Born 30th September 2006 at 9:42am after 11 hours of contractions, including 3 hours of pushing and a little help from an epidural and a vacuum extraction. A successful VBAC!
On Friday the 29th September I had a nice quiet relaxing day while Kel took Josh, Brandon, Hayley and Riley to the Melbourne Show. I made an appointment at the hairdressers and got my hair cut and straightened. Then I went visiting people, and went home and watched a movie. It was about 6pm when I realised I had been having these strange sensations that seemed to come and go. Kel and the kids got back at 6:30pm. We had fish and chips for dinner and then we went through all the show bags. They had picked out a pink cowboy hat with a tiara on it for me to wear to the hospital!!! By this stage I was starting to get a little bit uncomfortable. I put Josh to bed and told him a secret... "I think the baby is coming".
Me and Kel sat down and watched a movie (The Terminal). I started to write down the times of the contractions so I could see if this was the real thing. After a while Kel noticed that I was leaning over the edge of the couch every 5 minutes or so. I finally came clean and told him. I didn't want to tell him straight away because I knew he would panic and want to go to the hospital straight away. We kept watching the movie and writing down the times... here they are: 8:25 8:29 8:33 8:42 8:47 8:55 9:00 9:07
Then I stopped writing them for a while... I think this is when I sent a message to Kellie to tell her not to drink tonight. She was planning on going out tonight!
9:53 9:57 10:02 10:08 10:12 10:16 10:22 10:29 10:33 10:36 10:42 10:49 10:54 10:56 10:58
About this time we rang Stephanie (our doula) to give her some warning and see what she thought we should do. She said to ring the hospital, so I did. They said to make our way in, but that we didn't have to rush in. I decided to have a shower while Kel went to pick up my sister and his Mum.
I really didn't feel like I was ready to go to the hospital yet. I was rushing around trying to do last minute things and feeling like I was forgetting something. Eventually we got everything together and loaded into the car. I whispered one last goodnight to Josh and we were off. Here is the last pregnant photo of me wearing my pink cowboy hat...
The drive to the hospital was pretty uneventful… except for the few times when the battery disconnected and we lost power for a second! And we found out what the speed check sign says when you are driving too fast. It was a bit uncomfortable sitting through those contractions, but we made it to the hospital ok.
I had the pink hat on as we walked into the Emergency Department at 1:30am on Saturday 30th September. We walked up to the triage window and Kel told the man that I was in labour. You should have seen that man! He had no sense of humour at all! I don’t think he even believed that I was pregnant (the window was higher than my belly). He kind of looked down to check I had a belly! Then he walked off. We stood there waiting and eventually they opened the door with a wheel chair for me! I wasn’t really that bad that I needed a wheelchair… but anyway, I had never been in one before and I am all for new experiences! (I was going to have a lot of those over the next eight hours!)
They took us to the maternity ward (along with another girl who was in labour too and looked a lot worse for wear than me). We were shown to our labour room and I just walked around the room while we waited for the doctor.
The first thing they did was to have me lie on the bed for a CTG monitor to check that I actually was in labour. Thankfully they decided that I was in labour because I would have been really annoyed if they told us to go home!
We showed the midwife and doctor the birth plan and I got a bit disappointed when the doctor kept saying no to things that I wanted like the bath or spa, and to not have continual monitoring. Luckily we had a wonderful midwife who helped to hold the monitors in place while I stood up or leant over the bed.
At 3:30am I had an internal, and they said I was 4-5cm dilated! I was very happy with this news. Then they broke my waters. That was the funniest feeling! It just kept coming and coming and we needed more and more towels to mop it up! Every time I moved some more would come out!
The next part is a bit of a blur, but somewhere along the way while having a contraction I suddenly started pushing! It was totally involuntary; my body just started doing it. Now that was strange!
At about 7am the nice midwife was supposed to be finishing her shift but she said that she wanted to stay for the birth. That motivated me; I thought it must have been going to finish very soon! Unfortunately I was still pushing when she had to go home. But she did promise to come and visit me the next night.
That pushing part is damn hard work and unfortunately you can’t just turn it on or off. I was leaning over a beanbag on the bed for a lot of it, and then we tried lying on my back, and on my side. Nothing seemed to be working and it didn’t really feel like the baby was coming down, no matter how hard I pushed. The other thing I noticed was that I was very vocal… something else that I had no control over. By the end of it I had no voice left!
They called in The Very Nice Doctor in the morning to check me. They were a bit concerned because the baby’s heart rate was a bit slow to recover after the contractions, and I was exhausted. He said that the baby’s head was turned toward the left (looking out the window) so this was making it harder to push him out.
The plan was to go down to theatre and try a vacuum extraction. Then if that didn’t work they would perform a caesarean straight away. By this stage I was happy for them to do anything to get the baby out!
I was wheeled down to theatre and given a spinal block (I remember having a few loud contractions while being wheeled down the hallway). Then there was one last contraction and then nothing . It was amazing to think that I was still having contractions but I couldn’t feel a thing. The other funny thing was that I could have sworn that my legs were lying straight, but when I put my head up I could see my feet (wearing pink socks!) up in the stirrups. The anaesthetist was a little bit worried and asked me if I normally have blue lips… but it was just because I had been drinking blue Powerade during the labour! I vomited once from the spinal and that was blue too!
The Very Nice Doctor used the vacuum to turn the baby around to a better position and they told me when I was having a contraction so I could push. It was very hard to push when I couldn’t feel a thing, so I just did what I thought was pushing! It seemed to work and after about 5? contractions a little pink slippery bundle was placed on my now flat belly! I looked down and yes, he was definitely a boy!!
They took him over to the side to clean him and wrap him up. It was a while before he made any noise… and when he did he sounded like a little sheep!
His head was pulled out of shape from trying to come out for so long and he had a nasty bruise from the vacuum, but they said that wouldn’t take too long to go down. We got to enjoy some nice family time together while they stitched me up. I have no idea how many stitches I got, but The Very Nice Doctor did take quite a long time down there!
So in the end, I got my natural birth (with a little bit of help) and I had no drugs for pain relief until the very end.
The final measurements were:
Weight: 8 pound 7.5 ounces
Length: 47cm
Head: 35.5cm (half a centimetre bigger than Josh!)
His Agpar scores were 7 and 9.
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