A beautiful birthing experience: Midwives managed the whole process so beautifully!

/Courtesy

We started preparations well in advance for the delivery. As first-time parents, we did extensive research on the birthing process. I read four books on pregnancy, birthing, and labor.

The online research was an ongoing process through the nine-month journey - reading blogs, birth stories, websites, watching videos. In addition, I had subscribed to email updates from pregnancy and baby-related websites.

I was also meeting different people and in conversations with mums, soon to be expecting mothers and childbirth experts. I attended a prenatal exercise and childbirth education class.

The exercise was a part of my preparation and I attended a prenatal yoga class as well, which I think did wonders for me as a mum-to-be during my pregnancy and of course helped me during the delivery.

Natural birthing it was for me! The whole point of natural birthing is that the body knows when and how much to put pressure, and if the body is ready at all. Why complicate it with unnecessary interventions?

Natural birthing is basically delivering the baby without any intervention - no enema, no saline, no forceps, no pain-relieving or inducing injections! Basically, I had enough confidence in my body to give birth the most natural way.
Our need for giving birth in the manner we wanted, lead us to natural birthing. From then, it was an ongoing journey - meeting people, talking to mums, prenatal experts, lactation consultants, our midwives, and more.

The mild labor pains started two days earlier and I was in constant touch with, one of my two midwives, on the phone. The loss of my mucus plug was one of the first signs of my labor. But I was aware that labor could take time. Given that it was my first pregnancy, I was unsure about certain things, but my midwives advised me throughout the two days.

On Sunday early morning, the pains started to intensify. I called up my midwife and described the pain and she confirmed I was in labor. The intense labor pains began at 6.00 a.m. in the morning and I delivered at 2.44 p.m. in the afternoon.

I kept exercising, used different breathing techniques to deal with pain and applied the learnings from my yoga class as well. Warm water baths helped me quite a bit.

midwives massaging my back /Courtesy

My midwife kept massaging my back when the labor pains intensified and her touch was soothing and helped me cope with the pain. Before the contractions began, I continued the breathing techniques, squatting to deal with the pain as well.

My final push looked like it would never happen. It took about 45 minutes for me to push our baby out. Given that we had our midwives along, they took care of everything and I did not have any complications. They were ensuring I was well hydrated and monitored the heartbeat of the baby at regular intervals.

As we had hoped for, all went well and we didn't need even the slightest help from the doctor, especially as my midwives had managed the whole process so beautifully.

/Courtesy

As I look back, I must say that I would not have been able to achieve what I as a mother or we as to be parents wanted without the support of my husband. He knew exactly what I wanted and how I was feeling; he kept ensuring that I was OK and was my biggest source of strength throughout my pregnancy and definitely the delivery.

Labor is NOT scary!

One of the messages I want to really leave behind for pregnant mums is that labor is not as scary as they make it sound. You need to be well prepared for it so that you can deal with it better.

And the saying cannot be truer in this case - ‘The fruit of your labor is indeed very sweet’. Trust me when I say this - When you have that baby in your hand, the pain seems definitely worth it.

As told to Divya

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