Pregnancy Diaries: My Labour Story

Well this is quite some story. And I probably (most definitely) should have written it down earlier so it was really fresh in my mind, but one thing led to another and here we are nearly five months later still wanting to keep my legs closed because of the thought of it, makes it the perfect time to tell you my labour story.

Because we mostly hear about the stories of women in labour for days and weeks on end, and with horrific pains and all sorts of complications. Well, mines a little different to that in that it all happened within a mere few hours….

SUNDAY 6TH SEPTEMBER

It was the day after my due date and as everyone tells you ‘it’ll be a few more weeks until baby makes their appearance’, so the day was planned like every other day for the past seven months had been - doing very little, and eating a lot.

We got up and Tim popped to the shop to get us some breakfast supplies, I was feeling a little uncomfortable from the heat and just general aches so I decided I’d run myself a bath. As the water filled up, I sat on the toilet casually texting a few friends and my mum about life and whatever else. And then I had a bath - I wouldn’t say relaxing, but it wasn’t any different than the last however many baths I’d had. Because y’know 9 months of pregnancy isn’t that much of a relaxing time.

Bath done and Tim was now in the kitchen ready to make us a sausage sandwich (Cauldron sausages for the win) and it was around 10.20am. I popped to the toilet and then I popped back within minutes again. And as I sat on the toilet the second time round, I felt a slight twinge.
And another. 
And then a few more shortly after. 
Quicker. Longer. More intense. 
I tried to pep talk myself in that I was most likely just being dramatic, as I’d gone from feeling absolutely nothing to what appeared to be intense and real contractions every minute, all within the space of fifteen minutes - actually, the amount of time it took for Tim to put some sausages in the oven! I’d spent all my pregnancy wondering what a contraction felt like, and if I’d ever know the difference between them and Braxton Hicks, and it’s so true in that you JUST do when it happens.

Another five or so minutes passed, and after going from sitting on the toilet to laying on the bed and bent over the breakfast bar about fifty times, it was the moment that I straddled the toilet that we realised we needed to call the labour ward. Our Bump and Baby classes had told us to remain calm, but my god you’re not calm in those moments. We were frantic, a little flappy and trying to help me breathe in between contractions. After what felt like an hours chat with a midwife (it was most definitely something like ten minutes), she told us to grab our bags being prepared to come back home, and head to the triage unit for a closer inspection (I’d had a bit of blood in the time I was feeling contractions and couldn’t remember if I felt baby, which was common in my pregnancy…!).

With our hospital having no parking, we booked ourselves an Uber and grabbed as many of the bags we could. I’ll never forget the drivers face who looked like a rabbit in headlights as I sat in the back slumped over, trying to calmly breathe through my mask. And I am 150% sure he took every single road possible that had speed bumps on.

We arrived at the hospital and waddled myself up to triage. Tim wasn’t allowed in which I found quite hard, but it all became a bit of a daze from there. I remember them giving me something which they said was to help with the pain relief whilst they inspected me (it turned out to be gas and air which went straight to my head), and after a bit of back and forth where I didn’t want to be checked, another midwife managed to get my trousers off to shout down the corridor '“she’s fully dilated, we need to get her to the labour ward”. Somehow I managed to tell them I wanted the birth centre but then exclaimed I wouldn’t have time to get there because I wanted to push (I wasn’t pushing, I was just screaming).

I so vividly remember at this point whilst they got a wheelchair sorted, laying on my side, one hand clutching tightly on the gas and air (and going in and out of dizziness) and the other hand against the wall, thinking that I couldn’t have my baby here. I just couldn’t. Not without Tim.

At this point, I was then put into a wheelchair and wheeled out of triage. And this is Tim’s favourite part of the story….

I’d spent my whole pregnancy so afraid of labour, midwives and doctors seeing my vagina, and worrying what they’d think, and had convinced myself that I wouldn’t be like the woman I saw at my first appointment, who was basically naked and about to give birth. And well… Tim says he sat outside the triage talking to a lovely couple who were only halfway through, with them asking if I was in pain, to which he replied ‘only mildly, I don’t think it’s that bad’. And in that exact moment, the triage doors opened and out I came, screaming inbetween puffs of gas and air, with my bare ass for all to see. Just like I’d always said I wouldn’t be.

It was in this moment, that I closed my eyes and I kept them closed for the next two hours. I didn’t want to see who could see me, and what was happening.

We got to the birth centre and assigned a room by a midwife called Debra (who was an angel and someone I’ll never forget) and I got onto the bed where I full on cuddled the big beanbag. The midwives were trying to talk to me, however I was just in my own world. And in denial. 

