to a forceps. I remember feeling a lot of pressure as the forceps were being applied and very much using my relaxation techniques at this time! Over the next surges I continued to bear down as strongly as I could and the doctor assisted with the forceps. As his head began to come they could see he had his hand in a compound position, up beside his head. Once his head was out the doctor told me to open my eyes and reach for my baby! I reached down and received my baby and brought him up to my chest. The best feeling ever to hold my baby in my arms! He cried immediately, we had skin to skin and he had his first feed fairly quickly.

All the tools and techniques I learnt in The Positive Birth Program™ were really helpful throughout my entire labour, but especially during the ventouse/forceps. Being able to remain calm, make decisions and be prepared for the turns my birthing took was so important.