After feeling ill with flu like symptoms and high temps for the weekend and having contractions on and off from Friday afternoon, I had a show on Saturday morning and started having irregular contractions on and off for the rest of the weekend. They started up again on Monday around 1pm and continued for the rest of the afternoon. Around 4pm I started to feel ill again and had the shakes with temp and decided that I should go and have a lay down. I fell asleep til around 6.30pm when I awoke still have contractions and feeling even worse than before. I got up and went in for a bath thinking that if they were false labour pains that they would stop while I was in the bath. They didn't, I called my midwife Victoria from the bathtub to see if she could come and check me, also to let her know what was going on as her husband had to work nightshift that night so he needed to know asap to call in. Just as I was about to get out of the bath I got an almighty contraction, one that brought me to tears - of course all of my boys were hanging around the bathroom door at this time and witnessed it.
Victoria came and checked me and I was 4cm dilated, by this time Mum was here. Not long after my gf Jenny who was to be my photographer arrived. We decided that a walk was in order to get things speeding up. Had a couple of contractions on our walk but that was it, things had backed right off, in the mean time back at Mum and Dads house the pool had been set up and everything was ready to go. I conned Victoria into breaking my waters, something that generally isn't done in homebirths, just to get things happening again. Ok waters done, abit like Niagra Falls, there was so much. But it worked. Contractions started to hot up around now. Tried to stay upright and on my feet for as long as possible, just walking around the lounge room.
It wasn't too long before I started to feel the urge to push. I got into the pool which felt like heaven, I was immediately soothed by it's warmth. After pushing for what felt like forever, around 1 and a half hours and still no progress my midwife did an internal and found that I was only 6cms dilated. At this point I should explain that the whole idea of having a homebirth is to have minimal intervention and to just go with what the body is feeling as opposed to having internals which is why this wasn't noticed earlier. I was also found to have inpacted bowels, basically I was blocked up after being badly constipated for days. The pushing sensation I had been feeling was poo push not baby push, too hard to distinguish between. Neither poo nor baby could get out for one was blocking the other. At this stage I got out of the pool. This is where it gets alittle grose. My midwives decided to do a manual removal of the poo - sorry if tmi, then to give me an enema to clean me out. Fantastic I know. But it did the job thankfully.
I was absoulutely exhausted by now as I had been going alnight and it was now around 5.30 am I think. My midwife Victoria has a 4 month old who is being breastfeed so she decided that now would be a good time to go and feed her bub. She only lives 5 minutes away so I was ok with that, I still had the second midwife Jan there. My temperature was checked and it was found to be high and bubs heartrate had excellerated due do it. After a few words between my Mum - who wanted me to have some panadol as I'd had some in early labour when the same thing was happening and it worked for me and Jan - who is all for letting things go naturally it was decided that I would have some. Thanks Mum. I stayed laying on the blow up mattress we had just breathing through my contrations, so very hard to do when your not allowed to push and tried to let my body recover abit and regain some energy and finish dilating. This happened pretty quickly, maybe 40 minutes or so.
I could feel bub moving down as the pain in my spine was killing me, all I wanted was some counter pressure and everyone had left me alone, so here I was sticking my fist into my back trying to ease the pain. I started to feel bub coming and yelled out to let Jan know and to tell her to call Victoria up. I wasn't going to do this without her. Mum and Jan asked if I wanted to get back into the pool or to just stay on the bed as I was progressing well there. I briefly though about staying there then I remember how much I really wanted this bub born into the water and summons up the energy to get up and hop backinto the water. Again instant relief. I was having big pushing contractions and I was abit scared to go with them after what had happened earlier but soon I had no choice and my body took over. Victoria arrived and I was happy to start pushing now.
I pushed for 20 minutes, screamed and swore a hell of a lot, but finally my little girl came out. I had a mirror to loook into while I was pushing watching her progress and I truely believe that kept me going throughout it. Tehyas head came out, perhaps alittle too fast as I wouldn't stop pushing but Victoria slowed her exit down alittle stopping me from tearing thankfully. The next contraction came around about 2 minutes late I think, a fair while later and brought with it her shoulders and the rest of her body which I quickly reached down and caught as she came out and put her up onto my chest. She was covered in so much vernex that she actually looked preterm even though it was the day before her due date. She arrived at 6.35am on Tuesday 8th March.
We stayed in the pool for a while and Tehya had a little hat ut on her and a bluey put over her to keep in her temp. She stayed attached to her cord until it stopped beating, probably around 30 to 40 minutes later when I clamped her cord and Mark cut it. She was taken oveer to the mattress right next to the pool, still in eye shot, cleaned alittle and weighed and measured. They told me she weighed nearly 4kg but I truely couldn't see her as that big. The were using Jans scales which obviusly weren't acurate because I took her to get weighed the following morning at the chemist and she only weighed 3710gm or 8lb 2oz and was 50cm in length, her head 35 cm. So not tooo big afterall. I stayed in the pool until I had some more contractions and delivered the placenta in there naturally and without any shots.
We called the boys up around 7.30am, after I had cleaned up alittle and was laying in the bed. It was so good being able to share it with my boys so soon afterwards.
So there you have it. My home water birth story. Didn't go quite as planned, and lasted way longer than we had anticipated but still ened perfectly. With my beautiful little girl, who I might add absolutley loves her bath.
Tehya's Home Waterbirth Story
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