Although it has been three years since I gave birth to precious C I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was six days overdue and I was sick of being pregnant. I am one of those women who found pregnancy rather pleasant in the beginning but couldn't wait for the baby to get out as time passed. Anyway, my husband and I had just arrived home after a dinner out with my colleagues from work. I remember that I said to my husband that the baby was going to come really soon. I had false contractions but I had been having those for the last couple of weeks so it didn't really mean anything. But I felt very heavy, as if the baby was really pushing itself downwards. We got home about half past eleven and went to bed almost immediately after checking my temperature and found that I had a fever, which felt a bit strange since I almost never have a fever. For the past month I had been sick with the cold several times and I assume that the pregnancy had affected my immune system.
At two o' clock I suddenly woke up when I had another contraction, but it was different this time, I actually felt some pain with this one. I went to the bathroom and found something bloody in my underwear, I guess it was the show. Soon I felt another painful contraction and I started timing them with my Iphone. My husband got up and started timing as well. I tried to get him to continue sleeping for a while, knowing that this could take a while (sometimes many hours before it is time to go to the hospital), but he could absolutely not stay in bed. He timed the contractions like an obsessed person (typically him) and after a few hours when it started getting really painful, we called the hospital. The nurse said I should take some painkillers and a bath. Because of my fever I had already taken several painkillers and taking a bath seemed like a really bad idea. But following her advice I got in the bath. It was the worse thing ever. My contractions felt intolerable and I got up after only a few minutes. I remember I said to my husband; call the hospital, we're going in!
After 15 minutes or so we were in the cab on our way to the hospital and I tried my best to cope with the ever so painful contractions, which by this time came very often. The driver looked scared and he went really fast. I had contractions on our way from the car to the entrance and we got help immediately. I think it was about nine o clock when we got to the hospital so I had been having my contractions for about seven hours. Strangely it felt as if it had been going on for only a couple of hours. When the midwife checked me I was already about 3 inches (7cm) dilated, so I didn't have to worry that she was going to send me home. She left us for a while and I struggled through another couple of horrible contractions. When she got back she gave me nitrous oxide (laughing gas) which I inhaled during the contractions. At first it made me feel nausea but after she had lowered the dose I guess it provided some relief (but not much).
I soon dilated to 4 inches (10cm) which made me think that the baby was going to come out VERY SOON. I got tired from all the painful contractions which I had been coping with for about ten hours. I asked for pain relief, said I wanted epidural. But my midwife said that it was really close now, and that epidural would slow things down. Since I absolutely didn't want that we decided to proceed without. I remember a certain point where the pain was so intense that it made my vomit (I usually never vomit). Some people say that the last stage of birth is easier because the body just takes you through it but not for me. I was exhausted and didn't feel any contractions. I pushed when they told me to push and I thought it would never end. It took him two hours to be pushed out and the doctor had started to prepare for vacuum extraction when I gave it one final push (without having any more contractions since my uterus was completely exhausted) and he popped out, twenty passed two in the afternoon! He was a huge baby, no wonder it was hard to get him out.
Afterwards I felt lucky of course, but I was really tired. I couldn't go to the bathroom and they had to drain me for several liters of fluid through a catheter. During labour I had been drinking constantly without going to the bathroom, I was so busy handling the contractions and no one reminded me : (. They said my bladder was so full it could break. Afterwards I heard that a full bladder will make the delivery even harder since it will take up space and make the exit even more narrow...
I couldn't leave the delivery room for several hours and my newborn son couldn't stop screaming. They were worried about him, thought that he was very affected from the delivery and needed extra check ups. In fact I was the affected one...It turned out my baby was just very hungry and frustrated since my breasts hadn't started to produce milk. But finally they checked me and found I had a high fever. They moved us to another room and left us for a while. In the meantime I got sicker and eventually the fever was higher than 105 F (41 c) and my entire body was shaking from the fast rising change in temperature. They started taking a bunch of tests and the tests showed that I had a serious infection but they couldn't figure out what was causing it. So they gave me a lot of antibiotics intravenously and tried to keep the fever down. In the meantime they encouraged me to try to breastfeed my newborn who was still super hungry and angry and wouldn't stop crying. It was just terrible. And my husband was so worried he thought I was going to die. We stayed at the hospital for a week and these first days as a new mother was sadly not so happy. The birth of my second child who got delivered via a c-section was completely different and I will tell you all about that later.
//Nicole Hellgren
