Real and raw birth vlog...a positive labor and unexpected delivery / hypnobirthing story! This was my first birth and we had a beautiful, healthy 9lb 3oz baby boy after 26 hours of unmedicated, natural labour (only had paracetamol and used non-medical forms of pain relief such as baths, deep breathing, tens machine and gas and air!)...it was super exhausting, baby was back to back so the pain was intense, AND I didn't feel listened/felt rushed right at the end, but it was still the best day of my life!

I'm so proud of how I managed the labour and I have hypnobirthing to thank for that, and these other accounts, which genuinely helped me to re-wire how I perceived labour! Something I feared for YEARS!

► THE POSITIVE BIRTH COMPANY course Thomas and I did, 10/10 recommend: [ Ссылка ] (this course teaches you techniques that you and your birth partner can use to have a more calm, relaxed, empowered birth experience and the aim is to help you to have a positive experience regardless of how your birth goes! This really helped me to manage back labour contractions, they're so painful when the baby is back to back!)

► BIRTH-ED: another very popular hypnobirthing course:
[ Ссылка ]

► GENTLE BIRTH (an amazing app I used, also followed them closely on Instagram and learned a ton): [ Ссылка ]

I wanted to share the clips we managed to get and to talk you guys through everything that happened after I entered the pushing phase, when the doctor came into the room and decided it would be too risky for me to carry on pushing - citing exhaustion as the main reason - because I was having a long labour, though he admitted that the hospital only actually allows women to push for an hour before they look at interventions - I wasn't warned of this ahead of time and was very disappointed, having done my research on what is and isn't best practice. This is the main reason I didn't want to give birth in a hospital (but was refused admittance to the MLU in the end because the baby was measuring big on his last scan and they aren't allowed to deliver 'big babies'), as currently in Ireland 50% of *first time mothers* are ending up with c-sections, major abdominal surgery (source: GentleBirth) so there's a huge elephant in the room and I want more women to feel brave enough to address it until something changes! That's what AIMS Ireland is for, which I've been so happy to have discovered. The fact is that I felt capable of continuing to push (had been awake for a very long time, granted, but I stayed awake for two and a half odd days AFTER the birth anyway, 100 hours or so straight in total, so I genuinely feel I could have kept going, especially if I hadn't been pressured into switching to 'coached pushing' which has much more undesirable outcomes including unwanted interventions etc, according to research, linked below) and research shows that up to FOUR hours of pushing is safe and normal. So it bothers me that I wasn't allowed to keep going with it, as even though baby was back to back, he was coming further down every time they checked so things WERE progressing, and not once was he in distress. The intervention, which I didn't give informed consent for, we gave sleepy consent for a vacuum delivery and if that didn't work, a c-section but NOT a forceps delivery which I've since discovered can lead to more negative side effects than a c-section so I would not have opted for it!) meant I had a really difficult few days in hospital after the birth, which I'd have loved to avoid! I'll make a different video about that :) BUT, we came out with a healthy baby so I'm extremely happy overall and feel far more confident now about future births, fingers crossed!

SOME READING for mothers-to-be who want to be informed...the AIMS site covers SO much more so do read through it, but here are a couple of links relevant to what I talk about in the video near the end:

► LOOKING AT THE EVIDENCE FOR BIRTHING YOUR BABY: SELF-DIRECTED VS COACHED PUSHING? - from the association for improvements in the maternity services, Ireland (AIMS): [ Ссылка ]

► Report of a survey on Availability of Information and Consent (AIMS):
[ Ссылка ]

MY INSTAGRAM: [ Ссылка ]

WATCH NEXT: 24 hours with a newborn! [ Ссылка ]

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