The birth of Joshua Harrison (warning: very long!)
Everyone had been telling me how second births are easier and having had an epidural with my daughter, I wanted to try and have my little boy drug free. At my 38 week check up my BP was right up so my OB decided to induce me the next day (exactly the same thing happened with DD so although I had wanted to avoid this, it was no surprise). Unlike DD’s induction where I was made to have my waters broken and go on the synto right away, which resulted in contractions 2 minutes apart within half an hour (which near killed me!), this OB agreed to break my waters in the morning and give me until lunch time to start labouring on my own, and to only start the drip then if nothing had happened. I was happy with this plan and was fairly confident that labour would start on its own as I had been having intense BHs for weeks and after a check the OB told me I was already 2cm dilated, so obviously all these BHs had been doing something!
After a sleepless night we arrived at the hospital bright and early in the morning. I wasn’t as nervous this time as the first time (with my DD I had a panic attack in the hospital I was so scared!). Having my waters broken hurt a lot more than I remember with DD and my OB then left and said he would be back at lunchtime. We decided to go for walks, firstly around the hospital and then over the road to the Botanic Gardens and around the block. It was a lovely day and I felt very calm walking around with DH. I was getting contractions on and off, but because I had been getting BHs on and off for weeks it didn’t really feel much different! Every now and then we would pop back to our room so the midwife knew all was ok, then we would go for another walk or read for a bit and listen to music.
It was soon midday and our lunch arrived. I was convinced that the drip would soon be started and was dreading it. But during lunch the contractions started up with a vengeance! Within no time at all I went from having a few irregular pains here and there to full on labour – just in time! My OB popped back soon after and put the bung in my arm anyway in case I needed the synto and then he left me to it. Thankfully the midwife could see that I was definitely in labour so did not need the drip. Soon after this there was a midwife change and I got a lovely experienced midwife. Having had a very average midwife at DD’s birth I was pleased to have someone I felt confident with. She was supportive of my plan to try to manage without pain relief and to try the shower, different positions etc to handle the pain.
For the next few hours I felt that I handled the labour very well. The shower was a lifesaver and I spent ages in there. The midwife kept suggesting different positions to try as well and DH was great at spraying hot water on my tummy in the shower while the other shower head (thankfully there were two!) was on my back. After a while (I have no idea at all of time) the contractions started getting pretty hard to bear and I was struggling to cope without pain relief so I considered getting an epidural. The midwife phoned the anaesthetist who was just finishing up a procedure and was going to come by afterwards. While waiting for the anaesthetist, I asked if I could have some pethideine. The midwife said yes so I thought I would give it a go as I would have to have a catheter with the epidural and wasn’t too keen on that, plus I still wanted to try to cope with the birth without the epidural.
The peth shot hurt like hell! She gave it to me during a contraction so that I wouldn’t feel it, but I still did and ouch!! I found that while the peth didn’t take away the pain, it did make me a little dopey and dulled the contractions a tiny bit and made it just manageable. I also started sucking on the gas during contractions but I didn’t feel that it was actually doing anything and soon got sick of it. Soon the anaesthetist arrived but I needed an internal first. It turns out that I had dilated 3cms in an hour and was at 6cm so I was confident that labour would be over soon and I would be able to cope without an epidural so the anaesthetist was sent away. I would learn later that this was not a good move!
Within another hour or so I was fully dilated. By this stage it was around 4.45pm, so it had only been under 4 hours since established labour had begun. I remember going through transition – I hate that stage! I felt like I was completely losing control and kept saying over and over ‘I can’t do this’. I was on a mat on the floor at this stage, trying to get into a comfy position which was impossible and although I knew that I was only feeling this way because I was in transition, it was still so horrible feeling so out of control. I remembered this stage with DD and kept telling myself that it would soon be over.
From here things went terribly, terribly wrong. The midwife did an internal and found I just had a lip of cervix left which she pushed away and I started pushing. She got out a mirror so I could see what was happening (the mirror was HUGE – I was imagining a little hand mirror or something but this one showed me EVERYTHING!!). I remembered how hard I found pushing with DD so I put my all into it. The midwife had contacted my OB to let him know that I was fully dilated and after a while he arrived. During one push I felt my little boy move. We thought he must have moved down further, but then I started getting bad back pain. At first it was bearable, so I kept pushing, but then it really started to not feel right. From here my memory is a little hazy but I remember the OB getting me to move onto my side and to try pushing from there. I also remember getting very very distressed as the back pain became more and more intense. Pretty soon the back pain was so bad that I could barely even feel the urge to push and I started to find pushing unbearable. Sometime around now my OB realised that something was wrong. He tried to examine me to check on the baby’s position but the pain was so intense that I couldn’t even stay still long enough for him to do a proper examination. My body was writhing around in pain so that I could barely even control it and I could feel myself straining muscles all over my body.
