my second birth experience
I had contraction type pain – very minor – for two weeks before this babe was born so was expecting to go into labour any day since about 37 weeks. However, I got to 39 weeks and one day and on that day, had several small “shows”, diarreah and pains, and was pretty sure it was going to happen that night. But I slept most of the night, only awakening with the occasional pains which I had been doing for weeks anyway. Then I woke at 6am with some period like pain and wondered whether this was it because previously a lot of the pains I had been getting were happening in conjunction with going to the toilet and on this occasion it had just happened spontaneously and had also woken me up when I normally had just been sleeping till 8am or later. Anyway, about 10 minutes later it happened again and so I was watching the clock and these pains came about every 10-15 minutes although occasionally even 8 minutes apart. They weren’t super regular tho and so I still wasn’t sure, and they were also very minor. About 7.45am (while DH was getting our 3yo ready to go to his Mums as happens every week anyway) I said to DH, I think this is it – and he seemed a bit doubtful – and so he agreed to take the boy to his Mums and come home again and see. By the time he got home about 8.15, the pains were about 5-6 minutes apart and I was having trouble talking through them, so we rang the hospital and told them what was happening. The contractions were only lasting about 30-40 seconds at this point. Of course they encouraged me to stay home as long as possible, but given my history of a 3 hour birth with my first, I was a bit nervous about that. Anyway, still stayed home for another hour or so until I was occasionally having 3 minute apart contractions and they sometimes lasted for 60-90 seconds.
Got to the hospital about 10.30 and booked in. At the birth suite met midwife and student midwife. My regular midwife was off that day but I had met the replacement one and she was nice so I wasn’t fussed at all. Contractions possibly slowed a bit then, having them mostly 5 minutes apart and lasting only 30 seconds or so. They were quite painful tho, but in between times I felt fine. An internal (very painful) showed I was only 3 cm dilated but fully effaced. After an hour or so I got in the bath, but the contractions seemed to slow down so got out again after another 30 minutes to an hour. Was feeling a little bit frustrated at this point but managing okay with the break between contractions. Pain was fairly intense and after another half an hour asked for the gas. This seemed to help a little. The pain was really ramping up now and contractions were getting closer and closer together, occasionally coming on top of each other and I thought I was getting close, so got back in the bath. DH was really helpful at this point as he was talking me through the seconds in the contraction, telling me that they were about to peak and getting me to try and breathe and relax through them. It was full on and I’d stopped talking or joking around in between contractions. I think this was about 1pm. Lucky I didn’t know that I still had hours to go!
In the bath I started to feel the urge to push a little bit. The midwives were saying things were looking promising and even got a few things ready for the birth itself – but as I was doing a little bit of pushing I could feel that I wasn’t fully dilated and I was really struggling because the need to push was taking my breathe away but I knew I shouldn’t be pushing. Midwife said lets get out the bath if you like and check how dilated you are – I did and they found only 6cm. The internal was absolute agony and I shouted at her to stop it a couple of times before she could see. They also said that he was sitting tranverse (I think this is what they said and that he would need to turn before he was born). This really got me down.
This is where things went downhill in my mind. The overwhelming urge to push was really hard to deal with because it was really hard to breathe through the contractions and deal with the pain when I was feeling the pushing sensation – the pushing stopped me breathing if you know what I mean – you cant breathe in and push at the same time. And DH and the midwives were saying try not to push, just breathe and I felt a bit hysterical trying to tell them I couldn’t not push. I was also confused about why I felt the need to push when I knew I wasn’t dilated, and I also felt like he was stuck which freaked me out – was this going to go on indefinitely? I kept saying “it’s not working, it’s not working” and they were saying – it is. I felt like I couldn’t express clearly the problem which in my mind was not being able to stop pushing – but not being able to deal with the contraction and the pushing feeling at the same time. Also, contractions felt like they were pretty much constant now with only a few seconds in between them. I had the gas but it wasn’t helping much and I started talking about an epidural which i never did with my first birth. After another hour they did another internal which again was simply excruciating and I again screamed at the midwife to please stop. She eventually was able to do it and found I was still only 6cm. I pretty much lost it at this point. I’d been going for 8 hours of full on contractions and was tired and confused and in constant agony with both the contractions and also the horrible pushing feeling. It was simply a horrific experience at this point. I was insisting on an epidural and trying to tell DH that it wasn’t working and I was getting pretty hysterical. The midwife suggested we break my waters. Before this I had been weeing a bit with each contraction and they kept testing it to see if it was amniotic fluid but it wasn’t. I was scared of them breaking the waters because the internals had been so bad but she said breaking the waters would probably not hurt that much. So she did that and it didn’t really hurt at all. She then suggested pethadine to see if that would relax me. So both of those things happened about 3.15pm. I was saying I’m giving it 20 minutes and if its not better I definitely want an epidural. She was saying, just give it an hour, and I was like NO TWENTY MINUTES AND THAT’S IT!!
