Birth Story Part 1 - As It Happened

I have been thinking about how I want to write this birth story, and the fact is, I have three different stories to tell. So it's being written in three parts. The first part is, plain and simple, how the day unfolded for me. What happened, what I experienced, and how I ended up with my baby in my arms. The second, will look at birthing my baby in terms of a natural childbirth - I was very adamant that I wanted an intervention-free birth for my child, so I'm going to talk about the issues that came up surrounding that aspect specifically. And finally in the third instalment, I want to acknowledge our use of natural methods for birthing outcomes - with some surprising results surrounding what worked for us. I hope you'll enjoy this series and maybe even take something useful away from it. In any case, I need to write this for me. Thanks for reading.

Part 1: As It Happened

I woke up at 3:20am on Monday morning, with discomfort in my belly. I didn't think anything of it, just baby moving and making me a bit uncomfortable, a trip to the bathroom and back to bed. But back in bed only a few minutes, and the same thing happened - uncomfortable belly sensation. Not something I could just lie in bed for, I hopped out of bed and stood, bent over, until it passed. Back into bed. Repeat, only this time I don't get out of bed, just get on hands and knees on the bed and wait for it to be over, and lie down again. And repeat again twice more, once out of bed, once on hands and knees. You would think by this time I might have suspected contractions - and it crossed my mind, but I really didn't think it was.

Anyway, by 3.40am I had given up on staying in bed and hopped up. I took my favourite blanket and some warm clothes and went to my laptop in search of answers. I was trying to work out whether the pains I was feeling were in fact labour pains, or not, or just a false alarm, so I googled 'what do contractions feel like'. I didn't really become any further enlightened, and the pains kept coming, such that I was standing at my desk bent over as I was reading. I flicked through some notes I had made at a birthing course we had attended back at the start of February. Reading these made me suspect that I was actually in labour, but I still wasn't sure. It was probably around 4.30 at this stage. I also made myself something to eat - a few rice cakes with vegemite to keep me going.

The situation continued - basically my contractions were coming pretty standard 5 minutes apart, and lasting for about 1 minute. I played a 20 minute track of hypnobirthing affirmations that I had bought a couple of weeks earlier, a couple of times, which helped me through those early contractions. I found that I was able to breath into them, and relax my body enough, that I could actually feel the muscular sensation of what was happening - the pulling up of my uterus, at this stage quite low down but moving up higher. This calmed me - knowing and feeling what was actually happening in my body, accepting the movement without fighting it, really just getting my head out of the way and letting my body get on with it. I could do this.

Around 5.30 I decided it was time to wake Charles. He hopped up and got straight into action, watching me for a contraction or two, talking with me about how far apart the contractions were coming, bringing me magnesium drinks and at some point setting up an oil burner with some clary sage and lavender. That actually made things a bit more intense for me, the clary sage, and I ended up calling for a bucket as I started to feel nauseous. No sooner was the bucket delivered than I put it to good use, and poor old Charles had the job of emptying it and bring it back for me. This happened a few times. Purging - getting any last 'stuff' out of my body, clearing the way for labour to progress. It really didn't bother me at all. 

All this time I had been stationed in our office/library, but around 8am I went back to our bedroom. All I wanted in the world was to climb back into bed and go to sleep. I just wanted it all to stop, because I was feeling sleepy, and start again some other time. After a sleep. So I went back to this business of lying in bed, then hopping up for a contraction, then crawling back into bed for those few minutes of rest. Complete with a cat snoozing on the bed and everything. I'm glad we had seen a few dvd's of births in the birthing workshop we attended because I knew that Charles was ok with seeing a woman in labour - as in, he wasn't freaking out. And the cat didn't flinch, she probably didn't even notice.

Sometime next, I decided that I wanted to be in the bath. Or a shower. So we moved to the bathroom, where I sat on a chair in front of the bathroom mirror, being flooded with endorphins between contractions, and standing up holding onto the bathroom vanity for dear life and swaying my way through contractions. They were definitely getting stronger and closer together. During this, Charles was cleaning the bath [as you do] so that it would be nice for me to hop in. I was so very aware, being able to see myself in the mirror, of just how effective those endorphins the body releases are - I could have been fully drugged up, I was so out of it. But at the same time so focused on the task at hand. I'm in awe of what the female body does to assist in childbirth.

Anyway by the time the bath was clean, I knew that I really shouldn't get into it. It was about 10am by this stage, and there was a great big bath at the hospital birthing suite - much more appealing than our poky little bathtub. Around this time Charles spoke to our midwife, and I remember asking Charles to ask if we should go in yet. To which the answer was yes. So I continued to labour in the bathroom, while Charles calmly set about gathering all our bits and pieces together [I had half-heartedly packed a bag some time earlier] and preparing to go. Packing the car, remembering to take baby clothes, feeding the animals. And off we went - me on the back seat of the car, on hands and knees, for the faster than usual trip into town. Thankfully it is one long straight road into town.

