This is my birthing story. It’s a lot off topic to what I usually write, but I felt the need to write it.
On Sunday the 15th of March at 12.50 in the afternoon, Guy and myself welcomed our little BB into the world. We named him Edgar 🙂
Our birth story starts at 12.50am, we had just over an hours worth of sleep after a Saturday of doing odd tasks around the house and a nice lunch out! I woke up needing the toilet, and got an added bonus of my waters breaking!
Unfortunately, my waters were an odd colour, turns out BB had become a little stressed and had passed meconium whilst still in the womb. After a call to the hospital, they asked us to wait an hour then call back. We spent that hour repacking our hospital bag. When we called back, they said to come in straight away. It was about 2.30am when we arrived.
My contractions weren’t super strong. Before my waters broke I had felt nothing. But they were slowly gaining momentum. At the hospital they hooked me up to some monitoring equipment to keep an eye on BB and what my contractions were doing.
The Dr that came to check on me told us that they didn’t want to wait hours before they helped the process along, but in the same sentence he also said we had to wait until at least 7.30am so they would have enough staff on. Getting to 7.30 felt like an eternity, but at the same time, a blink of an eye!
It was after 7.30, like 8am, maybe 9am, when they started pitocin to get the contractions working. It sure did ramp up the contractions, they felt like they were off the charts! But they still weren’t coming quite fast enough. They also put a better monitor on BB to get a more accurate picture of how he was coping.
I had said right through pregnancy that I wouldn’t be a hero, I would take the pain meds if I needed them. At the same time, I still wanted to be able to move around, so an epidural was low on my list. I got gas when the contractions started getting painful. I spent most of my time laboring standing up or sitting on the edge of the bed. But at 11am when they checked me, I was only 5cm dilated, exhausted, and didn’t want to keep laboring for hours upon hours at that level of discomfort (I say “discomfort” when I probably mean agony). So I opted for an epidural.
As the epidural kicked in and I was starting to relax, BB’s vitals started to crash. The scariest conversation of my life was being told we need to go to surgery asap to get him out and we don’t have time for written consent.
And in that moment, they started rolling me out, Guy one step ahead, being directed by the orderly to open doors and hold lifts for us.
They stopped Guy before we got to the theatre so he could put on scrubs. He was left in a side room for a good 10 minutes. The longest 10 minutes of his life. In the meantime they got me ready to slice open. By this stage BB’s had stabilized and they could slow the process ever so slightly.
And then, once they had given me extra awesome numbing stuff through the epidural, and reunited me and Guy (in a blubbering mess) the Doctors did their thing and we had a baby!
Turns out BB just wanted to go bungee jumping! He had managed to tie his umbilical cord around his legs twice! The strain on the cord would have likely caused him the stress to pass meconium and then mess with his vitals during labor.
He was perfect, and, despite his dramatic entrance into the world, did not require any intervention!
We spent 5 days in hospital, recovering and getting help with feeding. He was a little jaundice, but not enough to worry about.
We’re only two weeks into a life long journey. It has a lot of challenges, especially in the current world environment with the covid19. But we are both loving getting to know this little dude and feeling our way into parent hood!
Bare with me as I slowly figure this new life out and start bringing the creativity back into life…
Stay safe
<3 Cate
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