K's Birth Story

So here it is – my labour in a nutshell! I have included most details but I don’t think it’s too distressing!

All night long from Tues-Wed I had strong period-like pains, which I managed to sleep through ok but felt them each time I woke up to go to the loo. My husband, O, was supposed to go to Warsaw for a shareholders’ meeting on Wed morning and we had the alarm set for 6 am. I woke up just after 5 with the pains still there. I told O. He asked if he should cancel his trip and I said that it’s up to him but maybe he shouldn’t risk going and that he’d promised days before that he wouldn’t travel anywhere before the baby was born. So O cancelled his trip. We fell asleep again and I woke up just after 7, went to the loo and went to check if Mum was awake. The pains had subsided and we had planned to go to Ikea and I wanted to add a few more things to the shopping list.

As I stood talking to Mum in the family room I felt a wet trickle run down my leg and I knew it wasn’t urine, because I felt it came from a different spot! I touched it and smelled it (my pregnancy guide said to do this if you suspected waters breaking). It didn’t smell of urine – it had no smell at all!!! I went to the loo again and as I sat down, a fair bit more gushed out. I looked into the loo and it was clear, smeared with white mucous (the mucous plug blocks the cervix during pregnancy and comes out just before labour, it can also be tinged red with blood). Mum was in the door of the loo and I told her it’s definitely my waters breaking. I felt a bit nervous. Got up and went to my bedroom for undies and a maxi pad.

I then called my gyno. You are supposed to go to hospital without delay if your waters break because it can lead to infection. He told me to be calm and eat breakfast, take a shower and be at the hospital within an hour or two. I went to O who was still asleep and told him that we had to go to the hospital because the baby was on the way. O was too sleepy to understand and said he’s just going to snooze 15 more mins! So I told him my waters had broken and the doctor had said to be at the hospital within 2 hrs. This got O up right away!

I ate a mini breakfast, which was a mistake because you can’t eat during labour, but I was nervous. Then I had a shower, washed my hair which was in need of it, got dressed and finished packing my bag for the hospital. We were there at 9.10 am.

At the hospital I signed in and the doc did an ultrasound to confirm the waters were disappearing and baby was positioned for birth but I wasn’t experiencing any other labour symptoms so, instead of going to the pre-delivery room, I went to my hospital room where they hooked me up to monitor contractions and the baby’s movements.

Around 10.30 am I had my first contraction, which was uncomfortable but not exactly painful. So Mum started timing them. O spent most of his time on the mobile making business calls outside! We timed my contractions for a while and they were hopeless – totally irregular and fairly weak, instead of getting stronger and closer together like they are supposed to as labour progresses. My doc suggested they induce me. I didn’t want to and asked for more time. In the meantime they asked if I wanted an enema (to stop you pooping during delivery as the pressure of pushing bubs out is the same as pressure to poo and often both happen at the same time!). I thought I’d be fine as I’d been to the loo twice already and I thought the idea of an enema sounded awful but Mum talked me into it and it was totally fine in the end and a bloody good idea!!

By this stage I was getting furiously hungry and dying to eat anything ranging from delicious meals to sandwiches, to chocolate. My mum and O both had dinner and I kept asking what they’d eaten. My doc administered a glucose drip to “feed” me and that helped a little. I was only allowed to swallow a little bit of water for the whole labour! The glucose got a contraction or two out of me but my doc was adamant that oxytocin was the best solution. He didn’t want me labouring more than 12 hrs after my waters broke as that could lead to infection and I would have to take antibiotics, which wasn’t good for the baby. So he hooked me up and straightaway a nightmare contraction hit! It was like a really bad period pain in the lower belly, vagina and anus, strong as hell and lasted well over 5 mins!! The big contractions I’d read about that take place in late labour only go for 1-2 mins! I was still on the monitor and I couldn’t get up or anything, I thought I’d die! My mum started to cry looking at my reaction to the pain. The doc quickly stopped the drip and took me off the monitor and I hobbled into the shower and massaged my belly and lower back with hot water, which was a big relief. As I was getting out, another contraction started and I jumped right back in!

The doc decided to put me on oxytocin as I had only dilated 1 cm in the whole 5 hrs or so I’d been in labour up to that point. For clarity, in the first phase of labour your cervix effaces and dilates to 10 cm. I had effaced and dilated to 1.5 cm before labour and now just needed to get to 10 cm. So they took me to the pre-delivery room and hooked me up to the oxytocin drip, which was a nightmare. Since I reacted well to it (had strong contractions), they decided they could administer the epidural right away. Sometimes they wait with the epidural as it can weaken contractions and prolong labour. So I sat up and bent over and got disinfected. The actual shot wasn’t too painful, and definitely nothing compared to giving birth naturally! After the shot I had to lie still for 15 mins and it took effect blissfully after that. At this stage, with the oxytocin, I could feel contractions as mild period pains but this was the real thing! The epidural allows for some feeling so you know when to breathe, push, etc. I kept taking deep breaths to my stomach to provide the baby with oxygen as it can lose oxygen getting squashed by contractions. They kept monitoring her heartbeat and everything was going fine. Mum and O spent a bit of time chatting with me and within just over an hour the oxytocin had dilated me to 10 cm and the baby’s head was down low. The midwife asked me to crouch and push.

At this stage I was a little uncomfortable with the urge to bear down and I sat on the loo and pushed until the head was really low. Suddenly the midwife was opening to door to the delivery room and saying, this was it. It was totally surreal. I walked into the room and got up onto the delivery chair (like half a bed) and put my legs up. They called my gyno and the pediatrician and next thing you know they were giving me instructions how to push, which I had practiced a lot at childbirth classes and had always found easy. For the real thing it was hard work. I felt the contractions and had to push 3 times on each one. This meant taking a deep breath into my lungs, bending over and bearing down with all my strength. It was exhausting and the sensation of the baby’s head crowning was stinging me (although probably nothing compared to birth w/o pain relief!). They made me wait out a couple of contractions and relax. This was also hard as it was a little painful and I wanted to push but I had to hold on and breathe those shallow breaths you see on movies of people giving birth.

Soon enough the midwife and doc were shouting “push, push, we have the head coming through”, I was freaking a bit inside and just wanting the whole thing to be over with. I had begged them not to cut my perineum if they could avoid it but I heard the midwife say there’s not enough room and then she pulled out these huge scissors and I had the urge to close my eyes. I could feel the snips but painlessly, not like they were happening to me. Then they were shouting again and all I could think was “let this be over!”

Next thing you know they were saying the baby is here and I looked down and saw this slippery purple body covered in white. The anesthetist said “You have a daughter, you did it!” They put her on my belly and all I could think was “Why is she so purple? Did she have enough oxygen? She is huge.” Then the pediatrician took her to do the Apgar and clear her nose and mouth and then they gave her to me wrapped up in a cloth nappy. It was totally surreal. I didn’t feel the flush of motherly love just then, I was kind of in shock. Then they whisked her off to get bathed and dressed. The doc stitched up my perineum and that wasn’t too pleasant and felt like it was going on forever. When he finished they disinfected me and cleaned up, covered me with a quilt and added a section to the chair so I could lie like on a bed for an hour under observation. Mum and O came in and they brought K all dressed up in the wondersuit and wrapped in the little wrap I had bought just a few days earlier! She was sooooo cute!!