arachnie

It was a really big decision for me to share this with you guys, but you've seen so much of my life and I love being open about everything I go through. Sooo here it is! Images are by the wonderful Dame of @frankndame

My due date calculated nine months from the first day of my last period was the twenty-third of November. That didn't happen. My due date as estimated from my two ultrasounds was the fifth of December, 2016. That didn't happen either. So on the morning of the ninth, we went to hospital to schedule an induction. The doctor who saw me did an internal exam and confirmed that the foetus was (thankfully) fully engaged, that he could feel his head and that I was one centimetre dilated after having lost my mucus plug two Sundays before my visit.

He decided that I was a good candidate for induction using Prostin, one of the less 'intense' forms of induction. A gel is applied to the cervix and this simulates Prostaglandin, which is one of the hormones that makes uterine contractions possible (it's the same thing that gives you cramps when you're menstruating.)

I'm going to backtrack a little here. I'd been in a significant amount of pain for about two days before my hospital appointment. If I didn't already deal with chronic pelvic pain, I might've realised that I was actually in early labour, or what gets referred to as 'prelabour.' But I'm used to fluctuations in the amount of pain I experience and I put it down to my usual pelvic pain flaring up more than usual, given that I hadn't had too much sleep. On the morning of the hospital appointment to schedule my induction, I told Marcus that I felt like I might be having contractions but I didn't think so, given that they weren't super painful and I didn't feel any real 'tightening,' just pain that fluctuated and would be worse for a minute or so and then ease off for a while. When the doctor did the internal exam he warned me that it could stimulate some contractions, and that they probably wouldn't last.

So when Marcus had to drive the car around to the front of the hospital because I couldn't walk that far, and when I had pain a LOT worse than my usual pain on the way home, I really didn't think much of it.

We got home, and I filled my hot water bottle and laid down and read. I was re-reading Stephen King's 'It' at the time – I still haven't gotten a chance to pick it back up. I'd been laying around reading and feeling the baby kick when my water broke. I realised what'd happened pretty much straight away. It felt not unlike a kick from my baby, but it wasn't in an area that a fist or foot would touch, and immediately after it happened I felt a release of liquid.

I'm not sure why I cared as much as I did about getting amniotic fluid on the bed or carpet, but I managed to lean over the bed, grab a towel off of the clothing rack, hold it under me and scoot over to the bathroom. I texted Marcus, who was down the other end of the house. No response. I called him on his phone maybe six or seven times. Nothing. He'd fallen asleep on the lounge and left his phone on silent from being at the hospital earlier that day. After about ten minutes of rapidly intensifying pain and zero response, I grabbed my towel, scooted to the door of our room and yelled down the hallway for him, which thankfully woke him up.

Retrospectively, we really should've just gotten in the car and gone straight to the hospital. What I didn't realise until after I'd been through it is that not only does everyone have a different labour and birth experience, everyone feels contractions differently. I'd gotten so used to hearing the word 'tightening' and being told to go to hospital when I experienced contractions closer than around ten minutes apart, and lasting for longer than a minute.

Looking back now it seems totally stupid and it probably was, but I legitimately didn't think I was having contractions because they were TOO CLOSE together. I remember saying to Marcus that I “don't think these are real contractions, they're too close together.” I never felt 'tightening' as so many people describe, just pain. And my contractions were never longer than around five minutes apart after my water broke. And like I said above, I guess I was having contractions that entire day – they just weren't that bad, and it took my water breaking for them to become intense enough for me to actually pay attention. We decided that the best plan of action would just be to call the hospital and see what they thought was best. The hospital wasn't much help. They told me they were busy, asked if they could call back when they weren't, and took my phone number down.

While we were waiting I messaged some of my close friends and my mother, letting them know that bub was well and truly on the way. Marcus moved the hospital bags I'd packed for us and the baby into the car, and helped me get all the last-minute things together. Twenty minutes later, the hospital still hadn't called back, so we called them. After I explained what was going on, we were told to come into hospital as soon as we could.

The hospital is about a thirty-minute drive away, and by the time we'd gotten there I couldn't really speak through my contractions any more, and they were maybe three minutes apart at most. Unfortunately, upon arrival we were told that there were currently no birth suites available, and I was taken into the waiting area. It was (I think) around this time that both my mother and my friend Jaimee arrived, and it was also around this point in time that I recall my contractions becoming VERY intense.

