yasin's birth (warning-very long)
Since I have locked myself inside with the air-con to beat the heat it looks like I finally have a bit of time on my hands to write Yasin’s birth story which is a good thing because my memory seems to be fading a bit. I thought about it in the days immediately after I came home but I had found it all a bit traumatic and I didn’t really want to re-visit it for a while.
I think the story all starts on the Friday night. Beajan and I went for dinner at his parents place with some friends. At this point Yasin was about 5 days overdue and FIL was getting a bit impatient so at about 1am he decided to take me on a walk around Canada bay, which is a three hour walk. I walked about half of it before pleading exhaustion and demanding to go home. DH and I got home at about 3 and I was asleep in about 10 seconds. Two hours later DH’s alarm went off for breakfast (because it was Ramadan he had to eat it before sunrise) and woke me up. I stood up to go to the loo and felt something tricking down my legs. I knew immediately that my waters had broken so I rang the hospital and arranged to come in after I had showered and eaten breakfast and so on. DH was a bit surprised not to be rushing in like they do in the movies.
When we arrived at the hospital the dribble was still a dribble but when I walked up to the reception desk it turned into a gush and went all over the floor :oops: !!!!! I was kind of embarrassed so the receptionist cheered me up by telling me about her experience. (Her waters broke in the supermarket so she just snuck off!!)
After I had checked in it was off to the examination room where a midwife confirmed that yes my waters had broken and told me that the hospital policy was not to release me until after I had given birth because of the risk of infection. I was hooked up to a CTG for a while and since I was having a few contractions I was transferred to a delivery suite and told to walk around to speed things up. At this point all DH and I wanted to do was have a few more hours sleep but instead we tried walking. My contractions were getting stronger and by this point were like really full on period pains with a backache as well but they weren’t getting closer together. The midwife checked my pad to make sure the liquor was the right colour (apparently my word wasn’t good enough) and after another stretch on the CTG decided that the baby was still not stressed so I was transferred to the ante-natal ward until I went into progressing labour.
Once I got there I was put on the CTG again, had my blood pressure and temperature taken and made to hand over another pad for inspection. Then I was told that every time I changed my pad I had to put it in a brown paper bag, write the time on it and save it for the nurses to check!! Also I would be monitored every three hours and that if I hadn’t delivered by 11pm that night they would start IV antibiotics. I was told to keep walking as much as possible in the hopes of starting labour naturally but if it didn’t happen naturally I would be induced on Tuesday or Wednesday unless the baby was stressed in which case I would have a c-section. At this point I started to realize that my hopes for an active natural birth were diminishing. I also began to find the constant monitoring and pad checking a bit invasive. Although I understood that it was to ensure the well being of myself and my baby I was tired and stressed and beginning to feel that I had lost any control over events. By this time it was about 3pm and my contractions were hurting but still erratic not progressing so…… we kept walking. After a few hours I felt like I knew every inch of the hospital but still no progress… ](*,)
At 10pm they sent DH home and told me that they would be back in an hour to insert a canula and start the IV antibiotics. So I had one of the worst night’s sleep of my life, being woken every three hours to be monitored and not sleeping much in between. At about 3am I ditched the no drugs policy and asked for some sleeping pills and panadine forte.
When I woke up in the morning (sunday) DH was back with extra supplies since I hadn’t packed for a stay in the ante-natal as well as the maternity ward. Since we were both bored with the interior of the hospital we started walking in the gardens as well and rang some friends to come and amuse us. This meant we had to ring his family as well which I wasn’t best pleased about because I hadn’t wanted my MIL around until after the baby was born (another plan out the window). So I spent the day walking about and hanging out with my friends, getting monitored every few hours, dosed up on antibiotics every 5 hours and handing in pads. At about 6 everyone left because they had dinner plans and DH and I tried to relax a bit and do some more walking. At around 9pm I had a massive pain which just went on and on for about 5 minutes. Afterwards they told me this pain was probably the baby moving into an anterior position. After a couple of minutes DH called a nurse who helped me breathe through it and then tried to check the baby’s heartbeat with the little hand-held Doppler thingy. She looked everywhere but couldn’t find it, then she hit the panic button and called in another two midwifes to check it. They hooked up a CTG but they could only find a really slow heartbeat and weren’t sure if it was mine or the babies so one of them yanked of my undies to check if the cord had prolapsed (and of course, if the pad was the right colour) while the other two went nuts trying to find a heartbeat and called a doctor. As you can imagine I was freaking at this point and the sound of my heart started to interfere with all the other sounds they were picking up. Eventually a doctor arrived (she probably only took a minute but time seemed to warp a bit) and managed to find the babies heartbeat and it was the right speed so either the one the nurses had picked up was mine or his heartbeat had slowed but was back to normal. The sound of that heartbeat was one of the most wonderful things I have ever heard.
After the fuss had died down I was just bawling my eyes out. I was still tired, I was worried and anxious, and I was sick of being in pain and the last 10 minutes or so had totally freaked me out. Since I was so upset and the appearance of my pads plus the big baby move had the midwives convinced that I was going to go into labour soon they decided to move me into another room that had a fold out bed so DH could stay. I also asked for more panadine forte so I had a bit of a break from the pain.
