Journal
Sign guestbook
Arthur's Mummy's Diary
Matthew's Belly Gallery
Nathan's Belly Gallery
Benjamin's Belly Gallery
My Fertility Friend Chart
2004-08-30 - 11:58 a.m.��previous entry��next entry
Arthur's Birth Story
I am FINALLY writing this birth story when Arthur is 9 months old!!! That is terrible! Fortunately I have my diary to fall back on, as my memory is pretty faded now, over nine months. So this account will be mostly copied and pasted from two older diary entries, and I will add bits as they trigger my memory.
Arthur Cameron was born on Tuesday 9th of November 2004, four days after his due date, at 11.28am. He weighed 8lbs 1.5oz and was 51cm long (20.5 inches). My labour was quite drawn out and stalled weirdly in the middle, and I got no sleep at all due to painful contractions for two days and nights straight, before he was born! I had booked for a homebirth, and things ended up quite the opposite from what I had hoped, but it all turned out wonderfully anyway! Here is my story of how it all went:
In the few days leading up to the birth, I had some dragging period-like pain, but nothing really bad, and no on-and-off pains, other than the usual Braxton Hicks tightenings. I didn't have any feelings that labour was coming and I was stressing a bit that nothing was happening. The day after my due date, Saturday November the 6th, I felt unusually perky and energetic. I remember describing it as "the complete opposite to sluggish", and I constantly felt this huge urge to go for a walk in the fresh air all the time. The air was crisp and cool, and it was Bonfire Night on the 5th so there were lots of fireworks and bonfires every evening, which made the air smell delicious with the coldness and the smell of rain mixed in! I also slept really well the night after my due date, and napped for two hours the following day, which was very unusual for me really.
At 5am on the morning of Sunday the 7th, I woke with awful period pain. I was so encouraged and excited! It did come and go slightly, but it was basically there all the time, dragging and painful, like a real period. I couldn't go back to sleep because it hurt too much, but also I suspect that being a bit excited that there was finally pain at LAST wasn't helping my wakeful state! By 6am I was too hungry to stay in bed, so I got up and ate cereal. Then I came back to bed. The pain seemed to stop being so constant and by 6.45 it started to become obvious contractions that hurt. I didn't time them too carefully but I guess they were about 10 minutes apart, maybe not that exact or regular. By 7.30 though, I was getting sleepy again and the contractions seemed to be easing, so I guess I only had 5 or 6 good contractions in total. But yay, because they were my first ever real painful contractions! They hurt like a bad period pain in my lower abdomen, right down low like where I used to get period pain, and also in the small of my back. At the peak of the pain it was quite sharp and searing.
Anyway I think I must have fallen back to sleep somewhere around 8am, and I slept till nearly 10am. Neil hadn't woken up yet so I lay there for a while trying to rest, as I felt like I hadn't had enough sleep yet. There were no contractions, but I had that constant dull period pain feeling. It was quite bad at times. Eventually my stomach was scrunching awfully from hunger so I got up and ate a HUGE breakfast! It was weird because I don't know where that appetite came from, especially after having eaten cereal at 6am! I even felt shaky and weak whilst preparing it, like as if I hadn't eaten for waaaay too long or something.
I then had constant period pain all day long. Only a few times did I noticed that it had eased off, but only for about 20 minutes or so. Nothing has really happened the rest of that day. I just hurt a lot, like I had my period, but it was pretty full on for period pain. I took a shower in the morning, and we had sex in the afternoon to try and help things along. I had some really quite painful contractions after that, about 5 or so minutes apart for a while, but they didn't stay regular. Since then I just had the constant achy period pain low in my abdomen, and slightly sharper pain at the same time in the small of my back. I cosied down on the sofa between 3 and 5pm to watch a movie to distract me/pass some time. I took painkillers at the start, because things are feeling painful enough for that - which was quite exciting in itself! They didn't work though. Or if they did, I guess the pain was getting worse because I didn't noticed a difference! After about 40 minutes of watching the movie, I noticed the period pains were back to on and off contractions again, so I started to time them. I timed them for the rest of the movie, about an hour and a half, and they weren't super regular, but they started out 7 or 8 minutes apart and ended up about 5 or 6 minutes apart, with the odd 3 or 4 thrown in. My Braxton Hicks contractions had always been much more regular and more frequent, but then these didn't feel like Braxton Hicks. Some of them did. Some of them were relatively mild, though none were actually painless), and some lasted only 30 or 40 seconds, but most were around a minute to a minute and 20 seconds, and I had one mammoth one that lasted 2 and a half minutes! I tried to note when they were particularly painful or not too bad. A few of them needed breathing through, but I guess I didn't HAVE to breathe through them - they just hurt a lot so I decided to try relaxing further by breathing long and steady.