Anyway, things finally started to happen very quickly then – whether it was the waters breaking, or the pethadine or what. Midwife said she thought I started to relax when the pethadine kicked in about 20 minutes later but I thought it started to change as soon as my waters had been broken. Regardless, the need to push just got stronger and I started to feel him move down a bit and the pushing seemed to be doing something at last. It was still agonizing but I felt sure it wouldn’t be long now and that helped. I was on all fours and pushing hard each contraction and after about 15 minutes I could feel him starting to come out. I started to feel a burning pain and feel this HUGE thing coming down and I was pretty much yelling/screaming each contraction for the last 5 minutes. Again i never yelled like this first time round. The sensation of his head slipping out was indescribable again – like with my first – a combination of such huge relief and such huge pain. His body slid out with the next contraction and I just wanted to burst into tears with the most total exhaustion and relief. I felt like I was in total shock…stunned, like I’d been shot or run over by a truck, or something like that. They slid him under me and said take your baby and I held him to me for a minute but was pretty much completely out of it. I’m pretty sure I heard him cry quickly. I remember midwife saying, I think he is probably 8 pound, quite big. He was born at 3.50pm only half an hour after they had found I was still 6cm and broke my waters/gave pethadine. They showed me that he was definitely a boy and then they cut the cord. DH took him and I then lay back on my back. I still felt in complete shock. I lay there with the midwives waiting for the placenta to be delivered, which took quite a while, about 25-30 minutes I think. I was just impatient at this point for it to be over, I wanted to have a shower and then hold the baby. I think the midwives were watching the clock because they seemed surprised that the placenta took this long I think. They ended up pulling the cord a little bit and then I had a contraction and it came out. They then had a look and said I have a graze but probably we wont stitch it. They got another midwife to come and have a look and she agreed not to stitch it. I then had shower and cried the whole time with relief and shock. It was great to get out the shower, sit on the bed and hold him. He fed a little bit. They weighed him and found he was 3.46 kilo (7 pound 11). His apgar scores were 9 and 9.
After the birth I felt pretty disappointed with the whole experience. I think for a few reasons. First, my first birth was so quick and straightforward (3 hours) and I didn’t have to think or do anything – it just happened. So I was expecting this one to be the same, or even faster. Second, the urge to push for hours before I was dilated was just terrible – because it stopped me being able to breathe and I felt like I was stuffing everything up and making it worse. Third, I was a lot more vocal/louder than with my first, and was yelling/screaming at the end and I felt like I lost my dignity completely, and felt embarrassed about that, embarrassed about having asked for an epidural and being so demanding about that. I felt “told off” by the midwives and DH for pushing and totally alone because no-one understood that I couldn’t help it, I KNEW I wasn’t supposed to be pushing but just didn’t have any control. They weren’t telling me off at all, and were being very gentle but that’s just how it felt. As the days have gone by, I feel a bit better about it and am just telling myself that the main thing is that we are all healthy and I didn’t have a caeser. I wonder whether if I had been under the care of an ob, I might have ended up having an epidural and then a CS …just because it had been going on for quite a while and wasn’t progressing for a bit. SO that didn’t happen which is good. Really it was quite successful all round, I guess I just different expectations about how it would go and how I would have handled myself.
