This is a long one, consider that your forewarning.
So I wanted to get my birth stories written down before I forget the finer details; or as is the case with Dylan, the entire experience. It is possibly the biggest moments of my life and something that was so important I want to remember as much of both my labours as possible. But why do I want to share them?
They are ‘good’ birth stories. Don’t get me wrong, they were incredibly painful, the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. They were also beyond hard work physically and mentally, labour is exhausting and it puts a tremendous amount of stress on your body it will take months to recover from.
However, when you are pregnant you will hear no end of labour horror stories which could rival the scariest of Stephen King novels. I don’t know whether it’s just a British thing or a human thing but we love to be morbid and we delight in seeing the terrified look in someone’s eyes when we tell them our labour ‘lasted 3 weeks and then they had to cut me open and haul the baby out with no pain relief because he was 15lbs! I still don’t walk right and he’s 12.’
My labour stories are very different from one another but both were what I think midwives would (and have) referred to as ‘text book’. So I’ll share them, in the hope it will provide some much needed reassurance for the more nervous and show all first time mothers or women waiting for their first labour; it’s scary but it doesn’t have to be a horror story.
Friday the 26th of February 2010 7.30pm
I’ll be honest; I went into labour with Dylan whilst having an argument with his dad. I’d seen the midwife the day before, apparently I still wasn’t passed 2/5th engaged and it was looking very unlikely my baby would be born anywhere near his due date. So my sweep was booked for a week’s time and Sam (Dylan’s dad) had made plans to head out for the evening with some work colleagues.
But that afternoon around 4pm I had woken up from a nap with a sort of weird feeling in the pit of my stomach and a desperate need to go to the toilet. I found then that I had had my show (for those who don’t know what this is, it’s a snot like plug which seals your cervix during pregnancy. Childbirth is a beautiful miracle isn’t it) but having been told over and over again that a show usually happens days (sometimes weeks) before labour, I didn’t know whether I should be making Sam come home or not.
This is what we were arguing about. In the end I had called him and he had left to come home but he was less than impressed I’d left it so late to tell him. I was in the middle of my counter argument that I hadn’t had any contractions yet and I thought if he came home and nothing happened he’d be annoyed at me and aside from that who goes out to the pub the night before his partner is due to give birth-that was it, the first contraction hit.
Midwives, baby books and the internet described it as a tightening sensation and that’s exactly what it was. To this point I’d never had real period pains and I’d not experienced Braxton Hicks so I’d compare it to early stomach bug pains. You know when you get that warm, sharp, squeezing in your stomach that is going to get more intense and then you are going to need the toilet. Since having Dylan I do get period pains and I’d compare this early labour pain to the same intense pains you get when your period is at its heaviest.
We immediately stopped arguing, the look on Sam’s face was a picture. I imagine the look on mine was too. We made the decision to head over to a friend’s house, try and pass some time. We both knew labour could be a long process and my sister had had a son 10 months earlier and she’d been in labour for over 48 hours!
Of course our friends were excited and as she ‘googled’ my symptoms, assuring me she was pretty sure I was in fact in labour, I sat very quietly feeling the pains intensify. I am grateful to her though, it kept me occupied for a couple of hours. When it got too much I asked Sam if we could leave. I don’t remember that journey home, the next thing I remember is being in an Indian takeaway ordering enough food to feed at least 4. I had a contraction in the middle of ordering and I tell you now I had never and have never again; been served that quickly in a takeaway in my life.
Once home we put on ‘Friday Night with Jonathan Ross’ and sat down to our food. I ate one mouthful and then had to dash to the bathroom where I proceeded to vomit like there was no tomorrow. I’m not sure what annoyed Sam more, that he’d just spent in excess of £40 on a takeaway that I would now not eat or that I hadn’t gotten to the bathroom with much time to spare so I’d vomited in the sink and he was now having to clean it out. But he didn’t say anything, he just told me to go lie down and I did as I was told.
Over an hour later, having heard nothing from me Sam came upstairs to find me sat up on the bed staring into space. I remember being sat looking out the window at the starry night sky but I don’t remember what I had been doing all that time, I really think I had just retreated into a spaced out world of my own, focused on breathing through the intensifying pains. I tell you what I hadn’t been doing; timing contractions.