Anyway after the movie I got up and went to the toilet and that, and didn't really notice contractions till I sat back down again. So I didn't know if those were "real" contractions since I hadn't noticed them much when I was walking around. They were pretty darn sore when I was sitting or lying down though, all the time. I knew that was a pretty good sign, and that maybe things could happen that night. But also it could have been one of many days of pre-labour, and it could also completely fade off and disappear if it chose to. I was a bit worried as to how I would get a good night's sleep with painful contractions, in order to be prepared for real labour the next day possibly.
In the night, when I had woken with period pain, I was lying there thinking, "I changed my mind! I CAN wait!" Hehe! I just suddenly felt a bit overwhelmed with nerves about the pain and how long it would all last and whether I'd cope or not. It was the unknown I suppose. But I figured one way or another this boy was coming out, and I WOULD get through it, no matter how hard it got.
Arthur was very active that day. He pushed and shoved around in there all day long! His little feet kept pedalling around up near my ribs, and I kept feeling like he was shifting or shrugging his shoulders, which was NOT comfortable! It hurt quite a lot when he pushed about during a contraction. He tended to go more still when he was being squeezed, but then he would start to wiggle as it wore off and that hurt if there was any contraction still going. At that stage I still had no sign of a show or anything yet.
That night, Sunday night, I did not get one wink of sleep even though I stayed in bed the whole night. Contractions were too painful and were coming every 10 minutes. I got up for cereal at 6am on the Monday morning. I felt something leaking when I got up so went to the loo, and found a small amount of brown spotting. After that I came back to bed and stayed there till 8.30am. I managed to doze between 7.40 and 8am, so I guess either I missed a contraction or managed to sleep through one! Basically I was really tired. The contractions were more painful than I expected, although they did start out like bad period pains. By lunchtime they were completely searing white hot things that seemed to slice me from my low abdomen through to my back! At 8.30am I got up and phoned the community midwives to say I thought I might be in labour, even though common sense told me it was probably more like pre-labour. My contractions were too erratic, even though they all came between 5 and 10 minutes. I thought they were lasting a minute easily, going by how long the pain was lasting. They sent THE loveliest midwife round at about 10am (who I hadn't met till that day) with her equally lovely student, and she took my blood pressure (normal - 120/80) and felt my tummy and said that Arthur was in a "lovely" position for birth. She could palpate 3/5 of his head though, so I guess he�d popped up again, as he was 1-2/5 palpable at my last antenatal appointment. Ironically, I didn't have a single contraction for the first 15 minutes they were here! So they said it was probably just my body "gearing up" for labour and it could be anytime from now to a week's time! Yikes! But then I had a nice contraction when she went to take my blood pressure so she felt my tummy and timed it as only 15-20 seconds, which I was amazed at! The pain lasted longer than my tummy was tight, it seems.
I asked about the spotting (there was no mucus with it) and she said it was fine to have some spotting. She explained about losing the mucus plug and said when it comes away it might look like a huge gob of raspberry jam (nice!), or just be blood stained mucus. She asked me to pee on a stick, so I went to the loo, felt something gooey and wiped, and there was my textbook ENORMOUS gob of raspberry jam, like 2 or 3 inches in diameter, just as described! Hehe! For some reason, looking at it made me feel yeurgy, but I was soooo relieved to have produced something indicative of "the real thing" that I rushed back out with it on a tissue and showed it to the midwife. She seemed very pleased and showed the student in some detail. Mmm! Neil came up and wanted to see it, and he seemed impressed but later admitted to feeling kind of ill when he saw it! It was kind of gross actually. But yay!
