Tinuke
I gave birth to my daughter in April at the hight of lockdown and the middle of the pandemic. While there was a lot of anxiety and uncertainty at the time of going into the hospital catching the virus, not knowing what you can and cannot do and knowing the heighten risks we face from giving birth while being Black (that we are more likely to die than white women and more likely to be hospitalised from COVID) I actually had a very positive experience giving birth.
My first experience with my son wasn’t good at all and was part of the reasons I was led to start the Five X More campaign in the first place. So, this time round, I had to make sure I was fully prepared. I guess this time what was different is that I followed my own advice from our 6 recommendations and I had read up on hypnobirthing practices which are very big on getting you to trust your own body and birthing process as a natural thing and not this scary image you see on TV of women in excruciating pain screaming at the doctors.
When I felt my first contraction at 10pm I immediately grabbed my contraction timer app “Freya” – Positive Birth Companies Hypnobirthing Contraction app and started to time them. I was shocked to see that within an hour the app was saying I was in established labour and to call the midwife. But I let the contractions play out for a few more hours as I didn’t want to go in to hospital and be sent home (I was very fearful of even going to hospital in the first place because of COVID). I finally called the midwife at around 12am and she talked me through my contractions and said it does sound like I am in established labour but it was completely up to me if I wanted to come in and get checked properly or wait. Of course, I waited a bit more. The app was helping me manage my contractions really well, helping me breath and think positive thoughts so I thought I would wait it out until I just couldn’t bare it anymore. That point was at 3am. I then went into the hospital but when they checked me I was only 3 cm gone but they didn’t send me home because it was my second child and they knew all too well that things could speed up very quickly. When I finally turned 4cm I was let into the birthing centre and into the pool.
All in all, my midwife made this a better experience for me. I was already in a positive mind frame and knew what was happening in my body with every contraction as I was so in tune with what was happening this time but the midwifes reassurance and positivity further added to my good experience. When it was time to push she told me “if you feel you need to push, listen to your body, that’s okay” which meant the world to me as with my son I had the midwives screaming at me saying “don’t push stop pushing you are going to reverse everything”.
When I felt my daughters head coming, my waters broke in the water, but she had done a poo so the midwife very calmly told me that if she we don’t see babies head in the next push then we will have to stop the water birth and get me on to the delivery ward. I then mustered up every last bit of strength I had left and pushed with all my might and her head came to which the midwife responded, “ahh never mind, your doing a great job, baby is almost here and has so much hair!”. She was so calm with everything and made me feel at ease every step of the way. She listened to me and treated me with respect.
My daughter was born at 6:30am and it was a lovely surprise as we didn’t know the gender, so it was nice to find out it was a girl.
Five x More have teamed up with the positive Birth Company to give away FREE access to their digital hypnobirthing pack to 100 Black women every month. For your free pack please click HERE.
