Birth Story

Ok so I know I said I'd post it last night but I got a little busy with the Boob Limpet (who didn't want to sleep anywhere but on his mummy) and by the time I got him into bed I was ready to fall into bed myself.

So, here it is. My birth story!


12:50am on the 13th of March, Seth Asher decided he wanted to come out and so, while I was on the toilet he gave a big wriggle and writhed around a bit then I had my first contraction. I was pretty damn sure it was a contraction because it was stronger than any of my BH had been and was painful. Half an hour later when I was back in bed, an ache started up right across my lower back and down low in my abdomen. This kept me from drifting off to sleep so I got up, took a couple of panadol and tried to stretch my back to ease the ache. No matter what position I tried or how I sat or lay, the ache was constant. Trying to distract myself I roamed around the internet, complained on facebook and just generally tried to keep my mind off the ache, it didn’t really work so well. I tried timing the pains to see if there was any rhythm to it but it just seemed to be so constant that I couldn’t tell the beginning or end of anything, just this darn ache!

After getting in and out of bed several times and a couple of doses of panadol, around 6:30 the pain finally eased enough for me to get a rest, and so I slept. About 3 hours later when I woke I felt great, really refreshed. Not long after that the ache started back up again and so back to trying to distract myself and possibly rev them up a little, I was walking tracks in the carpet going round and round the house. It was sometime about here that I went to the loo and had my show. It didn’t look like much, just a whole lot of clear, slippery, sticky mucus. After a little while I decided to try and conserve some energy so went back to bed to lie down and try to rest up. I had noticed that my belly seemed to be pretty much constantly hard, there didn’t seem to be any break between “contractions” and I was starting to get a little worried. By about 3pm, after bouncing in and out of bed a few times, several toilet trips where I had noticed that my show had taken on a bloody tinge, walking around and around in circles and positioning the couch and a chair so I could lean forwards and still be comfortable, I told DH about my tummy staying hard all the time and he urged me to ring the Delivery Suite at the hospital for their opinion. I wasn’t expecting them to say much but they recommended that I Go in for monitoring and to get everything checked out, so at about 3:30 we got there, I was strapped to the monitors and sure enough I was having frequent, regular, pretty strong contractions, about 3 minutes apart and all I could feel was the same ache I’d been having all day! Babys heart rate was fine and there were no issues with the tracings at all so they were quite happy and yes, my tummy was actually relaxing between contractions it just didn’t really feel like it.

At about 4:30 the midwife asked me if I wanted to have my cervix checked and I was actually pretty excited to think that things were happening but I was just expecting to be in the early stages of labour. Nope, I was 4 to 5 cm dilated and everything was all on. I think the midwife was as surprised as I was that I was that dilated because I was just lying there happy as a clam, chatting normally and only occasionally wincing a little at the pain. Since I wasn’t going to be heading home anytime soon I texted friends and family to let them know what was going on and did a little facebook surfing from my phone too, updating a couple of friends.

At this point DH went to get himself some dinner and at 5:20pm my waters broke just as I was about to walk to a labour room rather than an observation room. This kicked my contractions up a notch and they were more noticibly contractions at this point. Then my MIL rang to say her congratulations and I was trying to talk to her during contractions and it wasn’t working too well. She handed the phone to my SIL and I just couldn’t figure out a polite way to get off the phone so I could concentrate more on what was going on with me than what was happening in my ear. Luckily, DH and my mum soon arrived and I pretty much threw the phone at DH and filled mum in on the latest happenings since neither she nor DH knew that my waters had broken.

Not long afterwards we moved to the bigger room and I settled myself in, leaning on the bed. I was then offered to have the entonox tank brought in and I was a little hesitant, I wanted to see how far I could go without it, but I accepted and goodness did it make the contractions easier to handle, especially when I had to lie there with the monitor belts strapped around me. My nana turned up just before the entonox arrived and we pretty much just had a little party going on lol. Not long afterwards my med students came and we just pretty much sat around watching the monitor, me sucking back on the entonox and keeping ourselves occupied. When I was unstrapped from the monitor I spent a lot of my time leaning on the raised back of the bed. I would have been leaning over it but I was a little short lol. I bunched up some pillows at one point and stuffed them under my chest so there was something a little lower for me to lean on.