Okay then the midwife left and said she would phone before 4pm and if I wanted a visit she would come by after clinic (around 4.30ish?). My mum arrived around 11am, shortly after they left - I phoned to tell her I was having contractions and that I wanted her to come over. I rocked on my birth ball with plastic sheets underneath it (!), and Mummy tried to figure out my TENS machine. Contractions became much less bearable after I lost my mucus plug. I lost a bit more of it a little later, and then around lunchtime I came online to write a diary entry, and just before that I went to the loo and lost another huge chunk just like the one I showed the midwife. It made me feel kind of queasy again to see it! By 2pm I was really eager for that midwife to come back! I updated my diary online for maybe 30 minutes, but it was a huge effort just to sit at the desk and type. I had six or seven contractions while I did it and just had to keep stopping to get through them. In the end I had to leave the computer and go back downstairs. I remember I really wanted to keep my online friends updated for as long as I could bear it!
Mummy and Neil ate lunch I think, but I didn�t want any food. It wasn�t so much that I wasn�t hungry, I was more scared of getting sick later on so I just didn�t want to put anything in my stomach. I didn�t feel hungry though, so it didn�t matter too much. Neil and my mum fixed my TENS machine to my back and I had it on for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening. The contractions seemed no less painful, so at first I didn't know if it was on right, but the buzzing of the TENS did provide a minor distraction, which I gratefully accepted over no distraction at all by that point! I think it did help though, because later on when I tried some contractions without the TENS buzzing, it seemed a lot less bearable.
I was nervous about how much worse my contractions were going to get, since I had no idea what kind of stage I was getting to � I could still only be like 1cm dilated for all I knew! The midwife hadn�t done an internal when she came round that morning because I'd written on my birth plan that I didn't want unnecessary ones, and she thought it wasn't necessary since I wasn't contracting frequently or regularly enough to warrant a check to see if they needed to get the homebirth stuff out yet. But at lunchtime my contractions felt so painful that I was really getting nervous about whether I�d cope with them later on! If I was still only in really early labour then I knew they�d get much harder to cope with. I felt like I would be mortified if the midwife told me I was still only lcm dilated when she came back! I didn�t know if I could do it for another 24 hours, if that�s what it might take! I had no idea when Arthur might arrive. I remember thinking and wondering if this day would be his birthday, or the next day. I really didn�t know which. I guessed maybe he MIGHT arrive that day, but it depended how far I had progressed. I didn�t even know if things might still �fade out� and come to nothing!
Well after lunch, Neil pumped up the inflatable birth pool that we had bought, in the living room. I tried to sleep but my contractions were too painful. Arthur was very active all this time, which I found reassuring. I couldn�t believe I would soon be holding him in my arms! After the pool was inflated, Neil started filling it with water with the hose that came with it. I sat on my birth ball with my TENS machine and watched it fill with water:
The lovely midwife and her student came back at about 4pm and my contractions were a whooole different ball game by then, coming much more regularly and feeling much more intense. She told me she could tell it was a different story to that morning just by laying a hand on my belly during a contraction. I found that really encouraging! I was still using my TENS machine and the pool had finished filling with water by then, I think. I could breathe through the contractions well but I did have to stop everything and breathe to cope with them.
The midwife stayed with me a little while and eventually I consented to an internal examination so I could know how far my labour had progressed. I was sooo bummed because she said my cervix was soft on one side, but still quite firm on the other, and I was only 1.5cm dilated! Yikes! I was fully effaced though, which was good. The midwife said she could feel my waters bulging right out of the cervix. She winked and told me she could pop them �just like that!� with a mischievous look! She actually didn�t agree with artificially breaking the waters so she was just being cheeky (and she said the way they were bulging just made her want to pop them, hehe!), and anyway I had stated in my birth plan that under no circumstances did I want my waters artificially ruptured. So anyway, she transferred me to Sue, the on-call midwife for the evening, and Sue phoned me after an hour or so to see how I was doing, and arranged to come round at 7 or 8pm� or maybe it was 9ish?? I can�t remember. Anyway, some hours later. I don�t really remember much detail from the time between the first midwife�s visit at 4pm and Sue coming round a few hours later. It was just all about waves of contractions and breathing through them. Going to the loo to pee was hard, but I knew I had to keep my bladder empty to help things progress as well as possible. I desperately wanted to progress faster than I had been and get dilating! I did start to notice a vague sensation of trickling now and again during contractions, but only at the peak of a contraction, or when I sat on the toilet, and it was very little. I wondered if my waters had broken, but I had been expecting something more obvious than what was happening, so I wasn�t sure. I thought maybe it was just a tiny leak and they hadn�t actually �gone�.
