Attending an unexpected birth: power of rebozo
Last week I got to attend a lovely home waterbirth. This hadn’t been a planned event, I was asked to come do one of my overdue sessions as the labouring woman’s waters had broken for 24 hours and labour was not established. After doing some rebozo and bellydancing active labour began fast and furious and I stayed to help fill the pool and wait for midwives to arrive.
This is Anoushka’s birth story (shared with her permission)
Baby was eventually born on the 14/6 at 1045 weighing 8.8lbs. I had a long latent labour of ten days where contractions were happening irregularly then waters went on wed. Contractions didn’t speed up and that, so after 24 hours of waters having gone it was looking likely that I’d have to go in to hospital to be induced. On the thurs morning, I asked a doula friend Selina to come over to talk about induction and she’s also a Maternal movement for Fetal positioning practitioner, so she said she would see if some movements might help things along. Jade my birthing partner had stayed with me that night to see if a chilled out night without Ramy night help bring things along, it hadn’t! So, Selina came over at 8am ish Thursday, we had a good chat about the hospital birth plan, contractions still ten ish mins apart. Selina then did some rebozo, inversions and belly dancing moves and within the space of that half hour, contractions changed to being very intense and 3 min intervals. Selina suggested to jade the get the pool filling as the contractions continued to pick up intensity and speed. I asked for the midwife to be called as I was starting to panic at the speed that the contractions were coming. I really needed to get into the pool as could feel pressure but it wasn’t full, so jade and Selina were throwing buckets of water in to try and get it filled faster. I think I got in the pool at about 10am, Emma my midwife arrived at 1020 and baby was out at 1045. It was so quick and surreal, jade said I seemed really in control but I felt the opposite. There was nothing that I could consciously do except feel baby move down and out, it was like I was inside my body just watching. Jodhi was born in his membranes (sac) but the waters inside had gone and I was able to pull him out of the water myself, which was amazing. He needed a couple of breaths as went a bit limp and we had to get out of the pool as I bled a bit more than usual but we were happy on the sofa. The second midwife Nikki arrived afterwards and they both stayed until late afternoon, making sure we were both fine. We ordered Domino’s and had some lovely calm time My parents arrived soon after Jodhi was born and my Dad got to cut the cord. They went to get Ramy and we surprised him with his new baby brother when he got home. Ramy is besotted and is a brilliant big brother as I knew he would be. As I expected Jodhi had a tongue tie which was snipped on day 3, lucky us he had 2 ties! So feeding has been quite worrying but thankfully he’s lost a normal amount of weight so is getting enough milk, we are just waiting for poops to come! I can’t thank my parents enough and jade and Selina helping for J into the world, he would have been born on the floor if Selina wasn’t there filling that pool up! Can’t recommend Selina’s services enough https://www.facebook.com/UnlockingBirth
Anyone who would like to try the techniques I used to encourage active labour to start, I describe them in my blog post here:
https://magicalbirth.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/when-labour-needs-to-start/
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