Tim was amazing (and half of this is actually coming from him!), and informed them that I wanted a water birth, and if that didn’t work out and I really couldn’t cope, then as agreed at my midwife appointments, I’d have a c section. Everything had been written in my notes, along with my coping labour plan. We handed this to Debra who popped it to one side, and tried to assess my blood pressure and perform a general check of what was going on down below.
That never happened.

The water filled up in the tub, and somehow I managed to get in.

I felt like I wanted to push, which they said was a great sign and to absolutely start pushing. One midwife came in, Flo her name was, and I only came to know of her after I gave birth. Flo had said to me “you’re doing some really great shouting, but why don’t you put all your energy from shouting into pushing”. 
I didn’t push. I felt I couldn’t. I was blocking it all out.

I remember feeling like I was in there for hours. It turned out to be about 10 minutes.

In between pains, I managed to tell Tim that I couldn’t do it. And it was then, that he made the call that I was struggling and with Debra agreeing, they prepared to get me to the labour ward for a c section.

The rest really was a blur from here, with my eyes still firmly shut. We got to the labour ward and they were getting everything ready for me to have an epidural, when one midwife called Tim over and informed him that there was no physical way I’d be able to have a c section, let alone an epidural because baby’s head was crowning!

So it was down to Tim to tell me that I had to start pushing. Properly.

From what I’ve been told, I wouldn’t open my legs, even though I knew in my head that my legs were open, they weren’t open enough for labour. I was finding it hard to process that I had to have my baby in stirrups when I felt so uncomfortable in this position, and I was struggling to feel present and in the room when I had a midwife shouting at me that ‘women have been doing this for years so I need to just do it too’ which doesn’t work well with me, and made me want to close up further. It was at this point that Debra (my birth centre midwife) retrieved my coping plan notes and realised she needed to intervene and talk me through it. I know looking back now, that this played such a key part in her helping me through as she spoke to me in a way I understood - she told me it was hard, but that I had to do this and I was doing a good job even though it was painful and not what I had wanted. She said that everyone is different and I was allowed to be struggling. And that helped. It really helped.

With four midwives prising open my legs, a lot of pushing, screaming and crying, a moment of shock when a midwife poured water over my freshly washed hair, only gas and air for pain relief, and Tim and Debra fully encouraging and comforting me, baby made his way into the world at 1.26pm. Three hours later from my first contraction.

I don’t recall the moment they put him onto me, but apparently I jumped a little. My first question wasn’t what sex he was, but how much he weighed, and I cried shortly after. And I saw Tim cry. And cried some more.

That feeling of him on my chest is a hard one to explain now, because I can feel it now but I can’t explain it. I kissed his head, but I remember thinking how delicate he was. I remember feeling so overwhelmed with him, and with myself. Because I’d done it. I did it exactly how I didn’t want to do it. And I remember feeling pain like I’d never felt before. The burn.

And then they asked me to deliver the placenta. Naturally. That memory, that feeling of delivering the placenta hasn’t left me. I’m not sure if it ever will. But let’s just say it wasn’t pleasant.

Baby sat on my chest as an endorphin and pain relief whilst they stitched me up (I had a second degree tear). It stung, but I felt so many emotions and feelings both physically and mentally at that time that I’ve managed to forget about that moment. It was at that time, being stitched up, that Tim and I fully acknowledged each other that we had a little boy - and we wanted to call him Otis.

Once I was stitched up, cleaned up and a little more upright, Debra immediately put plans in place to get us back to the birth centre where we could recover and just relax as a new family. I don’t remember the whole process of being wheeled back down, but I do remember faintly that I hadn’t a clue where we were (even though we’d come the exact way we came from). As we got back to the room we’d been assigned at the birth centre and I stood up from the wheelchair, I never truly anticipated that feeling shortly after.
Like your whole insides are going to fall out.

Debra kindly told me to get some pants out of my bag so she could get me ready, and I remember laughing and telling her that I could do it and she didn’t want to look down there. How naive I was. Because she’d already been looking down there for quite some time, and also - I really couldn’t do it myself.

Once I was comfortably on the bed, Debra popped Otis into my bra where he curled into me, asleep, whilst I stroked his little back, embracing this feeling I’d never felt before. Debra finally got to take my blood pressure then too. We laughed about how it took this long. And then Flo came in and told me I’d done a great job in such a short amount of time. I’d asked Tim who she was and how she knew about it all, which is then when he filled me in on her motivating words at the start. Tim liked Flo for that exact reason. Debra and Flo left the room to fetch us some food and drink. And that was it.

It was just us three together. A new family.

And in true style, we called all our family to tell them of the news who had absolutely no idea. Then Tim went and fetched me a large bag of chips and a Diet Coke from Mcdonalds.
It was the nicest Mcdonalds I think I’d ever eaten.

Because we never got that sausage sandwich, which sat in the oven until the following evening, after all.