At the hospital, I remember trying to walk really quickly down the hallway to the birthing suite, not wanting to have a contraction in the hallway. I almost made it, but then it came, so I had to stop and hang on to the wall til it passed. There were people standing nearby too. Oh well. Anyway we made it into the birthing suite, and I promptly had a contraction and was desperately trying to find something comfortable to hang on to. Then a quick look to see how far I had progressed and we found I was about 6cm dilated at this stage. I would have preferred to be 7cm, but hey, a lot of the hard work had been done. I desperately wanted to be in that bath, so one of the midwives started filling it and Charles set up our station in the bathroom. During this time, I was dealing with the other midwife - who was trying to attach a foetal heartrate monitor to me. This was one of my 'not required' items - at first I didn't even realise what she was doing, but as soon as I did, and being on my back as a contraction hit, I had ripped those straps off in seconds.

I hopped in the bath, which was slightly on the too warm side, but which I was happy with. Between the heat of the bath, the issue of the heart rate monitoring and the car ride in, the contractions had slowed off a bit, and I had a few minutes to just lie in the warm water and rest. I was almost sleeping! Bliss. But Charles, seeing the slow down in progress, lit the clary sage to burn again and there we were, straight back into it with renewed intensity. The bath was amazing, and I stayed in there for some hours, Charles and I working through the contractions. By now, he was using some acupressure points on my backside to help keep the contractions under control. At one point, I realised he had my feet and was working on points to help the contractions along - and pretty much said 'don't you dare!'. I also had to get him to blow out the clary sage burner, I couldn't take the increase in intensity that it brought about.

Somewhere around 1.30pm I was starting to get tired I think, and I was keen to see how far I had progressed. My waters still hadn't broken either. A quick look showed that I was 9cm dilated, but was starting to get the urge to push down. I was struggling by that point - I think the knowledge that I still had 1cm to go and feeling the urge to push was all a bit much for me. The midwife had been offering me nitrous oxide and oxygen since we had arrived, and I had to this point adamantly refused [despite telling Charles on the car ride in that I wanted the gas right now!], but my determination wavered. We asked whether the gas would cross the placenta, and the midwife said no. The final straw, and what saw me end up taking the gas, was that the midwife actually helped to dilate the last 1cm - not an altogether comfortable experience, and pretty much my breaking point. I didn't use it for long, but for that hour or so that I had the gas in my hand, it was a brave person would have tried to take it off me.

So then we were pushing down. This was the strangest sensation ever, and not made any easier by the fact that I couldn't see or really get a feel for the baby moving down as I pushed. My waters eventually broke, which was a relief, as that ended the pressure to have them artificially ruptured. I was up on the bed at this stage, half sitting, half lying, and despite knowing that it wasn't the best position for me to be in [there was no assistance from gravity], I felt too tired to move. I was utterly exhausted, and between each surge I was resting, completely spent. This went on, and on, and on. Actually it was about 1.5 hours all up, but I wanted it to be over so badly, and it just kept on going. As it turns out, the baby had a hand up at his face when he appeared, which would have been making life a bit more difficult for me. I cannot complain though - the time taken allowed my body to stretch perfectly, and shortly after 4pm, baby William was born. Not a nick or a tear on my body. And a surprised midwife who had been suggesting an episiotomy for the past hour. I had to be happy with that. 

The most amazing thing in my life had just happened. My baby boy was passed up onto my belly, and Charles had laughed when my first words to him were 'hey little dude'. What are you supposed to say when you first greet your son? He was slippery and pink and absolutely perfect. We were left to bond, as mammals do, skin to skin, and within a short space of time he was looking to breastfeed. I was also pressured to have the injection to speed up delivery of the placenta. It had actually almost come out, then just stopped, so I knew it was just sitting there. The midwife kept suggestion the injection, I repeatedly said 'it's there, if I stand up it will come out'. Eventually I had to push it out, about 40 minutes after the birth. We also waited until the cord had completely stopped pulsing and was empty of blood before clamping. At this point we let the midwives weigh and measure our baby, and then he was back in my arms, where we stayed for about the next 2 hours, bonding and being a family together.  Charles put a pair of socks on my feet, I was so focused on other things, but he looked after me so well, taking care of the little details. He was absolutely amazing and I couldn't have asked for a better birth partner.

And that, in a very short summary, is how baby William came into our world. It was a total surprise, as I was 39 weeks, and had been saying to Charles the previous evening 'I think it's at least another week off'. Still, he was ready, and weighed in at a healthy 3.41kg. We had said frequently throughout the pregnancy that we thought he might come a little early. Not that there is really any such thing as 'early' or 'late', we have such a tendency to put our own timeframes on babies when in reality, they put theirs on us [and birthing is just the start, as I'm now discovering]. I have to say, this was by far and away the most amazing, best ever day of my life. It all feels a bit surreal now, but I want to hang on to the day forever. Those first moments bonding with my new baby, with Charles at my side, made me happier than I could have ever imagined being.

Read Part 2 of my birth story - A Natural Childbirth?
Read Part 3 of my birth story - Natural Methods