It’s been an eventful few months, namely turning 30, starting maternity leave and well, having a baby… so this is the first chance to write about it and a long one… well labour takes a long time and I want my daughter to read this one day.
March was my 30th Birthday and wasn’t all bad even though I really did not want it. Turning 30 is quite a big grown up milestone and I’m not ready for that yet! I had a surprise party that my husband planned and he invited some friends from school I hadn’t seen in years which was a very lovely thought as I know such thinking doesn’t come easy to him! My maternity leave started well, bit of sad occasion to leave all my colleagues behind but I have had so many visits from them all that I haven’t needed to miss them at all, they are so fabulous… and then the icing on the cake was the birth of my gorgeous daughter.
The due date snuck up on me pretty quickly. The last few weeks of pregnancy are bloody tough. The weight, the size, the heat, the pain, everything makes it extremely difficult to do anything and exhausting. By 38 weeks I was begging for my labour to start, I had really had enough. I was having Braxton Hicks contractions quite regularly that were starting to hurt more and more and my progress was being tracked by my boss to our team ‘cervix updates’ as she called them! Wasn’t much to report as nothing was really happening. I tried everything to get things moving, all the old wives tales and anything my midwife suggested I try… nothing. 2 days after my due date my midwife decided to examine me and some news that I wanted to hear came – 1cm dilated and waters bulging and by her experience said I should go into labour within the next 2 days… great I thought, can get this over with…. nothing. The induction was booked which I wanted to avoid at all costs.
Days went by and still my labour wouldn’t start, so again went through all the wives tales and bouncing on a birthing ball… still nothing. Then my friend sent me a tip I hadn’t seen anywhere suggesting I try to bathe in clary sage essential oil and rub some on my bump. In desperation and nothing else working I went to buy some straight away. That evening I had my disgusting smelly bath and went to bed. 2am in the morning I woke with a dull ache in my stomach, bit of blood, woke my husband and I started to feel contractions but thought nothing of them as I had been having them for a while. I went back to bed, told my husband to go back to sleep, if it was labour we could be at home a while anyway. 5 minutes later I woke him again as the pain was worse than I had before and he started to time them. Every 5 minutes on the dot lasting 50 seconds. I managed 90 minutes of it before calling the delivery suite to confirm my labour had started. Can’t say I was impressed with the response given the amount of pain I was in…. have a warm bath, your labour could go on for a long time before it’s established as it’s your first child, so take some paracetemol. PARACETEMOL are you having a f-ing laugh?!! Like that’s going to touch it.
I managed to stay at home until 6.30am when the pain was becoming so bad I needed some pain relief, I didn’t have a TENS machine or anything to try so needed to be in hospital. Called them again to say I was coming in, they tried to convince me to stay home longer, but this time I wasn’t having it I was going in to be examined.
Relief when we got to the hospital, then only to find that there were no rooms on the delivery suite, apparently Monday the 11th May was one of the busiest days they have had all year. Great, the day my baby decides to make a one week late appearance is the day I have to give birth in the corridor! Not only that but by the time we got to the hospital and up to the delivery suite to be greeted by an assistant, she then informs us that 7am is the start of a new shift and that for the next 30 minutes the midwives will be handing over to each other and therefore cannot get any pain relief to me straight away. Oh God, I didn’t think I could go on much longer, by this point my contractions were every 3 minutes and lasting just over a minute. I knew I was getting close but because I was dealing with the pain in my own quiet way, they felt I wasn’t that far along anyway and didn’t need to worry. Apparently you need to be screaming the house down to get attention which just isn’t my way… lesson learnt.
An hour later, a midwife eventually decided to make an appearance to the holding tent (well practically) where I was waiting to be examined. I hopped on the table in a classy beached whale kind of way and then she said ‘oh… actually you are quite far along, 8cm, your baby will be appearing soon’. Shit, and there are no rooms, I told them I needed pain relief desperately… having examined me she agreed and within 5 minutes I was hooked up to gas and air and drunk as a skunk! 30 minutes later the midwife came back to inform us there were still no rooms free but one lady will be moved into the ward shortly, it will be cleaned and I can go in there. It was like a birthing conveyer belt, one in one out. I don’t know how the midwives do it.
