One born every minute ... yikes!

[Rosebudx]

Sooooo whichever of my friends told me to watch it to get ‘excited’ about birth was lying and I think I’m traumatised! 😂

As a first time mum with anxiety I was enjoying it at first but then started to see all the things that can go wrong and the last straw was watching a poor woman haemorrhage and I had to turn it off 🥴

Please tell me it is extremely dramatised like most things on telly because I am regretting my decision to watch a few episodes greatly haha! Maybe I’m just a wuss and in denial about the whole thing??

Watch it like you would Big Brother/Love Island and the rest of 'reality TV'. Honestly, each birth is different.

Before I had DD, I went to classes about stages of labour etc and what means what at each point, when you should go to hospital etc but avoided anything about actually giving birth. Every birth is different, I had a difficult birth, baby got stuck and had to hold in contractions/ignore the 'pushing' instinct (which I tell you, is the hardest thing I've ever done haha) whilst I was moved to the labour ward but honestly, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It's the best experience of my life.

Don't get yourself in a flap, everyone responds differently but whatever happens, you'll deal with it because at that point, you don't really have a choice! The baby is coming one way or another!

I would be really really careful when watching it. These shows only made my anxiety worse. I found myself waking up in the middle of the night every night in the 3rd trimester with huge panic attacks and I am normally a very calm person. I was so anxious of the birthing that it probably caused my induction and lack of progress and EMCS as a result. Never again.

I'm with @Aly88. I watched every episode ever made because I wanted to be as prepared as possible. A few ladies on it gave birth in a pool practically silently and you get others screaming, haemorrhaging etc so you really do see the whole spectrum. I also read loads about pregnancy, labour and birth because I don't see the point in hiding from it. Plus, I tend to think that the better-informed you are (about anything at all!) the less likely you are to be scared of it. In the end my labour just felt like I was following a set of instructions in my head...a very calm and in-control experience. I felt the lack of fear and knowing that I had given myself as much information as possible really reduced the pain and just eased the experience overall. My TENS machine was an amazing help too and that was all I needed in the end. I also credit the hypnobirthing, yoga, Pilates and swimming for helping myself to prepare.

Basically as well what I mean to say is that they don't call it labour for nothing! It is like a marathon and you do have to prepare as if you are going to do exactly that.
However, of course, as we saw on Life & Birth with the yoga teacher, sometimes you can be as prepared as you like and it still won't work out. I know there's an element of luck too.