Sam timed a few, they were about 7 minutes apart and lasting about 90 seconds. Having a sense of time with them actually made them more manageable as Sam was able to tell me when I’d hit the peak and when to take a breath because it was easing. That’s the issue with contractions, the stronger they get the more your brain panics and begins to tell you you can’t do it, but knowing you’ve reached the middle, that’s as strong as it will get, keeps you focused.
As they got more unbearable I came back downstairs so that when a contraction began I could pace, the movement helped distract me. Sam had contacted the hospital who’d recommended I hold on at home for as long as possible and that’s exactly what I intended to do. I felt like I was coping, the contractions at their peak hurt but I was doing my breathing and my pacing and I was good. It was now nearing 1am so I’d been having regular contractions for about 5 hours. Its then I went to the toilet to find that I was bleeding.
Sam didn’t bother to ring the hospital again, we just grabbed our things and set off, it was the car journey from hell. I had chosen the general hospital over the royal infirmary because it wasn’t as busy, it was more relaxed and patients as a general rule had better experiences, but I lived 10 minutes from the Royal, I lived nearly half an hour from the general even at that time of night. My contractions were now closer together too and unable to move very far in Sam’s tiny silver corsa it was agonising, it was the first time in my labour I had actually felt like screaming.
Being the middle of the night the car park though tiny had plenty of spaces. We headed straight in to find the front desk unmanned. So we headed down to the labour ward. Once through they showed us to a waiting room and said ‘a midwife will be right with you.’ A midwife was not right with us.
I remember the chairs being so uncomfortable I couldn’t bear to sit in them and I spent the ‘forever we were in there pacing the small room, listening to the labouring woman outside screaming and grunting like something out of a mad house. I remember laughing nervously and Sam saying to me ‘Don’t know what you are laughing about, that’ll be you in a bit.’ And of course he was right and it wiped the smile right off my face.
Eventually a midwife came in and I could have hugged her. Sam and I (apart from his earlier comment) had sat in silence just listening, terrified for I don’t know how long in a bright and bland room. Now this is one of my biggest regrets, that I do not remember this midwives name. I remember her thick Geordie accent and beaming smile. I thought she was wonderful and a credit to her profession but I could not tell you what she was called. But as soon as she walked in I felt at ease.
So the first thing they do before they admit you to the labour ward is perform an internal exam to determine if you are in what they would call established labour. Established labour is when your cervix has dilated 5cm. Turns out the labour before that, not even labour, just belly ache. In my antenatal classes I’d thought ‘yeah fair enough, must mean it’s not that bad before that.’ In reality, it’s gutting to know you have been through now over 6 hours of strong pain and it doesn’t really count.
I remember apologising for not being able to ‘neaten up down there’ as I ‘hadn’t been able to see it for some time’ and the midwife laughing before telling me ‘she could let me off.’ I also remember, for some unknown reason, asking if I would need to take off my shoes for the exam. The midwife looked more perplexed by this one before replying ‘well if you can remove your trousers without removing your shoes then you carry on.’ Good point, well made Geordie lady.
I have watched many an episode of ‘One Born Every Minute’ and women always seem to scream or writhe in pain at the internal exam. Now obviously they are pushing right up to your cervix, but was it any worse than any other exam I have had in a lifetime? No it wasn’t. Compared to my so called ‘not real labour yet’ pains was it that painful? Absolutely not. 4cm. In 6 hours my body had managed 4cm. The decision was if I was sent home by the time I got there I’d have to come straight back, so I was admitted. And that meant the many, many drugs were now at my disposal.
As a low risk pregnancy (my bleeding had been classed as perfectly normal. She couldn’t explain why some women bleed but she said it wasn’t heavy and was nothing to worry about) I was shown to a ‘home from home’ room by a health care assistant who told me in no uncertain terms, that the bed was only for decoration and I wasn’t to sit on it. I was to get moving, that would progress my labour. Yeah, cheers love but I was on this. A home from home room is basically a hospital bed in a slightly less clinically decorated room and all the hospital gear was kept in wooden furnishings rather than in your usual hospital trolleys. I did not feel like I was home.
