The birth of Jacob Philip Thomas Matthews 4/4/05
The birth of Jacob Philip Thomas Matthews 4th April, 2005
How to decide when all this began? Was it mid morning this day or was it way back when I was 29 weeks pregnant? Why this far back? That’s when those pesky little Braxton Hicks contractions kicked in. There were quite a few times when I would wonder if this was the real thing or not. The BH could get so intense that I would be breathing through them, then after a few hours just vanish into thin air. So after 12 weeks of dealing with these, when it started for real I was still contemplating if this was it before calling Jeff and mum. As with my previous pregnancies, there were no other signs that labour had begun – no show, no leaking, nothing. So after deciding that I would rather go to the hospital being 8 days overdue in the hope that if this wasn’t it they might take pity on me, I rang Jeff and told him to come home. Then I rang mum to come over to stay with the boys. Her words?? What a way to start the school holidays!
By the time Jeff got home half an hour later, I was doing some serious breathing. Mum arrived 10 minutes later and off we went. I was so sure that as soon as I walked through the doors of the hospital this pain would go away. It seemed to take forever to check in as the hospital had babies coming out of everywhere. I have no idea how long we waited, Jeff thinks it was about 20 minutes.
When I got to the labour room I was asked if I minded having a student in the room and I said that was alright. The student then took all my vitals and I was then asked if she could do an internal. By this stage, I was like knock yourself out! Anyway she does the internal and then says she thinks I’m about 6cms so the midwife double checks and says I’m more like 7-8cms. I couldn’t believe I had gotten this far already without pain relief since I’m usually such a woosie. It must have been about 12:30 when I asked for the gas, as I remember them discussing who was going to lunch. After about half an hour I decided that the gas wasn’t doing anything for me and asked for pethadine. Ahhhhhhhh, bliss. Honestly, next thing I remember is feeling something cold on my back, opening my eyes to Jeff, saying something (sure there was a swear word involved), delivering Jacob and seeing a room full of people. So Jeff is kindly filling in what happened in the 2 hours I was off with the pixies.
After the shot of pethadine, Nat seemed to have a nice sleep for about half an hour. Even though it looked like she was sleeping she was still breathing through contractions. I noticed that she had maneuvered herself into a really awkward position on the bed – like an s with an extra tail. She opened her eyes and I was trying to talk to her to see if she wanted anything, but she had completely focused on a spot on the ceiling. The student came back into the room to see how we were going. I asked her how long should the pethadine work for because the look on Nat’s face showed that she was in pain. She said that it should last for a few hours, but after looking at Nat decided to go and get the midwife. It was just before 2pm when the midwife entered the room. She told Nat that she was going to examine her and said that she was 10cms and ready to push. No response from Nat, she was still focused on the ceiling. They decided to get a doctor in the room and the head of obstetrics was there in about 2 minutes. He was trying to talk to Nat, checked all her vitals. Nat was sort of responding to his questions with small nods and shakes of her head. He noticed that Nat was moving her hips with every contraction and asked her if she was in pain. She nodded yes. The first thing she had communicated in ages. He told her that she needed to push to get Jacob out and there was a look of confusion on her face. I could tell that Nat was trying to indicate something but when I asked her what was wrong she couldn’t answer. He then said to get an anesthetist so he could do a spinal as they may have to use forceps. I told him that Nat had it in her records that she didn’t want to have one so they brought in the consent forms for her to sign. They asked me if she had suffered from panic attacks or had had a head injury in the last few weeks and I said no. I looked at her again and suggested moving her as she was still in the same position, but since she had been asked to push, I noticed that her back was arched quite high off the bed. They asked her if she could move and nothing, so I suggested physically moving her again. Hmmmm no one answered me as the anesthetist and psychologist had just walked in the door. The anesthetist was asking her questions and making sure she still had all of her reflexes and she took her eyes off the ceiling for a second like she was trying to tell him something. He asked her if something was wrong and she nodded. He asked her what but she couldn’t tell him. They told her that she needed to sign the forms for the spinal in case they needed to use forceps. She was shaking her head no, but her arm and hand seemed to decide that she would sign. Once again I suggest moving her, but by this stage the room had 2 midwives, a student, doctor, psychologist and anesthetist in it and no one heard me. The anesthetist went to get everything organized and I tried talking to Nat again. I asked her if she wanted to move and I could just tell she was trying to say yes. I got up onto the bed with her just as the anesthetist came back in the room. He said we needed to roll her over onto her side and as soon as I did she was looking me straight in the face as I was lying next to her. The expression on her face changed completely! Then the anesthetist started to put the antiseptic stuff on her back. Well, hello Nat!!! The instant the cold swab hit her back she REALLY looked at me. Everything else happened so quickly. The first word out of her mouth was not pretty. Basically in a few seconds she said “fâ€, my back, I can feel my back, lifted her leg and gave an almighty push and delivered Jacob’s head. Within seconds Jacob was out and crying at 2:45pm. The look on Nat’s face when she rolled over to hold Jacob was priceless. Everyone was still in the room watching her so being the person that she is she looks at them and says “ummmm hello?†I told her I’d tell her later and we both went back to enjoying our first moments with Jacob.
OK, I’m back. After I had been cleaned up the anesthetist came into the room to see how I was doing. He explained briefly what happened and asked if I remembered anything or if I knew what I was trying to tell him. I told him that I couldn’t feel from my shoulders to my thighs and I thought I had told someone (I hadn’t, though I had asked for a heat pack that never came). What he thought had happened is the pethadine didn’t work very well and since I had been used to blocking out the BH contractions for so many weeks, I had just “over focused†on breathing basically self hypnotizing myself. The head of obstetrics then came in to see how I was doing and agreed with the anesthetist that this is what most likely happened.
Jeff has been great telling me what happened to see if I remember a little more about my “time outâ€. I don’t really recall anything other than trying to communicate about my back and the faces of the people that were talking to me. So finally we have finished our birth story.
