30-10-2009 - Birth Story

My mood while writing this blog: Happy!!

Birth Story – Archie Lawlee 21.10.09

On Tuesday 20^th October, 8 days after my due date, I started to get cramps with the Braxton Hicks about 6pm, I was on bed rest and mum bought in dinner of Pizza and Garlic bread which I had to eat lying down because the tightening of my bump meant I couldn’t sit up to eat…mum had said she would help me have a bath that evening so I was waiting up for her as she was doing a haircut, by about 9 o’clock I knew I was in labour but didn’t say anything as I didn’t want to get anybody’s hopes up. About 10pm mum came in and said she was just going to cut pop’s hair and she would help me with the bath, by this time I just wanted to go to bed and get some sleep before going into full blown labour so when she left the room I burst into tears…about 10.30 I had my bath and when I got out and into bed the contractions started to come a lot stronger, I tried to sleep but couldn’t so I read a whole magazine from start to finish waiting for these pains to either disappear or get stronger as I still didn’t really know if it really was labour but I had a good feeling, about 12am I text Louise to say I had sharp pains an what do contractions feel like…she text back “sounds promising, keep me posted” which I did NOT find helpful, I wanted her to convince me this was finally true labour!!! About 12.30am I finally asked mum to come down to me, I burst into tears and told her I think he’s coming, she said “why u crying? It’s a good thing!!” with the biggest smile on her face! Contractions were coming a minute long every 2 minutes. Mum had to phone Linda 5 times as she was in such a deep sleep! She finally answered and said she would meet us at the hospital, mum had a quick shower and phoned for an ambulance, the lady on the phone told mum to strip me off waist down and put towels down which made mum panicky thinking baby was going to shoot out…I wish!!! About 1.20 TWO ambulances turned up, 4 paramedics!! All men and me lying there knickerless!! They wrapped me in a blanket, put me on the stretcher and off we went, I was given gas + air in the ambulance, which was great :-D sirens rang and paramedics Martyn and Trevor looked after me. Apparently I demanded they let me bring the gas+ air with me when we left the ambulance so they connected it to my trolley, which I was very happy about. In the lift I told them 4^th floor so up we went only to realise it was the wrong floor so back in we went and back down to 2^nd floor Labour and Delivery. Linda was waiting for us here and started to work on my feet straight away while we waited in the corridor to go up to Carmen Suite. Once in Carmen Suite my gas and air ran out!!! Paramedics moved like lightening to replace tank and relieve me again. We were taken into a room and I was put on the mat on the floor with a massive bean bag, contractions continued to come a minute long every 2 minutes, Linda really helped working on my back and feet at this early stage. In the room was a bed, a Birthing mat with lots of pillows and a giant bean bag, a birthing pool, apparatus with swinging holders and different shaped seats for your comfort, and a bathroom with toilet and bath. About 5am a midwife came to examine me…I was disappointed to hear I was only 2-3cm but was 100% effaced, examined again at 9am and was still only 4cm…think we then realised this was going to be a long labour. My midwife was called Olga, lovely lady who talked very slowly and like a child at first but when we explained things she talked normally again, she had about a minute to get everything out that she wanted to say before the next contraction came so talking at snails pace was never going to work. She was also big on letting me make my own decisions, she didn’t like the idea of an interfering mother and kept saying I can talk for myself haha!! I was told I needed to do a wee and empty my bladder, they gave me a commode to wee in but that didn’t work, I just could not relieve myself sitting in the middle of a big room on that thing with people watching so I decided to crawl to the toilet and do it out of sheer desperation as midwife was threatening to put a catheter in which freaked me out!! Needless to say I managed to wee in the loo so no catheter needed!! I tried to get into the pool but could only manage 5 minutes, I felt like I couldn’t control my pain with my body floating whereas on the floor I felt I was on top of the pain and keeping under control, getting thro each contraction, mum counted “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, …….52, 53, 54, 55” with every contraction, it really helped as I saw “1-10” as the start “10-30” was the hard bit I had to think about the counting to take my mind off the pain, then “30+” was the wind down where I had the comfort of knowing that contraction was about to end and I was another step closer. So when mum decided to start counting starting with “61, 62, 63…” I was not impressed as I felt like I was at the end of my contraction in my head because the numbers was high when really it had only just started!!! I had to tell her so and she went back to normal, I think she was just sick of saying the same old numbers about 50 thousand times over an over!! I also had a twitch in my feet for the whole 24 hours, mum said they did not stop moving the whole time, I think it was my way of getting through the pain I would bang my feet on the floor with each contraction. By this time Linda couldn’t work on my back