Hanging out in the waiting room before being transferred to the Birth Suite

I've seen so many birth documentaries where labouring women are filmed saying 'I can't do it.' I always thought that sounded incredibly dumb until I actually went through labour and said it a good dozen times. Actually, I ended up being pretty surprised at how similar the earlier part of my labour was to what I'd witnessed on television before – there was a lot of swearing, a lot of yelling, and a lot of grabbing the closest hand to me to squeeze.

I feel like this is the point at which my story gets a little blurry. I do feel like I remember everything that happened, but some events are a little muddled, and time passes very weirdly when you're experiencing that level of pain. At a guess, I'd been in the waiting room for an hour, maybe an hour and a half when I needed to get to the bathroom to change out the maxi pad that'd been absorbing my amniotic fluid. (One super common misconception about birth is that when your 'water breaks' there's a big gush of fluid and it's over. This isn't the case. It doesn't stop leaking.) I checked the maxi pad as I was changing it and was upset to see that it'd taken on a greenish colour, which is indicative of the baby having passed meconium while in the womb. It can be dangerous, but I was reassured by a midwife that the level of meconium wasn't concerning, and that they'd monitor my baby while I was in labour.

It was also around this point that I started to feel like something was wrong, or just generally ‘not normal.' All through pregnancy I'd heard about labour being made more bearable by the points in time in-between contractions, that there's generally a sense of relief when a contraction ends. I wasn't experiencing that at all. I was in a pretty substantial amount of pain in between my contractions, and I was also having some contractions with zero break in between. I asked a midwife about this and she didn't really have much of a response. I also asked for morphine twice while I was in the waiting room, but it never came. I was given a portable Entonox (nitrous oxide/oxygen) unit and although I didn't feel like it was helping at all with the pain, it gave me something to focus my breathing on while I was experiencing contractions – I think it could've been plain oxygen in the tank and had exactly the same effect, but it did help.

Eventually a birthing suite was cleared out and I was moved in. I think that was probably around the point at which my labour preferences all started to go out the window. I'd wanted to move around as much as possible and remain upright during labour, and I could barely get off the bed. I'd set up a playlist for when I was in labour earlier, but I can't even remember thinking about it once I was there – I don't think I even knew where my phone was. My small, portable Entonox tank was switched out for a larger one and I was hooked up to devices to monitor my heart rate and contractions.

I was going through a contraction here. That’s the Entonox mouthpiece, and you can see some of the other bits and pieces I’m hooked up to here, too.

Showing off my ~sexy compression socks

A couple of things seemed to happen at this point. I had this sudden, very lucid thought that I absolutely COULD actually do this – obviously I was in a huge amount of pain, but I had the realisation that if I kept up my breathing in the way that I had I was going to be totally fine. It's somewhat comparable to being tattooed for longer than a few hours – at the beginning there's a lot of 'wait why am I doing this?' and it sucks, and then after a while you kind of get into a zone and you can meditate a little and it doesn't seem to bad at all. While labour definitely hurt more than any of my tattoos, that moment where you push past the pain and mellow out a bit was very similar.

It was also around this time that I seriously lost track of what was going on around me. A bunch of stuff happened, but I honestly can't say which happened first or last or how far apart any of it was. I remember Marcus having a fifteen minute nap, and my mother being shocked at his ability to power nap. I think maybe he got food at some point, too? My father and both of my sisters came into the room and said hello. Jaimee took photos. I had (I think) two internal exams, one at which I was four centimetres dilated and one at which I was seven centimetres dilated. What they referred to as a 'clip' was inserted into my baby's head and taped to the inside of my leg, in order to monitor the baby's heart rate. This needed to be redone twice. I threw up a couple of times, and kept having tiny sips of water. I know all of that happened, just not when and in what order.

I'm not sure when it was, but it was also made clear to me why I was in the amount of pain that I was in between my contractions. The chart tracking my contractions showed that they were unusually intense, and that I was experiencing doubled and tripled contractions, which are exactly what they sound like – back-to-back contractions without any reprieve. One of the internal exams also showed that my cervix was incredibly swollen from the strength of the contractions slamming my baby's head into it. We were told that they'd only seen contractions this strong before with an induction and that they'd never seen doubled and tripled contractions like what I was experiencing without a Pitocin drip.