Through the night my contractions got stronger and more painful but still not regular. My wheat pack wasn’t helping anymore so I was constantly in the shower which was useful for only as long as I was in it. At some point it all got too much for me and I asked for something a bit more effective than panadine forte only to be told that in ante-natal they couldn’t administer stronger drugs and I would have to go to the delivery suite for better pain relief but I wasn’t in proper labour so I couldn’t go to the delivery suite. The nurse who told me this was the only one I didn’t like in all the time I was in hospital. So I kept having showers and trying to relax between contractions. When the pain kept getting worse I asked to go to the delivery suite and was given the same answer so I got a bit annoyed and asked how in labour I had to be? The cow nurse said she would get the CTG and check. By this point I was so stressed by being strapped to the bloody machine every three hours that every time they put it on me my contractions slowed. I told her this and she said then you’re not in labour if the contractions will slow :smt013 . I nearly said bull****… stress can stop labour but thought better of arguing with her. Soooo…. She put the CTG on me and my contractions backed off a bit which was kind of a relief. I started to get really upset again, DH started to get ****ed off and the other midwife took my side so I was transferred to the delivery suite just as the sun was starting to come up on Monday morning.
Things get a tiny bit hazy from here in….. When I got there it was more monitoring (of course) the midwife said that my contractions were really strong and that the cow nurse had sent three women to them the night before who weren’t in labour which was why she had been so mean and refused to believe me. Sooo she wasn’t just a cow but incompetent too. I was offered gas, morphine or epidural. At this point I still had hopes of an active labour so I chose the gas which was a huuuuge relief.
While my contractions were quite strong and getting stronger and more painful they were still not regular and when the ob did an internal I wasn’t dilating much either so after a couple of hours they decided to augment my labour with a syntocin drip and also to start giving me IV fluid because although I had been drinking Gatorade I threw it all up. At some point the gas stopped being effective so I got a shot of morphine. I can’t remember if this was before or after they put the drips on. After the drips went in I gave up all hope of active birth. The syntocin meant that they had to keep the CTG on all the time and it’s a bit hard to move around hooked up to a drip and CTG machine. They put a scalp electrode on my baby so I had a wire coming out of my fanny as well. When the morphine started to wear off I figured that since I couldn’t move anyway and I had a killer backache I may as well get an epidural.
The epidural was great. Instant pain relief. DH was in tears at this point which I had never expected to see because he is kind of stoic and tends not to express himself when he is sad. After the epidural was administered I went to sleep for the first time in over 24hours and woke up every hour or so then went back to sleep. I still wasn’t having regular contractions (I never did have regular contractions) and wasn’t dilating as fast as they wanted so the ob tried to up the dose of syntocin but it didn’t agree with me, the CTG went nuts and they turned it back again. At about 6 or 7 the ob said that if I hadn’t reached 10cms within a few hours she would do a c-section. She came and checked after another 2 hours and I was at 8cms so there was still hope that I would dilate in time. When she came for the next check I was really worried because if I wasn’t dilated enough it was c-section time. Luckily I was almost 10cm so she decided to let me try and push the baby out but because she didn’t think that I would be able to do it with an epidural she told me that from that point on I couldn’t have anymore top ups so that by the time I needed to push it would have worn off.
By that time the staff were changing shift yet again so I had another midwife who I had never met before. Since it had been a while since my last top up the epidural wore off quite quickly, almost at the same time as I started to feel the urge to push. The ob dropped in for another check at this point and said that I had one hour to go before she gave me a c-section. I spent the rest of my labour watching the clock between contractions. After about half an hour DH could see him and told me he had heaps of black hair (well duh!! He’s a wog) which was really encouraging to hear and a little bit later he grabbed my hand and put it down so I could feel the little guys head. The midwife told me that she was going to give me an episiotomy which I really expected to be agony but there was already so much stinging in the area that I barely felt it but it sounded icky. She asked if I wanted a mirror so I could watch the birth and I said no way!!! Then she asked Beajan to hit the red button that rang the nurses button and I knew that my baby was nearly there and I had beaten the c-section deadline!!! A few pushes after that DH told me his head was out then after another couple of pushes Yasin was born at 11:31 pm. 66 hours after my waters broke and 15 minutes before the c-section deadline. Beajan cut the cord and took a few photos. I wanted to hold my baby straight away but they made me wait while they measured him and did his agpar test :( . (He got 9!! :) ) and then I finally got to hold my baby. He was sooo alert and quiet. And definitely the most beautiful person I had ever seen. :smt055
After that I started sucking on the gas again while they stitched me up then they cleaned up the bed and all left for a while so we could have a bit of time alone.
Yasin’s birth was far from what I wanted or expected and for a week or two afterwards I was really upset even thinking about those 66 hours and neither DH or I could ever imagine having more children but it was all worth it and we're beginning to think that maybe in a few years we might be ready for another baby.
Sorry for such a long and rambling story but it was a long 3 days.
