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Birth Stories

My Birth Stories - By Jenny

DD1:

My EDD was Thursday August 28th, and as it was my first baby everyone said I would go over. However on the Sunday I woke at 5am having low sharp contractions and began walking around the house. I rang the labour ward at about 9am as I was definitely sure I was in labour by this time, having sharp painful 45 second contractions every 15 minutes. They told me to just stay at home until they got longer and closer together. I got in the bath and pottered around the house for hours, the contractions got closer together then drifted apart again, no pattern emerging.

By 5pm I felt a change in the contractions so I checked my cervix. (I used to use a cap for contraception so I'm familiar with my cervix!) I could tell I was dilating, but didn't know how much. I rang the labour ward and spoke to a midwife who told me I couldn't possibly know I was dilated, so I explained that I'd done a VE and could feel it. She went mental and told me off like a naughty school girl and said all sorts of things about infection risk, which is rubbish as there is virtually no infection risk as long as your waters haven't broken. Any way she told me to come in, to be on the safe side.

We got to the assessment room and I was examined by a different MW who confirmed that I was just over 3cm, and who thought my self examination was great, and made sure she told the MW from the phone that I had been right! My mum came up and the three of us sat around waiting for things to kick off, and we waited, and waited, and waited. My blood pressure (which had been 110/60 thru my entire pg) went quite high, so my plan of a water birth was shelved, much to my dissapointment (I have since learnt that high BP should not stop you having a water birth, so perhaps it would have all gone differently if I had been allowed to get in the pool). By midnight I was still only 3cm, and the contractions were still irregular. Through out all this I had only paracetamol and codiene, as although the contractions were sharp, they were not very painful, and I used yoga breathing to relax through them. At 1am they decided to admit me to the labour ward, so my DP went home to get some sleep and my mum stayed with me over night. All night my contractions continued, but with no pattern change, sometimes 5 mins apart, sometimes 40. But, they were just too close together and slightly too uncomfortable to allow me to sleep, so I sat up and counted and timed and walked.

At 10am the next morning I had reached only 4cm, my mum went home for a rest and DP came back in. I had several baths, but still no progress, one midwife tried to "accidently" break my waters whilst she was examining me to see if we could get things going, but my membrane was as stubborn as me and stayed intact. All this time they kept monitoring the baby on and off, and the heartbeat was rock solid. My contractions continued all day, irregular but increasing in intensity, and at 6pm I was sent home as they felt I was making no progress and would be more comfortable at home. (However I had not been examined since 11am that morning.) We got home, I got in the bath and then went to bed about 10.30, trying to get comfortable and failing (I'd had lower back and pelvic pain, but not SPD, for the last 3 weeks, which made it difficult to sleep) and at 11.58 during one of my contractions my waters went with a pop and a whoosh, all over the bed. Thank goodness I had taken someones advice and covered the mattress in waterproof sheets!

My contractions kicked in hard and fast, every 4 minutes and strong enough to take my breath away. We rang the labour ward and made our way back in. When we got there I was 9cm and puffing like a train. I was transferred to a delivery suit and the hard work began. All night I pushed and pushed, feeling no pain, but very focused and unable to talk during contractions. This is 2am Monday night/Tuesday morning, I'd been awake since 5am Sunday and was starting to get really tired.

I pushed and pushed, the baby inched it's way out, a tiny fraction at a time, and at 6am the obstetric registrar came in and started to tell me that we needed to get this baby out. They had been monitoring the baby on and off, and she was showing no signs of distress, but they felt I had been in labour long enough. I just wanted to sleep, in fact I was drifting off between contractions, and struggling to stay awake and take in what the Dr was telling me. She then said she was going to do an epidural and take me into theatre and deliver the baby with forceps, at this point I woke up. Eventually I managed to get it across that I would not have an epidural, if she had read my maternity notes she would have seen that I have joint hypermobility and a back problem which makes lying on my back pushing with my legs in stirrups under this level of anasthesia a bad idea, as if I can't feel whats going on I could push wrong in this position and injure myself badly.

