Sebastian Lester's Birth Story
Sebastian's due date was officially the 30th June, and when that day came and went I was so upset. Dave and I had been trying for a baby for over a year before we conceived (on our first wedding anniversary!), and having to wait even longer to meet our son was just so hard.
I spoke to our obstetrician on Tuesday 3rd July, who booked us in for an induction on Monday 9th July. I was really upset about this, as I had wanted my birth to be as natural as possible and had heard horror stories about induction.
However, on Saturday 7th July I went to bed with period type pains, and from about 10am Sunday morning I began to experience some regular tightenings with some pain. I posted in my Belly Buddies group about this and received positive feedback from the girls that my body had started to labour by itself, which I was so happy about. I didn't sleep at all on the Sunday night (even though I knew I had a big day ahead of us) as the contractions were about 8 minutes apart and becoming painful. I put the TENS machine on about 11pm, and used it throughout the entire labour.
We arrived at the hospital at 5:45am Monday morning for the induction. I was hooked up to the CTG for an hour before the obstetrician showed up. He did an internal and found I was two cm dilated, but not contracting regularly enough for him to leave it alone, so he popped in the prostin gel at 7:20am.He also told me at this time that the baby was posterior, and the midwives gave me some advice on how to turn him. After an hour of monitoring on the CTG, we headed up to our room.
I found that rocking back and forth on the birth ball so great for getting through the contractions, and the TENS machine made the back pain a lot more bearable. The midwives threatened me with artificial rupture of membranes if nothing had happened at 12:00, but with the next contraction they broke. We then headed down to the birthing suites.
I spent the next five hours kneeling on the bed rocking with my chest on the birthing ball, using the gas and TENS machine with each contraction. I was fully dilated at about 3pm, and so began pushing when I felt the need to with my contractions. I was on all fours at this stage, rocking my hips back and forth which really seemed to help. However, after about an hour and a half of pushing and not getting anywhere, the obstetrician was contacted. They popped on the foetal scalp monitor and noticed that the baby's heart rate was decelerating with each contraction, and were getting concerned. They told me that they would give me a spinal block and epidural combination because if the baby wasn't out within the next half hour I would need an emergency caesar. Needless to say I agreed, although I was disappointed that I needed the epidural because I had wanted to birth as naturally as possible.
Once the epidural was in, they placed me on my back and I began to push when I could feel the tightening of my abdomen. After a while they ended up giving me an episiotomy, and attempted to use the forceps to get the baby out. He was so malpositioned though that they couldn't get the forceps in the correct place, so ended up using the vacuum to get him out. He only turned at the very last second as I was pushing his head out. Two pushes later and little Sebastian Lester was born at 5:40pm. Even though he only had the vacuum cap on for four minutes his head was very very bruised and quite excoriated. As a result of this he had quite nasty jaundice for a few days, but his head looks much better now and he's doing just fine.
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Sebastian's Birth Story
Well done.
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