I\u2019m my happiest in water and throughout my pregnancy, even during the hyperemesis, the swimming pool was the only place where I didn\u2019t feel sick or in pain. I figured that the pool would be the only pain relief I\u2019d need.<\/p>\n
I was then recommended hypnobirthing, signed up to a course and built a plan around a lovely water birth, no pain relief, delayed cord clamping and natural placenta delivery.
\nWhen it came to ante-natal classes, I ignored the section on interventions thinking they wouldn\u2019t apply to me.<\/p>\n
You see where this is going now\u2026<\/p>\n
At 36 weeks, I was given the choice of induction or planned c-section at 39 weeks due to hypertension. I was so scared of a c-section, I opted for an induction. I was also told I might still get my water birth with an induction.<\/p>\n
I carried on full steam ahead in my little bubble of imagining this perfect birth and in fact, hoped I\u2019d go into labour before the date of my induction.
\nI didn\u2019t and headed into hospital for my induction.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t go into the full story of the labour and childbirth here, but I did get the water birth (for a few hours), but I did also use gas and air, ended up with an emergency c-section which also entails having an epidural.<\/p>\n
What helped was even though I wasn\u2019t exactly open minded, I\u2019d always been of the opinion that I\u2019d do what it took to make sure my baby was safe. So when it came to consenting to the c-section, I did it without much thought.<\/p>\n
Sure I didn\u2019t get the birth I\u2019d imagined, but I\u2019ll never forget that feeling when I saw my little one appear above the curtain following my c-section.
\nI\u2019ve now learnt that epidurals are great (that moment I realised that I could no longer feel the contractions was amazing), interventions aren\u2019t that scary, having pain relief doesn\u2019t make you a failure and all that matters is you and baby are safe and healthy.<\/p>\n
Just now I saw a video of someone who had a 10 pound baby at home without pain relief being called a hero, but my message is we\u2019re all heroes. You might not have a neat birth story, it may have been traumatic but that doesn\u2019t make you any less of a hero.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, it makes you more of one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ok so I wasn\u2019t exactly open minded. From quite early on, I wanted a water birth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-divergently-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.divergentlybeing.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}