Pregnancy & Baby 

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Anastasia's birth story

Anastasia Brien has kept a diary of her first pregnancy for iVillage. She and her husband, Nick, are now anxiously awaiting the birth

Great expectations

I had so many of these for the birth of my first child - a calm environment with candles and aromatherapy, a water birth without drugs, a peaceful bonding with Nick, me and the baby afterwards, immediate and natural breastfeeding. It would be the most wonderful, memorable and momentous event in my life. Well, I got the memorable and momentous part, but that's about it.

Let's start with my birth plan

Not one of my expectations came true. I'd decided on a non-medicated water birth. Everything I read about birth seemed to agree on one thing: if you had pain relief you wouldn't be able to push very well, and if you couldn't push very well, they'd start to bring out baby-removal equipment, which consisted of sinister things like scissors and scalpels. In reality however, I ended up having every single intervention that the NHS had on offer.

At 40 weeks and 5 long days, I started

With strong pains in my lower back and immediately suspected my baby might be in the OP position, lying with its spine against my spine. I had already developed a fear of what they call 'back labour'. I read an account of one woman's birth in a baby magazine: back labour can be three times as long as normal labour and is much more painful. This is because the baby is pressing on the nerves in your spine and makes very slow progress as it's facing the wrong way. Anyway, at 5pm on a Saturday, I wrote in my journal, 'this is it! I'm having our baby today!'

My master plan was to stay at home as long as humanly possible

So Nick and I were up all night as my contractions came every ten minutes nearly to the second. They got progressively more painful as the night wore on, but they never got closer together. All I can say is, it really, really hurt. It had already been 12 hours and all I felt was the sensation of electric needles being stuck in my lower back.

At 8am my friend Sophie (my 'doula') came over. I asked her to be there for the birth because she had had really easy births with her two girls, and is a rock of calm and support. She and Nick coached me through the pain as it became stronger and finally faster. When my contractions were less than five minutes apart, we all set off for hospital.

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