Birth Story, Part 1. Late.

I (vee) am so annoyed with myself for not putting down in words the story of BB’s birth sooner than this. I had great intentions of capturing the raw emotion of it all, hot from the hospital, but having a new baby to look after kind of distracted me there for a while and now… well I can still *remember* what happened, but I can’t really *feel* it any more. Not as powerfully. But we’re here now and I don’t get a redo, so here goes.

I don’t remember much talk about pre-labour from our NCT classes, and certainly nothing prepared me for the run-up to labour that I experienced (endured?) but the first indication we had that something might be underway was on March 10th when I saw a little bloody show and experienced some minor contractions through the night – strong enough to wake me on occasion . Those contractions continued on and off during the 11th, 12th and 13th March, initially feeling like bad period pains and eventually hurting enough to scare me to hospital, despite their irregularity. I tried to persuade jay to sleep as much as she could during those nights, as I knew she’d need her strength to get us through what was to come. The pain was far worse when I was lying down, making sleep nigh on impossible, so by the time we rocked up at the Midwife Led Unit at around 1am on 14th March, I was already pretty tired. I vaguely recall us sitting in bed for hours beforehand, dozing between contractions, me squeezing jay’s hand each time to prompt her to write down the time. We were finding those pieces of paper with contraction timings on all over the house for weeks afterwards! Finally, enough was enough and we headed in. Jay carefully negotiated the late night drunkards, staggering home with their chips, finally on the journey she’d learned to drive for.

On arrival, the midwives on duty were unimpressed with my lack of regular contractions and tried to persuade us to go home and wait it out a little longer, but I quietly dug my heels in and we were grudgingly hustled into room and left to our own devices. As we’d walked up to the entrance, a car had pulled up outside in a most dramatic fashion and some poor bloke leapt out to assist his heavily huffing missus into the building pronto. Following them was someone else in a similarly advanced stage of labour, so all hands were busy elsewhere. At some point, someone found the time to come and examine me, declaring me to be a disappointing 1cm dialated. She then did a stretch and sweep (surprisingly bearable, despite the name), proudly announced that she’d stretched me to 4cm and left. We paced and danced and huffed and moaned and talked and watched the clock. We heard babies being born on either side of our room.

Eventually, things in the unit calmed down and I was allocated someone to check on my progress. Donna was young, but reassuringly calm and knowledgeable. The contractions were still not regular so we got down to a bit of nipple stimulation (jay and I that is) and accupressure that jay had picked up from my acupuncturist especially for the occasion. This certainly made the contractions more intense, but did nothing for establishing any rhythm. It also made me swear at my wife. I think this was the only time though. Donna suggested another examination mid morning, with the accompanying suggestion that if things had not progressed there was nothing they could do for me at this stage so it might be better if I went home. Seriously sleep deprived and in considerable pain, this reduced me to tears, as did the news following the internal that I was still only at 4cm. They relented and let us stay.

Soon after this, I decided to stop being brave and rip into the gas and air. Much though the massage and accupressure that jay had been administering had helped (when I wasn’t barking at her to back off, which she took very well, I must say) they just weren’t cutting it for me any more.  I’d also declined it thus far, and tried to last out as I was worried that, given that established labour was yet to start, I’d be peaking to soon to tuck into it just yet, but the contractions were now so intense that I needed some help to get through them. My mum and dad showed up at some point, but it clearly upset my mum to see me hurting, and neither of us were really comfortable with them being there while I laboured – I needed the quiet. There was obviously not going to be baby-news any time soon, so they went off again.

Both baby and I were being intermittently monitored the whole way through and at this point, Donna picked up that my heart rate was climbing worryingly. Initially, she wanted to bring down one of the consultants from the Labour and Delivery Unit upstairs in the hospital, but an older midwife suggested a warm bath might bring it down, which it did, though annoyingly the warm water seemed also to slow the contractions. I was ordered out of the water and jay laid into me with the evil acupressure points again to try and rev things up.

And on it went. My abiding memory of this period is of a long, rambling conversation going on around me that I was only intermittently involved in. I also recall being rather demanding and contrary, ordering jay to fetch this, do that, stop the other. She was certainly long-suffering, my jay, and fulfilled my every whim with no flicker of irritation.

During Saturday afternoon, Donna suggested I try the birthing pool. I had wanted to used the pool to labour and deliver in, but thus far had not been allowed into it as I had not progressed far enough. They usually like women to be at least 5cm dialated before getting into it, but because of my high heart rate, I got the go ahead anyway and ohhhh, it was bliss. The contractions (yes, still irregular) were so much more manageable and the time between contractions was much more comfortable and relaxed. My heartrate went back to normal. Only problem was that the warm water again caused the contractions to become even more irregular. Ordered out of the water once more, they picked up, as did my heartrate.Back in and they tapered off. Rinse and repeat.  In retrospect, this heartrate thing should have been scary, but I felt like I was in very safe hands so it didn’t worry me. If it scared jay, she did a good job of hiding it. Finally, around 5pm, I was given another internal by Donna who broke my heart a little, having to tell me gently that I was still at 4cm, but she could now feel hair – Bonus Ball’s hair! OMG! – indicating that my waters had broken at some point. The contractions were still irregular and, out of the pool, my heart rate was still abnormally fast during them – around 140. Sadly, she felt there was nothing more she could do for me on the Unit and strongly recommended that I transfer to L&D where my heart could be monitored more closely and where they could help get labour properly started.

Typing that has upset me, but I recall at the time feeling quite matter of fact about the whole thing. I had spent what I felt was an eternity trying to get things going, I was exhausted, we both were and we were no further forward; the decision was easy for us – it was time to let go of the idea that this would happen without intervention. Thus it came to pass that me and my portable Entonox canister were wheeled upstairs to The Land of Big Interventions……

(Part 2 to follow. Hopefully before Christmas!)

vee xxx