Sometime around now the OB decided that perhaps my contractions weren’t strong enough so he said he was going to push through some synto. I screamed at him over and over not to do it. I knew that the contractions were strong enough, but the baby just wasn’t budging. Apparently I wasn’t making a lot of sense at this stage and was just yelling at him ‘No no no!!’. The synto didn’t work. It just landed me in even more pain and made me even more unable to push as the back pain was overshadowing any other feeling. I didn’t feel an urge to push at all by this stage. The midwife didn’t seem too sure about what was happening and was urging me to keep pushing as she knew I wanted to birth naturally, but I just knew that it wasn’t going to happen. Something just felt very very wrong.
The midwife and OB were regularly checking the baby’s heartbeat which had never even faltered through all of this. But then when they went to check next neither could find the heartbeat. I asked if everything was ok and, obviously trying to keep me calm, my OB said it was all fine. Around now he started leaving the room and talking on his mobile phone a lot, although I was still pretty confused about what was going on. He mentioned at some stage that he was just going to arrange a little pain relief for me to get this bub out. Then all I could think of was pain relief. I had thought he was just arranging an anaesthetist for an epidural and all I kept saying is ‘Where is he, where is he?’. I kept getting told that he was nearly there, or that he was here and on his way in, but time kept passing with no anaesthetist. I was getting more and more distressed as the pain was just unbearable – the contractions were strong enough to push the baby out but it just wasn’t going anywhere and I thought my back was going to break in two it hurt so much.
At some stage here the OB told me that I was either going to have a light spinal so I could still push or a total spinal in case I needed a caesar and that we were going to try and get the baby out with forceps and if that didn’t work, then I would have to have a caesar. I was yelling at him to just do a caesar (which is the last thing I really wanted, but at the time I just wanted the baby out!). I noticed then that the OB was in scrubs, but I still didn’t realise I was going to theatre until they started wheeling the bed out of the room and telling me to lie down so I didn’t fall off. The pain was so bad I couldn’t even control my body and yelled at them that I can’t lie down! They told me it wasn’t far to theatre and before I knew it I was in a huge theatre surrounded by people dressed like smurfs. There were nurses setting things up, my midwife had come with us and my OB was there doing something. Then the anaesthetist finally arrived! I was sooo glad to see him but it was still ages before the spinal block was in. He started getting me to sign forms and was explaining all the risks to me. I was yelling at him over and over again to just do it! I would have signed anything to be rid of that pain. At this stage the pain was making a normal labour seem like a walk in the park.
It was finally time for the spinal block. DH was asked to leave the room and three people held me with my back arched forward while telling me I had to stay extremely still. I thought I was staying still although it was killing me as the contractions were coming hard and fast but apparently with each contraction my back would arch the wrong way and it took three attempts to get the spinal in. Then I was tipped onto the bed on one side and I started to feel some relief, but then they tipped me the other way and the pain was excruciating. I screamed and then a few seconds later the block kicked in completely and I felt nothing from my armpits down. I was still pretty distressed and not entirely sure what was going on but I remember being moved onto the theatre bed and I could vaguely feel my legs being put into stirrups and then I realised that DH was right next to me, also dressed in scrubs. I hadn’t even realised he had gone to get changed. Apparently he had been waiting outside theatre when the spinal was going in, although he could still hear my screams.
It seemed to take quite a while for everyone to get set up at this point. Everyone was very busy, and then the paediatrician arrived (from the other end of the room so would have walked in and been faced with my nether regions in stirrups – what a great first impression!). I remember telling him that I knew him as he had treated my DD in hospital recently when she was sick. I also started apologising to the anaesthetist for being such a ***** earlier but he said that was ok! To be honest, I wouldn’t even recognise him now but he was great in theatre. He explained what was happening as I had a sheet placed in from of me so I couldn’t see what was happening.
I was then told that they were ready and that although I couldn’t feel the contractions, they would tell me when one was coming and I was to try to push as best I could to help him come out. After two contractions and a massive cut, at 8.09pm the OB managed to wrench out our little boy. It was the strangest thing as I didn’t even feel him come out of me. The paediatrician just appeared from behind the curtain holding a baby boy for a second and then he was taken away. It felt just as I imagine a caesar would feel, although it wasn’t one! DH then went with our little boy to the resus table where the paediatrician worked on him for a bit. He never cried, but for some reason I knew he was ok and wasn’t worried. DH then came back to my side. I asked him what was happening down the other end and he said I was being stitched up. I then asked again a while later and was told the same thing! They must have given me something to make me feel relaxed as I was quite dopey and the peth would have worn off some time before this. Apparently they gave my little boy some drugs to reverse the effects of peth in case that was what was making him so quiet, but it didn’t change anything. He was a very quiet boy at the beginning and I didn’t even hear him cry for the first few days. Apparently it could have been from having a difficult birth, although I am told he was never in distress and the reason they couldn’t find his heartbeat earlier was because he had turned posterior so his heart was not where they expected it to be when they were trying to find it with the Doppler.
