Want to hear a good birth story?

Yep they are out there. In fact there are plenty of wonderful birth stories but they are often from the women sitting quietly in the corner whilst other women swap battle stories, almost in a competition to see who suffered the most.  This is how we grew up, listening to horrible stories of pain and anguish but did we ever stop to think that by listening to these stories, we changed our potential to birth and by recalling our own tragic stories to others we are impacting the births of these unpregnant mothers.

Now my first birth was a typical horror story, a breach baby and an emergency c-section. So when the second one came I stopped listening to women tell their traumatic birth stories. Any time someone told me a horry story I said no thanks, or walked away and guess what? All of a sudden all those quiet women in the corner could be heard.

I treated my second pregnancy much like a training session to prep for birth. I spent 9 months relearning about my body, about my breasts and vagina and their innate powers.  I learnt about different positions to take to get the baby in the right spot and also how to move during birth. I read book after book of inspiring birth stories, orgasmic even.  We live 2 hours from the nearest hospital that will deliver a baby so I had to be prepared for anything and I was. We hired a Doula from the Sunshine Coast, 3 and a half hours away, and she was a very empowering force.

Then on 20th October I began to feel sensations.  These continued erratically until about 8:30 when a pattern started to develop.  I and Marni my Doula didn’t really believe I was in labour so my partner went to sleep. I rolled on the ball and crawled around on my hands and knees. Then after a short 3 hours of moving around and repeating over and over ‘go to sleep your not in real labour yet’. Then I tried a bath as things seems to be getting a little intense, here I noticed a show. It was on. I woke my partner who sprang to action, then I rang the doula, whilst on the phone she was surprised my contractions were so on top of one another, I sounded too together. Then pop my water burst. I’m sure if someone measured it, the fluid would have hit the wall on the other side of the room. Marni jumped in her car to start the drive and I jumped on the toilet. 20 minutes later after some animal noises out ‘popped’ my son. I threw myself to my knees on the bathroom floor and caught him. He was such a wide eyed little fella, looking around at us all, not a sound did he make. Marni had only just put fuel in her car.

After the umbilical cord stoped pulsating and was cut, and Darius had fed I climbed into the shower, then my own tracky pants and best of all, and you will love this, into my own bed with the little man. It was magic.

It was an amazing experience to have Andrew and my oldest daughter, Sophie, right there as Darius was brought into the world. We are not special people by any means but we had a very special baby in a most special way. I refuse to be one of those quiet women in the corner I want as many women as possible to know that it is possible to have an empowering birth experience, more than once…..

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