Devon's baby boy - 24th January 2009 (super long!)
I was woken up at 7.15 on Saturday morning by two weird sensations, feelings in my abdomen that I hadn't experienced before. Got up to go to the loo and had a bit of a show. I couldn't believe that this could perhaps be labour, I wasn't due for two more days, and was convinced that I would be overdue. Still, I started to get a little bit excited. I'd had two sessions of acupuncture that week to prepare me for labour, and I really do think they helped to bring it on.
I went and woke DH and said that I thought something might be happening, but that I wasn't sure and he should go back to sleep. I got up and pottered for a bit, then DH got up because he was too excited to sleep. In the meantime I had become fairly sure that the strange sensations were indeed contractions. They started in my lower back, and moved around to the front of my belly and felt like strong period cramps. I texted our doula to let her know what was happening, and called the hospital as well. The midwife said it sounded like I was in early labour and to stay home until it got really intense.
I suggested to DH that we go for a walk to bring it on a bit more. It was a beautiful morning, so we had a lovely walk around the neighbourhood. I had quite a few contractions while we were walking, and it was starting to sink in that I might actually be in labour. We walked home through a little park near our home, and we sat at a picnic table for a few minutes. Then I had the strongest contraction so far, I had to stand up and lean on the table until it passed. After that we figured we'd better get home pretty quickly.
When I got home I had a shower, which felt wonderful. I didn?t stay in too long, because I thought I'd need to save the hot water for later on.
DH set me up sitting on a fitball in our loungeroom, with a wheatbag against my lower back. That made the contractions a lot more comfortable. I sat there for ages timing my contractions on an online stopwatch. Over the course of a few hours they went from every 7 minutes or so to every 3 minutes. They were still only lasting for less than a minute, so I figured I had ages to go.
After a while I switched to lying propped up on the couch, still with the wheatbag. I had planned to have an active labour, but I was really comfortable on the couch, and was scared of the contractions getting too intense if I moved around.
The contractions were getting stronger now, I had to ?shush? DH if he was talking to me during one, but in between I was still feeling fine and fairly chatty. The contractions were about 2 and a half minutes apart now, but still only a minute long. I had it fixed in my head that my labour wasn?t really advanced until they were a minute and half long, so I figured I had ages to go. I started to get a little bit scared - how much more intense was this going to get?
I think that DH called our doula around this time, about 1pm or so, and she said she would head over in about 45 minutes. After this the contractions started getting pretty intense, and I was really just going inside myself during them. Poor DH was running around putting the last minute items in the labour and hospital bags. I was obviously having quite a hard time now, and he was scared. I didn't know it though, he remained so calm and supportive for me the whole time.
Our doula arrived at around 2pm, and I remember her saying that we could stay at home for a while yet. I was now in a lot of pain, and it was all getting very overwhelming. She got me up off the couch and leaning over the fitball, then it all got too much. I remember being on all fours on the floor, almost trying to crawl away from the pain. I told DH to call the hospital, it was time to go. I remember just having the word 'epidural' at the front of my mind for what seemed like forever. DH came in and said that the midwife at the hospital was insisting on speaking to me. I shouted that I 'wasn't speaking to the hospital', which the midwife overheard and told DH to bring me in - she could tell from the tone in my voice that I was in quite advanced labour.
Getting it together to get to the hospital was truly awful. I kept feeling like I needed to go to the toilet, and the contractions were so close together that I had several while DH and our doula were getting me to the car. I didn't realise it at the time, but I believe that I was in transition at this point, and I think I might have been experiencing the beginning of wanting to push. The drive was a haze, I sat on the floor of the car, leaning on the seat. When we finally arrived it was almost impossible for me to get out of the car, but I was also claustrophobic, hot and desperate to get out. I think it was around 2.30pm. I can?t believe that I managed to walk in the hospital entrance, leaning on DH's arm. The receptionist saw me and raced off to get a wheelchair - very dramatic! DH wheeled me up to the labour ward on the third floor. The midwife assigned to me, Joan, took over and wheeled me into the family birth suite, as I had requested in my birth plan. Joan seemed like a dragon at first, and was a bit mean to DH, but once she realised he was being a wonderful supportive husband she was a bit nicer and she did a great job of getting me through the rest of my labour.
