Our Very Very Speedy Arrival
Considering my previous birth, I was always anxious about how this one would work out. The first was a long and painful dysfunctional labour with coupling contractions and with Amelia born posterior. Our first birth story is below here https://www.bellybelly.com.au/forums...adventure.html
When they say that all your labours can be completely different, I understand what they mean. This is how our very quick and unexpected labour went.
About 2am I was woken up by one very active baby, she was squirming and thrashing around and grinding her head around in my pelvis. I was so worried that she was turning breech or something that I was up for two hours, on all fours using the positions and exercises for optimal baby positioning, finally getting back to sleep around 4. Bubs had been persistently posterior since about 37 weeks and I was spending hours a day doing exercises to encourage her to stay anterior.
At about 5 I was woken by a very mild contraction, I dozed back to sleep and was woken again around 15 or 20 minutes later, this continued until about 7 oclock when I decided to get up and have a shower. The contractions were pre-labour style, mild and irregular between 20 minutes and 10 minutes apart, so I just slowly finished packing my hospital bags and tidied up the house a bit, and then got onto my ball on all fours to rock through them.
Around 8, they changed, they became very strong and 2 to 3 minutes apart just about instantly, I tried to go to the toilet but as soon as I sat down the pressure down below made me jump through the roof, by 8.30 I decided to ring the hospital, told them how strong and close they were and that I couldnt sit down at all (I was worried there was a babies head right there) and decided that we would pack up and go up. DH was in the middle of making breakfast and my mum was about to get in the shower when I declared we were going and within 15 minutes were were in the car. Which was a very painful ride, I couldnt put my bum on the seat and spent the 20 minute drive holding myself in the air with the bars.
When we arrived at the hospital my contractions were very close together, making the walk from the stopping bay to the birth suite extremely slow, I had so many on such a short walk. We even got stuck holding open the lift doors and got rescued by a mw walking past. She instantly put us straight into a birthing suite and went to get a mw who was actually on duty. We were left on our own for some time, I was using DH as a hanging post because I felt like I needed to hang.
When the mw arrived I asked her to do an internal to find out how many cm's I was and to check the position of bubs but I couldnt physically get up on the bed, my contractions seemed to not end properly and take a break but instead just eased off and increased. When I finally managed to get up she quickly checked and told me that I was 4cms and bubs was well engaged and even slightly descended and was in a very good position for birth. It was 9.30.
I asked to hop in the bath but was told that there was no mw to stay with me because they were very busy, so I opted for the shower. I felt like getting on all fours and using a birth stool to rest my elbows on and have the shower head held on my back. My contractions were crazy, they were on on top of the other and the pain was excruciating, the poor gas tube was having the life sucked out of it. It wasnt long before I was asking for an epidural, I had just been told I was only 4cm and I was not going 7 hours again in this situation like my last labour. The mw told me there was 3 others in front of me for one and it was quite a long wait and would I like some pethadine. I agreed and was even wondering as she walked off why I had, it done nothing but make me groggy in my last labour and I despised the stuff.
Minutes later though I felt a strange slight popping sensation and I said I think my waters just broke, DH and mum both said they werent sure because I was already in the shower, but a split second later a second big pop and my waters came gushing out. Basically as soon as this happended I felt something big there, and the instant urge to push and I started screaming I need to push, DH has hit the buzzer and ran straight away to get a midwife, I just kept saying 'why am I pushing, I need to push, I cant stop pushing, Im only 4cm's what is happening' over and over. My body had taken over though and I couldnt stop it.
The mw came in and squeezed in between me and the wall and started tellling me that my baby was coming out, that its okay to push and I was having my baby. 4 big pushes and out came our beautiful baby girl. The mw caught her head from behind and DH caught the rest of her from underneath me, I hadnt given them much room to manouvere because I was in the corner of the shower and couldnt actually move. I picked her up and carried her to the bed. My labour time had been 1 hr and 45 minutes and 2 minutes of pushing, I used only gas and got no tears or even grazes.
Everything had happened so fast we were all a bit dazzed. I had some trouble birthing the placenta, the mw said my uterus was exhausted and probably in shock, it was having trouble contracting because my bladder was full but I couldnt empty it either, she said it was in a bit of shock to. Our little girl, unnamed still, was 9lb 1oz (4120gm) and was 56cm's long, and her agpar was 9 and 10.
We were left to ourselves for a few hours to gaze at our new little bundle but then I started feeling like vomiting, my lower belly started to cramp and it didnt ease up, the pain was real bad so I called the mw, I started vomiting and was shaking and getting cold sweats, she called for a dr as she didnt know what was wrong. It took a while for him to come and it had started to ease off but came back while he was there. Apparently my body had gone into shock with the quick delivery and all my muscles and ligaments were cramping up, and the pain was causing the shaking and sweats. It would come in bouts and ease off again, and was worse after I fed. I was given painkillers and a heat pack, through the rest of the day and night it slowly happended less and less.
When I was getting ready to leave the hospital I was visited by an OB. He explained that what I had experienced was called a Precipitate Labour, which is a labour under 2 hours and is actually considered a labour complication and can very dangerous for both baby and mother. Dangerous to baby because of a lack of oxygen supply during the intensity of the labour, and the fact that it can be born in a dangerous situation like a toilet seat. Dangerous to mum because of the increased risk of subtancial tearing internally and externally, haemorrage and retained placenta, uterine inversion and the physical and emotional shock. I am lucky that they only things I got was the physical shock. He said that if we decide to have a third then my pregnany would be closely monitored and probably recommended that at the first sign of labour an ambulance be called.
I am glad that our little (well big) bundle arrived safely in the end, she is happy and healthy and we are all doing well. Her 21mth old big sister loves her dearly and is completely in awe of her, loves reading to her and playing cup a teas. We finally decided on a name for her at 4 days old and named her Chloe May.