as it hurt too much so she continued to just work on my feet, unfortunately Linda decided to get me through a contraction my pushing points in my back and I lashed out in pain, I think she forgave me for hitting her with my excuse being I was in labour :-D I also hit the midwife at one point too as she put hot flannel on my back and started rubbing it which I couldn’t cope with and accidentally lashed out sending her glasses flying! About 1pm Wednesday I was 6cm, contractions were coming hard and every 2 minutes and baby was now back-to-back having turned in the last few hours. At this point I was exhausted and the pain was getting on top of me so I asked for Pethidine, the midwife tried other things to help me cope first but after another hour or so I asked for the pethidine again and she administered it, however this slowed the labour right down, for about 4 hours I was able to sleep in between contractions and had a break however I needed this because I was so tired I wasn’t coping and wasn’t going to have any energy to push, Linda took this opportunity to have a nap as she’d been with us the whole time and was shattered, mum read a magazine in between encouraging me through each contraction. Mum started to feel hungry so Linda said she would go get her something to eat, she came back with two dried weetabix in a cup, no milk or anything, me and mum just laughed and laughed at this, don’t think mum was very happy and they were still sitting on the side when we left. Eventually the midwife started to say if things didn’t pick up again she was going to have to send me down to L&D where they would need to give me drugs to quicken my contractions again but thankfully it happened naturally and this want necessary. At 6pm they decided to break my waters to help things along, this was a strange sensation of gushing water, no pain. Pain got a lot worse after this and contractions were at there strongest, by 9.00pm it was nearly time to push as I was 9 ½ cm, I wanted to start pushing at 9.30 and felt like my body was doing it for itself, the midwife wouldn’t let me an I had to wait until 9.45. Before pushing there was the changeover of midwifes, Olga went home and Ann-Marie came on to assist the pushing, she had had SPD with all 3 of her pregnancies so she was perfect for me as she knew exactly how I should be positioned so I was in the least pain from my SPD and at as little risk of damage as possible. I was finding it very hard not to push so was a relief when she said ok lets start…to begin with I was lying on my back but this wasn’t working so mum made me lean up on my knees and over the bean bag so I was upright, the pain was horrendous, I didn’t think the pushing part was going to be so hard, although I knew it was going to be painful the extent of the pain was totally unexpected, it was not something I had thought about as I had only ever given thought to the contractions when thinking about labour. I pushed, mum held me tight and kept encouraging me, midwife did her bit and Linda sat by my lags holding a mirror up so mum could watch the baby come out…she didn’t want to miss it!! After about 45 minutes his head came out, I thought my contractions had stopped but midwife told me I needed to give a push as his chin was stuck inside so I pushed and, as mum said, “ it flopped out!” At the point mum says I decided I’d had enough and was screaming and yelling in pain and tried to stand up and run away, she says they had to convince me it wasn’t a good idea with a head between my legs!! At 10.50 I gave one almighty push and his body slithered out, my beautiful little boy. I’m terrified of needles so when she came over with the injection to get the placenta out I freaked, until mum reminded me I’d just given birth so a little needle was hardly going to hurt, she was right, I hardly felt it!! Baby didn’t breath properly for about 5 minutes so she worked on him for a little while until he was ok then I had a cuddle for a few minutes then passed him to mum, I was so exhausted I couldn’t even cope with holding him for long, the placenta came out really easy, she just pulled it and out it popped. I was lying in the biggest pool of blood and gunk and baby poo ever, I was very shocked, it looked like a blood bath!! Mum and Linda had a cuddle each and I conked out. I woke up about 20 minutes later, about 11.30pm and Linda had gone home, midwife was weighing him and giving him his Vit K etc…while mum was snapping away catching it all on camera, then she washed and dressed him which was so nice for me to watch, my new baby boy being pampered my his Grandma, my amazing mum!! I could not have got through that labour without her, she did not leave my side at all except to run to the toilet in between contractions. He went on the breast for the first time about 1am. Once Archie was settled in the transparent little hospital trolley I was able to have a bath – YUK!! Once I was done with it, it was disgusting!! I was worried about the tear and “that area” hurting but it was actually ok, got out, got dressed and was taken to a nice little ward with one other lady and settled into bed, by this time it was about 3am Thursday morning and I had been awake for approx. 40 hours yet I still didn’t sleep, I just couldn’t stop staring at my little boy, he went on the breast and actually drank for the first time at about 5am. My brother and sister-in-law came to visit followed by my sister, mum and Aunty Coral, he was seen by paediatrician and we were discharged home about 6.30.