At about 8pm or so I think I started getting a little grunty during contractions and felt a little bit like pushing. About this point I think we asked if I could get in the tub and see if it helped any. I was not impressed when I was told there was a 25 minute wait for it to be filled but we still asked for it to be filled anyway. By the time the tub was ready I was getting pretty vocal. The midwife was pretty sure I was already pushing and hey, so I was. I never made it to the tub. A second midwife came in and everyone gathered around while I started into the real pushing. DH held my hand and kept telling me how great I was doing. The midwife checked me and said I had a slight lip of cervix at the front and she tried to hold it out of the way while I pushed during a contraction but it just slipped back again. Soon that wasn’t a worry and I was just pushing away with all that I had and the midwife told me she could feel babys head right there! DH zipped away with the camera and started taking pictures (Yes, of my bits!) In the pictures you can see Seths white head just peeking through and then more and more of it as I pushed him further and further out. They brought me a mirror that one of my med students held on to while I pushed so I could watch what was happening. It was fascinating!

Soon I had DH holding one of my legs and a midwife holding the other while I planted my feet against them and pushed with all I had. I kept running out of puff lol and the midwife kept urging me to hold it just a little longer, just push a little more. I could feel this band of resistance right around where I was supposed to be stretching and I said to the midwife “I don’t think I’m going to be able to stretch” About 5 minutes or so later and after a couple more contractions and more pushing that just didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, babys heartrate on the monitor was starting to get a little wobbly so the midwife said “I’m going to have to give you a little cut” and I practically shouted YES at her. DUH, I’d suggested that like 5 minutes ago! So out came a whopping great big needle and a tube of local anaesthetic and, believe me, I was sucking back on the gas pretty hard as she numbed me down there. As soon as I was good and numb she brought out the scissors (both DH and my mother tell me they were gigantic!) And gave me a goodly sized episiotomy. Seths head popped right out after that! Waiting for the next contraction, it felt like a lifetime passed! My mum told me that the midwife really barely had time to lift his head and pull the cord over it before I had pushed him out and he was plonked up onto my belly.

A flurry of warm towels descended on us and all I could do was stare down at my gorgeous little man as they dried him off a bit and wrapped both of us up. He didn’t really look all that pretty lol, in fact he was really quite white and looked rather pissed off at being evicted from his lovely warm home.

This is about the time things took a downward turn. I was bleeding. A lot. They jabbed me in the thigh with the synto and DH cut the cord. They then had me deliver the placenta and jabbed me in the other thigh with some more synto to try to get the bleeding to slow. DH said it looked like I was peeing blood lol. In the end they reckon I lost about a litre all up. I then needed to be stitched back up and the doctor who did it was lovely. He was explaining everything to my med students while he did it and although I have to say it’s a little disconcerting having people chat over your nether regions, I had other things on my mind like my little man who was still snuggled up on my chest/tummy, bundled up under a whole lot of warm towels.

The doctor put my feet up in the stirrup things and very soon they went icy cold from the blood leaving them for more important destinations lol. While I was being stitched (which took about half an hour!) I gave Seth his first feed and just lay there looking at each other. I had a loot at his eyes to see if I could see whether he was going to have the same genetic disorder that I have and when I saw that he most likely wouldn’t, I announced it in a bit of a squeak to the room and my mum did a happy dance lol. After I was all stitched up and the room was tidied a bit, they put the bed back together and let my feet down. Gosh it was good to get them warmed up! DH got to hold Seth and pass him around for the others to meet while I slowly made my way to a position closer to sitting. That was definitely uncomfortable. Then they weighed him and measured him and dressed him up in a cute little outfit.

Soon my mum and nana left so DH and I could just sit and enjoy our new arrival and I had a shower to make me feel a little refreshed. In the shower I felt a little faint but didn’t really think much of it, I had after all just given birth. When I got back to the room the bed linens had been changed and the floor had been mopped and there was my MIL and SIL meeting Seth and just cooing all over him! We stayed in Delivery Suite until about 11:30pm when they came with a wheelchair to wheel me to my room on the maternity ward. I was definately in need of a good sleep at this point and not long afterwards everyone had to go home and I had my first night with my darling little angel.

During the night I had quite a bit of pain where my stitches were and I couldn’t sleep because it was so bad. My bladder got really full but everything was quite bruised so I couldn’t pee and when they tried to get me on a bed pan to give it a go, well the room started going white around the edges and my hearing got really muffled so I quickly lay down on the bed again. It took me a couple of minutes to feel right again.
Two days later they transfused 3 units of blood into me because my hemoglobin was horribly low (I started at around 130, dropped to the 80s the day after delivery and was in the low 60s the next day) and had dropped more than they thought it would. They took me in for a scan to see if I had any internal bleeding and what they called “Free fluid” but they found a hematoma instead, which is basically just a bruise. I didn’t know it but I also had one on my butt around where the end of my episiotomy is and I think that’s why I had such a bad night the first night with pain.

Now I’m feeling a lot better, I have to take iron tablets religiously and because of the blood loss it took a little bit longer than normal for my milk to come in but it’s slowly getting there. I think the Domperidone is helping as is pumping at every opportunity.

Seths Stats were 3310g (7lb4), 50cm long with a 36cm head.