After the OB and paediatrician were done my little boy was handed to me all wrapped up and I put him on my chest where he had a feed as I was wheeled to recovery. I was still feeling very out of it as I phoned my parents to pass on the news. I spoke to my OB briefly who said that my boy had turned posterior right at the last minute (while I was pushing) which was very unusual because he had been in a perfect position right up until then. He was so low down that he got stuck in that position and came out nose first. He was so stuck that the OB couldn’t even use the forceps to get him into the right position and then pull him out, rather he just had to pull him out where he was so I received a cut pretty much as far as you can go! Despite all of this, my little boy was fine, with apgars of 6 and 8. He was to be connected to monitors for next 12 hours or so and later in the night he had to go to the nursery for an hour as his stats weren’t good enough. He received some oxygen and had some blood tests in case he had an infection, but thankfully all was ok and he was returned to me.
I woke the next morning to excruciating pain and absolutely no control over my pelvic floor (I still had a catheter in thankfully). I started crying my heart out – it had all been very traumatic and I was just in so much pain. A midwife came in and told me off for not buzzing straight away to get something for the pain. She gave me some pain killers which helped immensely. Slowly over the next few days some feeling came back into my pelvic floor – not a lot of control, but something at least. I was still on a lot of painkillers and was in agony if I missed a dose. I eventually had a look at the damage and was amazed at the length of the cut and the swelling and bruising. More than four weeks later my bum is still black and blue!
I found out from the other OB that I had my OB quite worried for a while there. He certainly did a good job of not letting me know this at the time though – he was always very calm and soothing and, although I am not happy with how the birth went, I am very happy with my OB.
On the day I was discharged from hospital (6 days after giving birth – again not what I was expecting – both DH and I had expected me to be up and about in no time after the birth!) I told my OB that I was still in a lot of pain. He asked the midwife to have a look and remove some of the stitches and thank goodness she did! Apparently my swelling had caused the stitches to start cutting into my skin which was why I was in so much pain. Having these stitches removed was a huge relief although the process of having them removed was agony. Several days after returning home from hospital I found myself in a tremendous amount of pain again. There was one spot where I was so so swollen and I couldn’t even sit down, the pain was so bad. Eventually I phoned the OB’s office and the midwife got me to come in to have a look, however she then decided that she would need to get an OB in as she couldn’t get the stitches out. The other OB came in as mine wasn’t in that day, and he told me that the knot in this particular stitch that was causing all the grief was actually under the skin and it was all so swollen that he couldn’t cut it. He said to take three times the amount of pain killers I was already taking for the next week or so until the stitches dissolved. I was to come back the next day so they could check it again in case it was getting infected.
I came home in tears from the pain. I had no idea how I was going to cope with this amount of pain for the next week. My little boy was already so sleepy and the last thing I wanted to do was take more pain killers – the poor little guy would never be awake with all these pain killers coming through my breast milk! I couldn’t even drive the pain was so bad and I started to get very very depressed. Like the birth hadn’t been bad enough – now my recovery was going backwards! I went back the next day and was so happy that my OB was in and he was able to remove all the external stitches. It was the most amazing relief. My skin was still swollen there and even when the offending stitch was released, you could still see exactly where it had been as there was a huge indentation there where the stitch had started cutting through the skin. My OB said he had stitched me up very loosely but the swelling had been too much, hence the trouble I had experienced.
I am still very sore and can’t imagine ever healing up again. I think the internal stitches have all come out now but I still have a long way to go. I now mostly have control over my pelvic floor but number twos are agony!! And as for DTD, well let’s just say that poor DH is going to be waiting a very very long time!
I know that the most important thing is that I have my gorgeous, healthy little boy but I still can’t help but feel very disappointed about how the birth went. I had expected an easy labour the second time around and it was all going so well right until the end. And my plan to have no pain relief turned into a labour with peth, gas and then theatre with a total spinal block!! I have spoken to my OB about it and he has been very understanding – he seems to understand the disappointment I am feeling and has said that there is nothing that could have been done – bubs just got very stuck at the wrong time. He said even he was very surprised at his turning at that point and he could never have predicted it. He said on paper I would have been a low risk birth and that he had thought he would miss the entire birth altogether by the time he got there. He had thought with 4 or 5 pushes bubs would have been out – probably by 5.30pm! I asked what this means for number three (if I decide to go there!) and he told me to just have an epidural. There is a chance I would have another normal birth like with DD, but there is also a chance of this birth repeating itself, so to be on the safe side, an epidural earlier on in labour would be the way to go.
I have to admit to feeling jealous when I read other birth stories where all went to plan. I didn’t have a strict birth plan and I know that things often go awry, but after having an uncomplicated birth with DD, this was the last thing I was expecting. I know that in the scheme of things it doesn’t really matter, but I am finding myself having some issues with how things went. I am hoping that getting it all out will help in the healing process – I guess now I will find out!
Congratulations if you have gotten through all this. I know it is very long but I felt that I had to get it all out with as much detail as possible. Thanks for reading!