I'd been seven centimetres dilated for (if I recall correctly) seven hours when things started to get kind of scary. My heart rate became incredibly elevated for no understandable reason – my resting heart rate before pregnancy was around 70bpm, through pregnancy it went to around 85-90bpm, and in this part of labour it shot to between 150 and 160 – higher than that of the baby. At around the same time, my baby's heart rate began to plummet, which is probably the most terrifying thing I've experienced in my life. I saw the number on the monitor drop and a lot of beeping started. I asked Marcus to hold my hand and he told me that he didn't think he could, as he could see people about to come into the room. And then all of a sudden there were five or six medical professionals around me checking everything and trying to figure out what was wrong.

My heart rate rising

Thankfully my baby's heart rate came back up to normal, although mine hadn't dropped. I was told that I needed an epidural if I wanted any chance to have a natural delivery, and that they'd wait it out if I wanted them to, but that there was around a fifty-fifty chance that I'd need to have a caesarean section.

All of this was a total nightmare for me. Obviously I know that it's rare that things go to plan, but I'd dreamt about a natural labour with a vaginal birth and being able to leave the hospital within a couple of days. I have a huge fear of numbness – I can't even stand local anaesthetics. I went into everything knowing that of course there was a chance I'd need a caesarean but wanting to avoid it if I possibly could, and the idea of an epidural straight-up horrified me. But it was my only chance to have a vaginal birth, so I said they could do it and someone came in to insert the tubing for the epidural into my back, as well as a catheter.

I apparently don't respond well to epidurals. My heart rate rose a bit further, although I think that's probably attributable to my fear of numbness. I began shaking like crazy, which isn't an abnormal response but it's incredibly unpleasant. I started throwing up a lot more, and I had huge waves of nausea with each contraction. I could still move my legs and even feel most of my legs, but from my waist to my butt I was totally 100% numb. I had a vague sensation of tightening with each contraction but I was barely aware of it unless I concentrated. Still, even though I wasn't really in pain any more, I would still take the natural labour ten times over the epidural. I absolutely hated it.

Just chillin’ with my vom bag

Eli's heart rate dropped again, and again the room filled with people, and again his heart rate came back up to normal and all was okay again – but I was told that if it dropped again and stayed low for more than five minutes, which they seemed to think was quite likely, I'd be taken in for an emergency caesarean section. After another four hours of being seven centimetres dilated with a swollen cervix, his heart rate dropped again (which only gets more terrifying every time it happens, I was terrified that my baby was going to die) and a caesarean section was organised – a consent form was held in front of my face, I was given a pen to sign it and they slid me from the Birthing Suite bed onto a gurney. Even though a caesarean was always a last resort and seemed like a total nightmare to me, at this point I just wanted my baby out safe. I remember saying that more than once - “as long as we both get out of this alive I'm good.”

And honestly that's kind of where my labour/birth story ends. With my heart rate being so incredibly high and my anxiety about numbness, they didn't want to risk a caesarean with epidural and they strongly recommended that I go under a general anaesthetic for the operation. I agreed, as long as Marcus could see our baby immediately after surgery, which they assured me would happen. I told Marcus he could name our baby since he'd be the first one to see him, and I was given oxygen and general anaesthetic.

That seems like a weird place to leave a birth story, but I just wasn't conscious at all. I woke up after around an hour in a recovery room, which I was unfortunately kept in for around five hours, as my heart rate still wouldn't drop below around 140 (even though I was on a ridiculous amount of pethidine and not a bit stressed out.) The first time I saw my baby, Marcus told me that he'd chosen Eli as his name, and he was unfortunately taken back away from me pretty quickly as he started to cry and they didn't want to risk my heart rate becoming more elevated. He was brought back a little while later when I was a bit more lucid and placed on my chest, where he immediately latched, breastfed for forty-five minutes and made both of my nipples bleed. I was so anxious about meeting him – I was incredibly worried that with my history of mental illness I wouldn't find it easy to bond at all, but I was so in love with him as soon as I saw him. I'm very lucky. If you want to know anything about my immediate post natal experience/my experience in the hospital or if there are any other questions I can answer, please let me know :) This is obviously SUPER long already so I didn't want to add any recovery type stuff into it!

And thank you for reading :) Here are some more photos taken by Jaimee, while we were in the Maternity ward: