Your birth

My mom said that her water broke with my brother and someone told her to get to the hospital. He was born about half an hour after her water broke. With me it was almost the same, her water broke and I was born about an hour later. But my umbilical cord was around my neck, so I was a bit blue. I was not breast fed, because I refused to drink on my mom’s breast. She also didn’t have a lot of milk. I was bottle fed till about 9 months and then I refused to drink milk, so I was raised on rooibos tea out of a sippy cup. Well, that is my short story. Hope my own birth story will be the same, but I don’t know, my pregnancies is nothing like my moms.

My moms water broke at about midnight on the 8th feb. by morning contractions hadnt started so she headed off to hospital where they decided to induce because they were worried about infection. My mom was adament that she wasnt going to use pain meds, so she did 16 hours of induced labour before they decided that my heart rate wasnt bouncing back as quickly as they would like, so they did an emergency csection with a spinal block. I was born at joburg gen especially because they didnt have a separate nursery. I was breastfed for 9 months before my mom fell pregnant and had to stop because she was loosing too much weight.

My mom is not unhappy with my c section but she does blame the fact that she was forced to lie on her back strapped to a CTG moniter for the fact that her labour didnt progress, plus she wastn allowed to eat or drink so she was completely fatigued after the 16 hours.

Oh, I've got a good one!

I'm the 3rd daughter, my mom did a preggy aerobics class while pregnant with all 3 off us, and there they also learned relaxing strategies for birthing. When I started doing hypnobirthing with my 2nd, and told my mom about it, she was amazed at what I was doing and said that that was very similar to what they had done 35 years ago! They just didn't call it hypnosis and had no idea that that is what it actually was.

So my two older sisters was born the hypno / natural way, calm easy births, almost no pain, and my mom says they where born with 2 contractions each. Thats the total lenght of her labor!!!

Then I came along... I was very small, apparently 5 pounds (2,26 kg). But full term. And labor was induced as my parents lived far from the hospital. Even with my mom's best efforts at a calm birth, I just didn't want to get out. I was lying posterior (face up) and my umbilical chord was wrapped so tight around my neck and was so short that it kept pulling me back up. Eventually the doc started getting worried about me not receiving oxygen (the chord was tight so no more blood getting through) he then cut the chord inside my mom and helped pull my head out.

I was blue, unresponsive and likely dead. But they revived me and here I am today. All healthy and not to insane...

I roomed in with my mom (not normal practice in those days) and was breastfed.

My brother born 3 years later, was huge (over 4kg) and was again born with 2 contractions (after induction). He was so big that his shoulder got hurt with the delivery but he just slipped out. So I was the only "other wise" child in the family.

No surprise then that I birthed 2 posterior babies myself!!

My mom self induced me at 38 weeks with Castor oil, and then went for a 4km walk.

I was a natural baby, I think she had some gas to help with the pain. She loved her birthing experiance. Short labour, I think 8 hours from water breaking till end.