At yoga classes our teacher always reads out the latest birth stories, which I love, and it made me think about digging out my own birth story that I sent to the class, and here it is. It still makes me cry to read and remember how my journey as a mummy began. I read a quote the the othe day which said "Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” So true.
George Barnaby Greer arrived at 7.24am on Friday 3rd October after 13 hours of labour at home and 45 mins in hospital. Elaine the reflexologist correctly predicted on Tuesday that I would go into labour on Thursday!
Labour wasn't quite what I imagined (surprise surprise!) as I was expecting it to set off with irregular contractions and plenty of time for preparing my calming birthing environment - ha ha! It doesn't quite make sense then that as I began established labour at about 5pm I asked Ryan to take me for a hilly walk to make sure that things would progess quickly. I had been doing some ironing in the afternoon and wasn't sure if my aches were as a result of leaning over the ironing board or, indeed, the onset of labour. The hilly walk turned into a quick march for 200m to and from the Coombe Hill monument with me bent over breathing through my contractions every few minutes.
We then came home and Ry got on with blowing up my birth pool and getting things ready for my home birth - I couldn't understand his haste as I was convinced that even though my contractions were 5 minutes apart and lasting nearly a minute that they would still wear off and become irregular giving me plenty of time to practise my various hypnobirthing and yoga relaxation techniques! Luckily Ry had more sense and I wish that I had begun to concentrate on full relaxation rather than bark orders at my poor husband!
At about 7pm I had a bath where I relaxed using the candle breath and then got out and played with my TENS machine, which I found to be a really useful distraction. Soon I could no longer speak during contractions and realised perhaps this was it and my contractions would not be going away. However, deep down I was still concerned that I was making a meal of things -even though I could now only either stand up or hang off the door frame during contractions - and that a midwife would turn up and tell me that I had a while to wait.
The midwife arrived at about 10.30pm and got me out of the bath and asked me how far I thought I might be. I didn't want to get my hopes up so guessed 2-3 cm and was thrilled when she said I was more than 6cm - hoorah!! The next few hours were spent in the pool with candles and dim lights using breathing and sound to get me through each contraction - just as I'd hoped. I guess this was as blissful as labour gets (I thought I had been in there for 45 mins when I was actually in there for over 3 hours!!). I think the midwives wanted to smash my stereo which had my hypnobirthing scripts being read by a very strong accented American on loop. I recall them begging Ry to record the CD with his voice next time as it was so unbearable for them!!
At 2.30am I was 9cm and the pool was warmed and the clothes laid out ready for delivery. I was desperate to begin pushing to get my baby out and think now I must have pushed before I should have which may have been my downfall - next time I will definitley work more closely with my body rather than being so desperate and forcing matters myself. At 3am my contractions started to fade off a little which was worrying as I was nearly fully dilated and had been genuinely wanting to push. I was sent up and down the stairs - with Ryan getting me to do Charlie Chaplin walks to break up the monotony of the stairs. This did get things moving again but something was clearly not right. The midwives discovered that there was a swelling on my cervix which was blocking the head - possibly down to me starting to try to push too early although the midwives say it could have happened for any number of reasons. This was the turning point in my labour and when I began to feel real pain - up to this point I had coped with pain by taking 2 paracetamol at 6pm.
I won't go into too much detail on the next few fairly difficult hours (because birthing is an amazing and positive experience and I don't want to focus on the negative) Briefly, they were spent laying on my back (a position I really did not want to be in) while the midwives tried to hold back my cervix during every contraction telling me that if I pushed I would only make things worse but it was 100% impossible not to push. I did give into some gas and air which did next nothing for me although the displacement of concentration from the contractioons to being sick was welcomed!! I found using the hissing sound combioned with a scchhh noise to be the only thing that helped me breath through the contractions.
At about 6.30am the swelling was still there and George's heartrate was dropping fast. I was absolutely exhausted and felt like I would be in labour forever! I remember Ry or the midwives trying to say to me the that if I had run the London marathon then I could carry on with this - I calmly but forcefully informed everyone that this was much much harder than running 100 London marathons!!
Things then got a bit scary as George's heartrate dropped significantly on a contraction so an ambulance was called and I was taken in. I remained quite calm as had always been open minded about the transfer to hospital. It must have been unbearable for Ry chasing the blue lights though and I was more worried about him than us as I felt I intuitively knew that our baby would be ok. Once in the delivery suite I was told I would be on a syntocinon drip, given an episiotomy and would maybe deliver my baby in 4 hours time. NO WAY!! I could not wait another 4 hours and my wonderful midwife completely agreed. As the drs talked about all sorts of things, including preparation for a C Section, some how, but I would say down to the encouragement of my amazing husaband and midwife, I felt the head crowning. I was screaming that I could feel the head and the drs didn't believe me. Ry tells me the dr was literally walking towards me with the scissors for the episiotmy as my midwife got/pushed(!!) the Dr out of the way confirmed the head was indeed coming and told me it was a race against the scissors!!! With a little help from a ventouse I managed to get my gorgeous george out into the big bad world. Sadly not in my dimly lit candle filled living room but most importantly with both me and him safe and without a tear or cut in sight - much to the delight and amazement of my midwives.
I am sure that this was 100% down to perinneal massage. I think my husband would have been more gutted than me with an episiotomy as from about week 28 he has religiously massaged my perineam for 5 minutes every other night. It wasn't an experience that either of us enjoyed in any way but I used the opportunity to practise my breathing and imagine the birth and I really think it made all the difference.
George weighed in at 9lb 9.5oz and fed immediately from me. The most amazing and wonderful experience of my life.
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