Joan got me up on the bed for a vaginal exam. It was so hard to get on the bed, and it hurt so much. I couldn't believe it when she said she couldn't feel any cervix at all, and I was fully dilated. I was so, so relieved that I had gotten so far.
I really was in a great deal of distress. Someone gave me a flannel, and I clutched onto that flannel for dear life. I remember DH giving me sips of water. Soon after I started really feeling a need to push. Again, I had imagined a very active pushing stage, but all I wanted to do was to lie on the bed and hold my flannel. Joan told me that she and our doula were going to support my legs and she told me how I needed to push. DH was beside my head, holding my hands.
At some point my obstetrician turned up. I was pushing and pushing, it was exhausting, but I felt so much better in the breaks between contractions. After a while Joan realised that my baby was having a hard time negotiating my pelvis, so she got me off the bed (no mean feat) to do a few pushes standing up. I hated this, I felt like every ounce of my energy had to be focused on the contractions, standing up was just too much. Apparently it helped though, and I was allowed to get back on the bed.
After what felt like an eternity of pushing, our baby's head could be seen. Joan got a mirror, and I could see a little bit of head with dark hair. It was a bit disheartening, because there wasn't much head visible and I didn't know how much longer I could go on. I was rapidly running out of energy, and my pushes were becoming weaker. My OB suggested 'making some more room', and while I hadn't really wanted an episiotomy, at this stage I was desperate to get my baby out before I became completely exhausted. So I told him to do it. After the episiotomy our baby's head came out almost immediately, then on the next contraction I felt an intense stinging as his shoulders came out, and all of a sudden I had my gorgeous boy all warm on my chest. That has to have been the most incredible, overwhelming, intense moment of my life. my son was born at 5.40pm on the 24th of January 2009, after a total labour of 9 hours and 40 minutes. 7.40 minutes first stage, 2 hours of pushing.
I noticed Joan with a syringe in her hand, and was quite impressed that I was compus mentus enough to tell her to wait until the cord had stopped pulsing. Then DH cut the cord. I don't really remember delivering the placenta, I was too absorbed in our baby and blown away by the experience I had just been through.
After a little while it was time for my OB to sew me up - I'd also had a third degree tear when the baby's shoulder came out - he had his arm wedged up against it as well. DH took our baby to be weighed, and we discovered that he was even bigger than expected - 4134g, 54cm long and a head circumference of 38cm. I'm glad my OB didn't know how big he really was...
I am just so proud of myself for the whole birth experience, for managing the contractions for so long at home, and for birthing such a big boy with no pain relief but a wheatbag! It really was magical and I'm so happy that I got to experience it. I don't often feel proud of myself, but I really do feel proud of my labour and birth experience, and it feels great.
I was also really impressed with my labour experience in the private hospital I went to, I had been so worried about interventions, and in the end they just monitored my baby's heart rate with a Doppler, no one offered any pain relief (although it was too late for an epidural by the time I got there), and the only interventions I had were the episiotomy and the oxytocin injection once the cord had stopped pulsing. Not bad considering I gave birth at Caesar's Palace!
After the high of the labour, our poor little boy had to be taken to the special care nursery as his breathing rate was too high, and he was put on IV antibiotics for a suspected infection. He spent a week there, and it was a very harrowing start to his life, and to our new life as a family. He's been home for two weeks now, and is doing really well, and I still can't believe that two and a half years after we first started trying, we finally have our perfect, gorgeous little boy.
Happy three week birthday, beautiful boy!!
Sorry this is so long, I've typed it all up as a record for myself as well, so I wanted to get everything down...
Devon
xxxx
