The arrival of Xanthe - a long posterior vaginal delivery (long)
Wednesday & Thursday
Start having a bloody show, period pain, back ache, lots of walking and sex. Decide to reset my countdown to 10 days overdue so I don?t go insane.
Thursday 10pm
Comment to a friend online that I wish I knew what a contraction felt like, because I think I just had one!
Friday, early morning
Start timing contractions, between 15 and 8 minutes apart. No sleep at all! Tell DH when he wakes up that I am not sure what is happening, and I might need to call him to come home from work. He decides to have a sick day.
Friday mid morning
Contractions are well and truly here. Vary between 6 and 8 minutes apart. Not too painful, but because she is posterior I have a terrible back ache that doesn?t go away between contractions.
Friday, lunch time
Ring my doula to come over, say I am not sure if this is the real deal (it didn?t hurt enough to seem to be doing anything). She arrives early afternoon.
Friday, late afternoon
Contractions are down to 3 minutes apart. Leave for the hospital at 6. I am sure that I will be sent home. I know I am having real contractions, but I sense that I am not far dilated enough.
Friday evening
Internal at hospital, 3 cms. Given the option of taking pethidine and going to the wards for a sleep, or going home. I decide to walk around the city for a while to see what that does. The walking makes the contractions settle down. When I stop walking they come back with a force! The hospital still won?t give me a labour room, so we labour for a while in the hospital chapel. Another internal ? and again only 3 cms. I can?t believe that I went through all that pain for no dilation!!! However, I knew within myself that I was only 3 cms even before I had the second internal. We go home around midnight.
Saturday early morning
Try labouring in the shower, can?t sleep at all because laying down makes the contractions far more painful. Get online and try to learn about labour and birth of posterior babies (far to late to be doing research!!!).
Saturday 11 am
Can?t deal with the pain anymore and go to the hospital. 4-5cms dilated. I get a room! Relief. I think knowing that I don?t have to endure another car ride to the hospital relaxes me. I get straight into the bath. Absolute bliss! This is the start of the 1cm per hour timing though, and that is in the back of my head.
Labour for 4 hours, internal, 6 cms. Opt for sterile water injections to help with the back pain. That stings so bad, it was the worst pain I have ever endured for about 20 seconds. It works! Labour for another 4 hours, internal, 8 cms. Hospital must do something, so I opt to have my waters broken. It is a strange sensation having all that warm fluid gush out of me. I keep trying different positions but I am getting very tired. It would be another 8 hours until she was born.
Labour for another 2 hours, internal, 8 cms again but more effaced. I am in absolute agony. The intervention didn?t work. The back pain is so intense I don?t know what to do. Midwife suggests an epidural and I take it. They are worried that my uterus is getting tired, so they start synto. I begin to relax. In hindsight, I am glad I took the epidural when I did because there is no way I could have dealt with transition-intensity contractions for another 6 hours!
Timing starts to get a bit foggy here. At the next internal (2 hours later? Maybe more?) they say I am 10cms and fully dilated, ready to push! Try as I might, I just cannot feel how to push after the epidural. My legs are totally gone. The midwives warn me that this might end in a cs. No!!!! I push with all my might, and make some progress but she isn?t turning. I have been vomiting since transition. The midwife (who hasn?t done an episiotomy in 5 years) doesn?t believe the baby will come out unassisted. I get the epi and her head slides out. One contraction later, at 3.42 am on Sunday morning, Xanthe Grace slips into this world. She is perfect!
While she is settling on my tummy, she poos twice and wees once. LOL! So cute. It takes them two hours to stitch me back up again, the whole time flat on my back with legs in styrups. Xanthe has a little suck at my nipple and then goes for hugs with dad, and to be weighed and measured etc. 2 hours later she has a proper feed for 1.5 hours! It is bliss just holding her.
I had more interventions than I had ever wanted, but I feel like I had an empowering birth. It was 48 hours until I had the epidural, and I am proud of that effort! 54 hours in total. Yikes!!! I honestly think that if she wasn?t posterior, I would have made it the whole way naturally. My midwives were awesome and tried their hardest to make it as natural as possible. In the end it came down to doing everything they could to avoid a csection. I am so thankful for my middies!