She eventually suggested we deliver using local anasthesia and a ventouse, and, too tired to argue any more, I agreed and every one went to action stations. I lost all control over what was happening, and as the Dr started to give me the local I sat and watched what she was doing to me in the reflection of her glasses! Very surreal. At one point she catheterised me with out telling me and I asked her what she was doing, and she actually seemed cross that I should want to know what she was prodding me with! Excuse me but that's my privates you're rummaging about in, you could at least warn me before you do something. This made me quite cross as I am a member of staff at this hospital, and so know all about the issues of informed consent etc.

They hooked me up to a drip and hard, painful contractions, kicked in with avengance. They put my legs in stirrups and told me to push, with me all the time telling them that I wasn't supposed to push in this position, and at 7.05am Tuesday August 26th (50 hours after it had all begun) DD1 was pulled out and flopped onto my tummy. She looked at me and grunted, very calm and relaxed, so they poked her to make her cry! They cut her cord instantly, gave me more oxytocin to expell the placenta and hauled it out by the cord, asking my DP as an after thought if he'd wanted to cut her cord. My plan for a natural birth with a physiological third stage had gone out the window and I then bled out 850mls (which is just shy of a PPH) and had to have several large clots "manually" removed from my uterus, and by the time she was stitching up my episiotomy the local anasthetic was wearing off, not nice. At the end my birth plan was ignored and it was so far from the kind of birth I wanted, and, according to the MW, who came to see me the next night, I could have had if the Dr had just left me to get some rest. I feel they did what was easiest for them, not what I wanted, or what was best for me or my baby. Pushing in stirrups left me with serious back pain from a prolapsed disk, which has taken two years of intensive treatment to reduce down to a managable level.

DD2:

Well, after having grumbley contractions Friday night, and again on Saturday night and Sunday night, when they started up again on Monday evening I thought it was just par for the course. How wrong can you be?!

I got out of the bath (with DD1) about 7.45 and the contractions seemed a bit stronger, by the time DD1 was in her pj's (8.30ish) I was having to walk them through and breeeeeeaaaathe! I checked my cervix after DD1 had gone to sleep (about 9.30 I suppose) and it was gone, flat, effaced and starting to dilate! As I was on the phone to the MW (just after 10pm) the contractions got much more intense, and when I rang my mum they were really going.

The MW arrived about 10.30, I was in the bath, and the contractions were only a couple of minutes apart, if that, and very long and intense.

I got out the bath and she tried to assess me, but the contractions were so intense and so close together that she couldn't get a fetal HB as I couldn't stay still long enough! She had a go at an internal exam, but abandoned it for much the same reasons. We got the stuff out, DP spread out the waterproof sheeting on the sofa and the floor and the MW got her bits together.

I suddenly realised I was pushing, and then the second MW arrived. The next thing I knew the head was out, and there was a short break in contractions. So I rested on my ball, holding the head with one hand, and with the next contraction she was out. The MW and I caught her together and she passed her through my legs to me and DP and I were gobsmacked to see we had a little girl. They left the cord, as requested, we cut it between us (the MW and I) when it stopped pulsing after a good 15-20 minutes and about 15 minutes later my placenta slooshed out. She weighed in at 7lb 13.5oz, a whole pound bigger than DD1 was! My mum got here (she lives an hours drive away) about 5 minutes after she was born!!

I did it all on my knees resting my chest arms and head on the ball, which was great as I could rock through the contractions which really helped. Start to finish it was less than four hours, I realised I was in real labour at about 9ish, and she was born at 11.41pm. Just slightly quicker than DD1!!

This was the exact opposite of DD1's birth, it was hard work, a bit painful in places, and sadly I did have a small tear with 3 stitches in it, just next to my episiotomy scar, but it was a fabulous experience, I'm really glad we opted for a homebirth, even DP was happier in the end, he described it as "quite mellow", so it was clearly a world away from DD1's birth for him to

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