Anyway I finally got in the room about 9am ish I think and then the time just flew. The midwife asked whether a student could also come and watch, I agreed seeing as everything was hanging out anyway, the more the merrier, bring them all in! So at this point having been asking for pain relief since 7am and all I got was gas and air, I had asked for morphine and an epidural to which I was refused constantly. I was too late for an epidural… in my drunken state I told the midwife what I thought about that and if they weren’t faffing about when I came in and just seen me I might not be in so much pain now and that she was withholding the morphine to save the NHS money! I can’t remember her response, I think another contraction came, I forgot and she was used to abuse and being criticised so probably paid little attention. She tended to ignore any of my little outbursts. Instead she would just turn to my husband and casually tell him I was making all the right noises and labour must be progressing well. I’ll give her right noises!! I remember asking for morphine between every single contraction and still she said no, there was no time, the baby was coming. I was terrified, I never intended to go through labour with practically no pain relief. I’m all up for epidurals, why suffer if you don’t need to, I have nothing to prove.
Time went on, the midwife kept checking me, my waters that should have broken 5 days ago still hadn’t gone despite hours of labour so she gave me the hook treatment and they were gone… then discovered that the baby had done a little poo and was slightly distressed. Me and the baby’s heart rate were monitored more carefully and then the words that I had dreaded all the way through… your 10cm now, time to start pushing. Now I may be naïve here, I don’t know why but I always thought that when you are 10cm, there would be some kind of body change or something significant to indicate this, like fireworks going off or something, not just a midwife saying lets have a go. I never got the urge to push either so was relying on her. I started to cry quite hysterically when she told me I was ready, I couldn’t push a baby out with no pain relief as she took my gas and air away from me saying I wouldn’t be effective with it. She told me I was crying because I was just scared and that it wasn’t the lack of pain relief that was the problem as I had done really well without it. I was now full on natural birth sans entonox, I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to do it but before I could really think about it, the midwife and the student had grabbed my legs, put them on their hips and told me to push. I was a bit scared of the midwife, she became hugely militant, so I obeyed!
“PUUUUUSH…”
“I can’t” I said, “it hurts”
“I know, it’s meant to, now just push, we need to get this baby out…. PUUUUSH, keep it coming, keep going, keep going.” By this point I had turned purple, barely got a time for a breath and she was telling me to push again.
“oh no, another contraction” I said.
“Good, now PUUUSH, if the pain is still there keep pushing, push, push, good your doing well”
“I feel sick” So the student got me a pot while the midwife in her constant commentary to the student throughout my labour (to which I probably heard more than I should have done for my imagination was going wild), she told her that feeling sick was quite normal at this stage. Good I thought, I’m normal.
“Now PUUUUSH, I can see the head… keep pushing” my husband was now full on in there watching the crowning. Really quite disgusting, but he was transfixed and I didn’t have time to question him while he snapped away with the camera.
“I’m going to make a cut to make delivery easier” oh oh, an episiotomy, didn’t want one of those but whatever, I need the baby out to stop the pain now
“right come on PUUUSH…….PAAAANT, PANT, PANT”
And that was it. I thought I had hours to go and as I had my eyes shut the whole way through the hour it took push the baby out or I would have felt worse, I had no idea what was going on. I was too focused on obeying the midwife’s instructions and feeling the cold towels my husband was putting on my head to cool me down. It wasn’t until I braved opening my eyes that I was totally amazed to look down and see a baby… I had done it, though I didn’t actually feel it. She was here, my daughter had arrived and the next thing I knew she was put on my chest, my husband cried, I cried, the midwife smiled and lost her military head as the 3 of us cuddled whilst the midwife did some bits down there. Which I have to say was more painful than delivering the baby thanks to a lack of anaesthetic, but it didn’t seem to matter, I had my baby and she was breathing, had all her fingers and toes and looked healthy.
She was taken away to be cleaned, weighed (a healthy and surprisingly big 8lbs considering my size) and handed back to be breast fed. The midwives then disappeared and left the 3 of us to be together for an hour or two before returning to dress her and have me examined by a doctor so as I could shower and then be moved onto the ward. The baby needed to be monitored for 24 hours as she was a little stressed on the way out, but all was fine and we were allowed out the next day. It was over, my beautiful daughter was here and well after a 10 hour labour… now let the fun begin!
