labour

This post has been a long time coming.  When a baby arrives there is so much to learn and so much feeding to do and all the while you need to start recovering from the birth. For me my labour story was blurry and I had to keep asking questions about what happened and when. A lovely friend asked for all the details, which was nice because once the baby arrives all the focus goes on them (as of course it should). Also as a Mum you have often gone through a rather traumatic experience, coupled with a drop in all your happy pregnancy hormones and a chance to talk through what happened in labour is necessary. Here is Ada’s arrival story, it is really detailed, those details are important to me!

I went into labour really positive. I had planned to give birth at Botany Maternity Unit with minimal medical assistance. On Thursday night contractions started about 10pm they increased in strength and intensity and by 1am I wanted Cam there with me. We watched live comedy on DVD and paced about the lounge. At 3am the contractions were 5 minutes apart and about a minute long, we called the midwife who requested we call back when they were three minutes apart. Cam and I diligently recorded the start and finish of each contraction, they would be three minutes apart then four, then five, then three… By 5.30am Cam had fallen asleep and the contractions had basically worn themselves out. How disappointing.

Late Friday night the contractions started back up again, they felt stronger and longer and lasted all night. At 8.30am we couldn’t get hold of our midwife but talked to her associate and decided to come into the hospital where she was. On the way there I had contractions in the car and while standing at the nurses station getting admitted they were still coming, but by the time my midwife arrived they were petering out again. It was kind of embarrassing sitting on the hospital bed talking normally and waiting for the contractions to show up so she could get started.  Two full nights of contractions, all night long and no baby on the way! My belly got hooked up to a monitor for a check up that we had scheduled for the Sunday morning. We discovered that Ada was happy in there, her heart rate was steady as she goes. We went home disappointed with having to keep waiting for our wee arrival and to try and get some rest.  

I felt the contractions start again at 4pm Saturday afternoon and my waters broke about 6pm. There was no going back!  At 8pm and the contractions are most definitively the 3 minute interval and one minute duration required to be heading into labour proper. My midwife comes to see us at home and takes a look at the ‘waters’, there is a little meconium in them so we so we go to Middlemore rather than the birth unit. On the way there I was still positive about the labour process that was about to happen and I had the thought that whatever happens I am taking home a healthy baby. 

Everything progresses for a few hours. Then I am still kind of hazy on the order of things,  I get to 8cm dilated at one point then later go backwards and am only 7cm dilated  with uneven cervix width on one side! So I lie on my side to try and get this evened out, this position is more painful but it rights the issue and I am evenly dilated at about 8cm. Around 11pm it seems I am entering transition to go into the final active stage of labour. Instead and hour goes by and the contractions completely level off and never return to prior intensity or speed.  All is quiet.

So now it is about midnight on Sunday morning and I now get assessed by the registrar and it is decided that my labour needs a kick start, I get a drip in my arm for fluids and to deliver the artificial labour hormone syntocin. I also get an epidural because I have been in labour for so long and the syntocin is going to increase the intensity of the contractions a lot. Cam calls Jo to come and sub in for him during the epidural and the growing contractions over the next few hours and he has a nap in the waiting room. As Jo arrives the contractions are increasing and I am offered gas for pain relief for the first time since this all began, this works well for me. About 1.30am the anaesthetist arrives and I get the epidural with no drama. Later reading the monitors on my belly reveals that again the contractions are leveling off; they are not regular and strong enough for me to be fully dilated. The syntocin gets cranked up a few more times in the night and the doctors come in to check my progress. I am now racing the clock to be 10cm dilated at a reasonable time in order to be able to push baby out myself or I am going downstairs to theatre for a C section. All the while the heart rate monitor on my belly shows that Ada was in no distress while waiting in position to be born.

The final deadline is 6am, upon examination I am fully dilated. Hooray! I finally get the go ahead to push but we wait for an hour and they keep the contractions going and we all get an hours sleep and rest while Ada continues to slowly travel down the birth canal. 7am Sunday morning another exam reveals that Ada is now within touching distance and that she has hair!  I begin pushing, the epidural means I can only just feel when the time is right to do so. Jo and Cam and my midwife are amazingly supportive during this time. The contractions again level off and the syntocin gets increased a few more times even during this period.  The leveling off means that not every contraction is strong enough for me to push with. Two hours later results in no baby and a C section is still not off the cards. The doctors changed shifts so a different team examines me. They measure me pushing to see if baby is actually moving from all my efforts, she is, relief! A full medical team has assembled and are setting up equipment to assist me with either forceps or a ventouse. This is the first time I felt a bit scared, as I hadn’t been told this was about to happen. The decision was that I had been in labour long enough and needed to get this baby out. The doctor sets up with a ventouse and she pulls when I push, even this is not one smooth action, it results in a crazy amount of pain, considering I have an epidural and no baby is born yet.  We try again, waiting for a strong contraction to assist us, then slip, something shifts, there is a lot of blood and finally she is born at 9.13am on the 27^th of November! Hallelujah!!

It was so comforting that Ada was happy as a clam, even after lying in the birthcanal, ready to go and within touching distance for the duration of the last phase. Her heart rate never showed signs of distress and I was able to stay calm throughout her birth. Is it not amazing how alert and calm she is in her birth photos after all that waiting!