FF 12: Felicity’s beautiful birth story

Newcastle infant chiropractor, Felicity Cook, shares her preparation and experience with bringing beautiful little Ivy into the world with Dorte Bladt.

Intro: Flourishing Families with Dorte Bladt, the Switched On Kids chiropractor and her passionate friends sharing the secret of inspiring wellness to help your families thrive.
Dorte Bladt: We’re going to do something really different today. We’ve got our own super mum, Felicity Cook, on the podcast today. Instead of asking your experience with work, we’re actually going to have a little bit of a chat about birth. Now, birth is a very personal experience – a good birth, a not so good birth, some are challenging – but I think many of us get scared… we sort of attract the bad stories. So we’re just here just to have a chat about a happy birth story.
Felicity Cook: Yeah. Exciting!
Dorte Bladt: Yes, so introduce us to the birth.
Felicity Cook: So little Ivy was born back in March. We did, we actually were quite lucky. We worked hard on it but we were lucky to have a nice, straightforward birth. So a nice positive birth story, so we’re lucky.
Dorte Bladt: That’s good. What were the things that – you obviously had a little bit of an idea of what you wanted. I think we all have an idea. What was your vision? What was it that you were looking to achieve?
Felicity Cook: Well, for me, I wanted to make sure that I had the best birth that could allow my child to have the best darn life. That was kind of my aim. So at the end of the day, if I had to make choices that meant that her safety was paramount then I would do that, but I wanted to also make sure I can have close to natural delivery as possible. So that was my ideal and so was Ivy’s, as you can hear. So really, I wanted it to be intervention-free, if possible, and work towards that.
Dorte Bladt: So that was your vision. What sort of action steps to take? What plans did you put in place to try to achieve that?
Felicity Cook: Well, I made sure that I had the best support I could. Initially, when it came out to it, I wanted to make sure I had the care providers that would support that vision and who understood that vision – so I did. I went and actually met with a couple of obstetricians and then I also met with the midwives and I came away from that feeling like the midwifery quality of care was intuitively what I needed to do for me and I felt amazingly supported in that. That was great and also then having the support team around me too, so knowing that my partner was on board and he was happy with that too. Then making choices towards the end that enabled that all were on board with that too, so antenatal education and books and those kinds of things that helped along with it.
Dorte Bladt: So what sort of antenatal team did you have?
Felicity Cook: Well, I had my amazing midwives, my primary midwife, and she was there pretty much throughout the whole care for me. So from when I booked in at 20 weeks with the hospital and with the birth centre. I had some really good antenatal that was privately arranged and then I also had my chiropractor. That was a big part for me for lots of reasons and I had that all the way through from basically prior to conception, so I thank you.
Dorte Bladt: Anytime.
Felicity Cook: Towards the end, I also did some acupuncture as well, too. That was my support team.
Dorte Bladt: And when you were looking for support, what sort of support were you interested in?
Felicity Cook: I knew to have the birth that I wanted to have, I knew that I had to have the options of being active for as long as possible. So I wanted somebody who would support the idea of active birth if I...