Now my birth plan was pretty simple, it essentially said I was happy to go with the flow. I was happy to have any pain relief offered except I did not want an epidural. The idea of one terrified me, the needle in the spine, the losing feeling in the lower half of your body, the need for catheters, etc to be fitted, the more likely it was you’d need an assisted birth or c-section and finally, the risk of permanent paralysis, no I didn’t want one. But gas and air, you hand me that. So I set up shop bouncing on an exercise ball, in my night dress, sucking on the gas and air pipe during contractions. I remember at this point feeling a little excited and looking forward to meeting my baby soon if not a little nervous for the actual pushing bit.
In terms of pain relief; gas and air probably doesn’t elevate the pain much but what it does do is make you focus on your breathing. The key is not to panic with it, breath in deep and steady, breathe out slowly. I also found bouncing on the ball rhythmically helped me to focus elsewhere. But the gas does make you very thirsty and it made me feel a little sick too.
My midwife popped in and out to check on me but mostly it was just Sam and I making conversation until about 4am when I began to get tired. The decision was made that I would take some pethadine as this would make it easier for me to get some sleep.
Pethadine is injected into the top of your thigh. Within about 10 minutes of having it, I threw up in another sink. Poor Sam. It does make you feel spacey and not necessarily in control, it also makes you feel very sleepy. Between the midwife and Sam they tucked me in and dimed the lights. I still felt my contractions but the drowsy nature of pethadine took over and eventually I fell asleep.
Sadly by the time I nodded off, I only managed an hour of sleep before the midwife returned, switched on all the lights and declared it was internal exam time! That’s right; they do it every 4 hours. My first had been at 2am so now at 6 am it was time for the next. I was excited to hear what progress I’d made. That is until I was told I was still at 4cm. I had been through all that pain for absolutely nothing. The decision was made to break my waters.
This upset me as I’d been told in my antenatal class to avoid this if I could as the waters provide some cushioning. The midwife returned with a sterile pack of instruments and set to work. They took what essentially looked like a crotchet hook, inserted it and ruptured the sack. It felt very warm, people are right you do feel different than if you wet yourself, possibly because there is zero control, it just rushes out. I remember sobbing through the entire thing but don’t get me wrong, it didn’t hurt at all I’d just had enough, the pethadine was still strong in my system and I was in pain and I just wanted it done now.
Exhausted and upset the natural thing to do was, order me out of my bed and tell me I had to sit on the exercise ball. I did and let me tell you, the breaking of my waters had a quick impact. My next contraction felt twice as powerful as the last, even with the pethadine in my system. It was time for Sam to put that back rubbing he’d learnt in the antenatal classes to good use. And that’s how we sat for the rest of the labour. Me on a ball, bouncing, sucking on an oxygen pipe and leaning over the bed. Sam behind me in a chair, rubbing my back and offering me Jaffa cakes. I was way past Jaffa cakes.
At 7am; my Geordie midwife told me her shift had ended and she was going but her colleague was taking over and she’d take good care of me. I remember asking her to stay and her smiling warmly….before leaving; quickly. I don’t blame her.
At 7.30am, Ester arrived. Now Ester’s name I remember because; I hated her. She was a fantastic midwife, also a credit to her profession. But she was not the Geordie lady, she was somebody new and she wasn’t listening to me.
Ester walked in beaming, bright eyed and bushy tailed having just come on shift. But I had now been at this shit for 12 hours and my contractions had reached a point where they were lasting a couple of minutes with no time between. One would start, peak so intently I honestly believed I might die, then release slowly. And just as I was easing into ‘normal’, the next would start. Sam has told me since, for about half an hour all I kept saying, through the sobbing into the bed was; ‘There’s no break! Why isn’t there any break?’ Bless him; he couldn’t say anything to comfort me so he just kept rubbing my back.
