40 weeks…EDB 28/05/13…Includes birth story

Tuesday, 28 May 2013…Due Date!

I have now survived 40 weeks of uncertainty, heartburn, lack of appetite and nausea, cravings, light headedness, various un-ladylike behaviours (including being unable to sit like a lady since 20 weeks and passing large amounts of gas from both ends of my body), insatiable hungriness, constipation, sleeplessness, frequent trips to the toilet to urinate, difficulty urinating (due to baby’s position or various aches), round ligament cramping, and now simultaneous pressure on my hips, tailbone/spine, and cervix. Yep, it’s been a blast, and yet people constantly feel the need to make me feel guilty if when they ask, “How are you going?”, my answer is “I’m over it!” (which I have been, since 20 weeks). Everyone else is getting orders from the midwife at 39 weeks to go home and have lots of sex to induce labour, and my midwife orders me to go home and enjoy my last two weeks of pregnancy…thanks!

Speaking of sex…every post I’ve made on Facebook since Sunday, whether pregnancy related or not, has been subjected to endless suggestions about how I should induce my labour and yet, nobody has actually mentioned anything that would help raise oxytocin levels, which is the only proven way to induce labour naturally. Even if you are induced medically, it’s still with synthetic oxytocin – yes, that’s what’s in the drip. So, nipple stimulation, sex, and orgasm are the only three ways to naturally induce labour that I am aware of. As to which methods I’m using, frankly that is nobody’s business but my own. However, my cousin mentioned some other useful things to prepare your body for labour, which I thought warranted a mention.

Raspberry leaf tea and evening primrose oil…both ripen the cervix in preparation for labour. Now, being so over it, I wanted to be ready to go if I had to be induced for some reason, so I’ve been drinking raspberry leaf tea since 35 weeks. I’ve not known about evening primrose oil until more recently, and I haven’t utilised this knowledge. I believe you can take it orally or insert it vaginally (or both), but to be honest, I have enough pill bottles in my arsenal at the moment, and I don’t need more.

So sometime after 11:00am, I started getting contractions. They feel like intense period pains, intense like I haven’t felt since I miscarried. They are around 10 minutes apart and around 1 minute long, but this varies. I think I’m going to become two people in the next 24 hours!

Brad got home from work at 4:00pm. My back was really starting to hurt and I was getting Brad to rub my back. Contractions were about 7 minutes apart. I called the birthing unit and they told me to take two Panadol and go to bed to reserve my energy for active labour. I followed their instructions, but my back pain intensified once I laid down so I didn’t get any sleep.

At 9:00pm, we went into the birthing unit as I had started vomiting and my contractions were around 3 minutes apart, only to find out that there was no room at the inn. I had an internal and found out that I was only 2cm dilated, so I was sent home with a Maxalon shot, Panadeine Forte and a sedative and told to have a shower and go to bed. I tried, but it just wasn’t happening. Brad called the birthing unit as I was really crying out during contractions and begging for pain relief, and they told him to put me in the bath. I tried to lie in the bath, but that was quite painful as Brad could no longer rub my back. I tried to kneel on all fours, but our bath isn’t deep enough. I got out as the heat was making me woozy. I decided to go back to bed despite knowing that the pain was a lot worse, as I was really concerned about fainting.

Wednesday, 29 May 2013 (Day 1)

They didn’t want me to go into the birthing unit until my contractions were consistently 3 minutes apart and at least a minute long. I was regularly asking Brad if I was there yet, and over time we went from 5 minutes to 4 minutes and finally I had three contractions that were 3 minutes apart. Brad finally said that we can go in, and he called the hospital at around 2:00am. I was really dreading the 5 minute trip to hospital, as I was unsure how I could “comfortably” get there. I didn’t think kneeling on the floor facing the seat would be comfortable, having already hurt my knees kneeling in the bath (they’re still sore). I couldn’t lie across the back seat, because the baby seat had already been installed. Brad put the passenger seat back as far as he could, but I preferred to lean forward and put my head on my hands on the dashboard.

An internal revealed I was 5cm, and I decided to try the gas and air. The internal revealed that the baby was slightly posterior, which is why I had such bad back pain, and I was encouraged to get up and sway through the contractions while leaning forward. The internal also brought forth my bloody show – a truly disgusting bit of muck! I found my spot at the end of the bed where I proceeded to sway, moan and suck gas through my contractions leaning over the end of the bed until 5:00am. I found myself trying to climb an invisible ladder as the pressure changed from my back to my tailbone to my pubic bone. Due to results from my urine test showing that I was dehydrated and had proteins in my urine, I had a cannula inserted in my hand – no mean feat for the midwife as I was leaning on my hands and she needed me to relax my arm, never mind the fact that I normally faint when I have needles that stay in my arm for longer than 30 seconds. Thankfully my contractions were frequent enough to be a sufficient distraction while she took three vials of blood for further testing and hooked up a saline bag.

I had another internal at 5:00am where I was told that I was 8cm with a bulging bag of waters, but that the baby’s head still hadn’t quite descended as they’d like. We were trying to discuss further pain relief at this point between contractions when I had an almighty contraction and my waters broke with a massive pop. I had another internal straight away, and I was now 9cm but still not quite effaced. However, the baby’s head had come right down and I was getting the urge to push, despite still being on my back. I resisted this urge for two whole hours before the midwife as able to flip the lip of cervix over the baby’s head and I was allowed to push.

Due to what I’m sure was vena cava syndrome as well as my previous labouring position at the end of the bed which put a lot of pressure on my arms, I had pins and needles in my legs, arms and up to my nose on my face during the two hours of not being allowed to push. It was very disconcerting, and I was very worried the whole time about fainting. Needless to say, I didn’t

First I pushed in a reclining position. They wanted to sit me up as far as possible, but with the feeling like I was going to faint constantly in my mind, I stayed as flat as possible. After my first push, the midwife said that I could stay there as I was going to do a good enough job for now. Once the baby came down, they really wanted me to move into a more upright position to move her around the bend, but my contractions were coming so frequently that I didn’t feel I could move. Luckily, the bed was very moveable, and they sat the head of the bed up, put the base of the bed down and put up a bar that I could cling onto to hold myself up. Once I reached that position, I couldn’t help but push, the urge was so great. They got me to lie back again once the baby was around the corner to slow things down again.

I pushed for an hour in total without any pain relief (I pushed the gas away) before our beautiful baby girl was born into the world at 8:08am. She was very eager to take her first breaths; she started squirming once she had crowned, before her shoulders had been born. She was placed on my belly as a purple, crying, squirming, very warm baby, and at that moment I had the thought, “My goodness! I’m a mum!" Up until that point, it had almost felt like I was a surrogate and wouldn’t get to keep the baby at the end of it all, but the realisation that I was now totally responsible for this baby and had to step up to the plate was instant and flooding.

Unfortunately, while my 7lb 15oz (3.61kg) baby is completely average in height (50cm long) and weight, she has a much larger than average head (36.5cm) which gave me 3rd degree tearing, resulting in me getting my first ever stitches. Not a pleasant experience at all, but even the midwife was surprised that I had torn at all, let alone so badly.

My midwife’s name was Bernadette Bland. We had the pleasure of meeting her in antenatal classes as her cousin was in the same classes and she was her support person. It was absolutely lovely to have somebody deliver my baby who wasn’t a complete stranger.