A mom shares her birth story with you:
I was 38 weeks pregnant, I starting to feel really wet down below with a few niggling pains but nothing major apart from one full blown contraction then nothing. I phoned my mom who took me out for lunch then onto my routine midwife appointment. I went in and told her I thought my waters were leaking and babies movements had slowed down. Only five weeks earlier I told her I thought I was in labor – it was braxton hicks.
She thought the dampness down below was probably discharge and she would have checked herself but because I had reported slowed down movement she wanted me to be checked at the hospital. My sister took me, I had an examination, and was put on a monitor. Everything was fine with baby, my waters had broken but I wasn’t in labor.
I was sent home with instructions, not to have a bath and I had to go back at 7.30 in the morning to be induced. I had no sleep as contractions started and doing everything I could to get it moving, I stayed standing all night hoping gravity would do its job. I returned to hospital the following day and was put on a monitor. The midwife examined me and informed me I was 4cms dilated and took me to labor ward. I was given some toast and a drink. I told the midwife about my birth plan, but said I give my consent to anything, if it was going to give me a healthy baby. I started to worry something may go wrong. I had to be hooked up to a monitor constantly because of my waters breaking 24 hours earlier.
However my little princess was back to back so all the pain was in my back and every time I had a contraction I jumped of the bed as it was too painful. They asked if I wanted pain relief and I was refusing, didn’t even want gas and air ( not because I wanted to be super women but because I didn’t feel I needed it). Every time I jumped of the bed during a contraction they would lose the heartbeat,they decided to put a clip on the babys head.
I asked my sister to rub my back so she did, though I kept shouting at her to rub it not tickle it. At about 3pm they examined me and I had only progressed to 5cms since 7.30 am!!! That’s when I discovered you have two waters and only one sack had gone. They decided to break the other one to see if that helped me progress it didn’t! I was again asked what pain relief I wanted, I gave my usual response that I didn’t. They explained they wanted to put me on a hormone trip to help me progress and to have some pain relief. I opted for gas and air.
The pains got bad, after two puffs on the gas and air and saying I didn’t like it and the midwife’s telling me to breath it in and hold it, I shouted at them to get me pethidine so they went running for it ( never knew a women in labor had so much power) about 10 minutes later the room was all blurry and I was well and truly drugged.
I had my sister rubbing my back and me shouting at her because she stopped to have a drink and take her jumper off ( how rude of her!!) then all of a sudden I started panicking and shouting at the midwife why am I going a poo, I don’t want to go a poo, please I don’t want to, and the midwife saying its OK your not, sounds like you are ready to have the baby so push.
I tried refusing because I didn’t want to do a poo, but I couldn’t, the head started to crown and OMG the pain. I stopped pushing, the baby’s heartbeat would drop and take longer to recover, until the midwife said we need to get a doctor as the heart rate was not recovering. The room went silent and then she said oh no wait heartbeats coming up, she then said to me, this is really important. You need to push through the pain your baby’s not happy and wants to be born, the heart rates suffering, well that’s all I needed to hear.
I pushed and kept pushing until my little princess was born at 4.45 weighing 5 pounds and being laid on my stomach, the first thing my little princess did to show me all about the joys of motherhood was wee on me.