I remember Ester saying to me ‘Hi Kirsty, I’ve heard wonderful things about you.’ And that’s when I let out a massive sob at her ‘please help me, please make it stop.’ She replied simply ‘oh dear.’ Despite all my previous fear, all my telling Sam, no matter what don’t let me have one, I asked for the epidural. The pethadine wasn’t helping anymore to which Ester told me ‘It’s probably helping more than you think’. I stopped my sobbing long enough to give her the stink eye, and then went back to turning the bedding into a snot nest. In the end Sam snapped ‘Can’t she just have the epidural?!’
Ester said I was due another exam in an hour, if I hadn’t progressed much she would make enquiries about an epidural for me. Ester then took a seat in a corner of the room and got on with some paperwork.
At about 8am Sam said I just stopped sobbing, I went very quiet just sat rocking on my ball, my face resting on the bed. I told Sam I was tired and I wanted a lie down. I got up, walked round the bed, got in and pulled the blanket over me. 10 minutes later, from under the blanket I said ‘I need to push.’
Sam looked over at Ester who did not seem concerned, after all only 2 hours ago I was still 4cm. She smiled knowingly and said ‘No you don’t.’ I do remember thinking, erm, I really do. I told her such. ‘No, no. If you needed to push you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself.’ Fair enough, so with the next pain, I took a deep breath, put my chin forward and pushed. Ester was up and at the end of the bed in a flash checking me. She turned to Sam and told him to close all the windows. Despite it being February and cold, you get so hot when you are in labour. Ester then told me I had to sit up. I told her; no.
This went on for a couple of minutes. ‘Kirsty you need to sit up.’ ‘no’. ‘trust me’ ‘no’ ‘it’s not good for you or your baby to be lying down’ ‘no’. ‘Ok, Sam could you pick her up?’ So I was manhandled into a seating position and then Sam stood supporting my shoulder to stop me lying down again. Ester then told me this could take up to an hour and a half before she perched herself on the end of my bed and essentially watched me giving birth.
I don’t remember the contractions being painful now when they came back, they just felt purposeful. Your body completely takes over at this point and Ester was right, I’d reached a point where I couldn’t have stopped the pushing even if I wanted too. I remember Ester asking Sam if he wanted to see the head coming out and he responded ‘nah, you’re alright, I can see it from here.’ Which made me laugh.
There was a slight burning sensation as the head made its way out and then just a big pressure that suddenly gave way as Dylan came into the world in one huge push, already crying. He was rubbed dry, wrapped in a towel and placed on me. He had thick, dark hair and giant hands compared to his tiny little body. He pouted at me as he cried, shocked to be in the big, wide world. It was the most incredible moment.
What was not so incredible is of course, they took Dylan away from me to weigh him and do his agar scores (the test they do on babies to make sure they are coping with breathing, etc), at the same time I had to have another exam. Sadly, they discovered I had a second degree tear and it would require stitches. For some reason my midwife couldn’t do these and she had to request someone else to come in to do them. Until then I was not allowed to get off the bed. It would take an hour for the medical professional to arrive who would become very short tempered with me because I kept crying.
With the greatest respect, apart from the initial 5 minutes I was yet to have a proper moment with my baby. Sam had been shown how to dress him and had given him his first feed while I could only sit and watch. Then this doctor had turned up and even though the midwife had said I could keep my gas and air while they did the stitches, she had taken it off me. Then I was given an injection of local anaesthetic in the sight of the wound and I swear to you, on everything I held dear, pushing a baby out had been less painful. Then she’d done the actual stitches but only after she’d yelled at me for crying because she couldn’t do it while I was crying.
Once that was all done, Dylan was asleep and I needed to shower and change having sat in a pool of my own blood, amniotic fluid and other bodily fluids for getting on for 2 hours at this point. I do think this lead to a difficulty for me to feel a bond with Dylan in those early weeks. But nothing would take away from that first moment of seeing his little face and thinking I did it. Dylan was born at 8.50am on Saturday the 27th of February 2010, the day he was due to be born. Sam and I have since gone our separate ways but there was a mutual respect born in that moment that has meant no matter how bitter things got we always did our best to get along for Dylan’s sake, because he is our now not so little treasure.
Outnumbered 