Sue arrived later that evening. I had not met her before either, but she was so so lovely. I had some fantastic midwives!! She ended up staying with me for the rest of the �home� part of my birth. By the time Sue came round the pain was a lot more intense, but I still was able to manage it by breathing. I seemed to need to make my breathing more focused than I had been though. I didn�t ever think to follow any �taught� breathing things for labour. It was much easier to just do what came naturally. Around that time, the best thing to cope with the pain was by making my lips round - like the smallest �o� I could make, so that blowing through them meant really pushing the air through - and blowing regularly, long and steady, through the contraction. Sometimes a bad one would require someone to put a hand on me and remind me to breathe through it. Sue was fantastic with that. She seemed to just �know� by looking at me when I needed that supportive soothing hand laid on me to give me strength during a difficult contraction. Otherwise I didn�t like being touched, and somehow she seemed to know that too. Here are two more photos, taken around this time. One is obviously me, tired and in pain, heh! The other is me on the sofa with Mummy and Sue, the midwife, being talked through something or other. I can�t remember what. Anyway, here they are:
Sue was great. She was very respectful of all the things I wrote in my birth plan, and she just sat on the sofa with me and waited, and let me labour. She took my blood pressure on and off (which was well within norms � 120/80ish) and listened to Arthur, who by the way was an absolute STAR throughout all this. He stayed so calm. I�m so proud of him! I didn�t want to get in the pool till I knew I was at least 5cm dilated, so as not to slow things down, but I didn�t want another internal too soon after the one I had at 4pm � firstly, OH MY WORD it hurt!! I did more writhing around and groaning from that than my labour at that point! And secondly I didn�t want to be disappointed if I had only dilated another cm or so, which I thought was likely since it had only been a few more hours and it was my first baby. Well about an hour later I finally said I wanted to be in the pool and the only way to feel sure about that was to be checked. Or get in and risk it being too early and slowing the labour down. Neil had a nap for an hour or so just before this, and Mummy sat with me (they were both WONDERFUL during it all!). Then Mummy went up for a nap around 10.30pm, but that�s when I had my internal and was proclaimed (with some surprise!) to be 8cm dilated, and my waters had gone! I was sooo encouraged by such fast progress! I had absolutely noooo expectations of getting to 8cm from 1.5cm in just 6 hours on my first baby! So Mummy got up again (poor thing!) and I took my TENS machine and remaining clothes off and got in the pool.
Right around that time, maybe even directly after the internal, or right after I got in the pool, something changed and things got really really hard. It�s much more blurry for me to describe from here because of how hard it was. The second midwife was called and the delivery pack was opened and prepped, because they thought I would dilate those other 2cm pretty quickly and be ready to push. But an hour went by and then another, and from pretty early on in that time, the contractions became absolutely unbearable. I presumed at first that it was just because I was in transition, or the hardest part of labour with the hardest contractions. The pain was like searing white hot pain in my lower abdomen and lower back, and I was getting more and more pressure-like pain (but PAIN, not just pressure) in my rectum sort of up in there. I was coping with the pain less and less well, and using all sorts of different breathing to help me through � anything that came naturally. Saying �shoosh, shooosh� a lot seemed to be the main thing I did in the hardest part during contractions, but the breathing really wasn�t helping me much anymore. During that time I just wanted my mum close to me. She was wonderful. She held my hand and stroked my hair and said, �shoosh, shooosh� along with me. She wiped my face with a cold cloth and fanned me. I had a hard time having her let go of my hand so that she could squeeze the cloth out to wipe my face when I asked her to. Neil took video footage and kept telling me I was doing great. He was wonderful too, but at the time I didn�t want to hear him tell me I was doing great. For some crazy reason it jangled my nerve endings and I felt like he was just saying the �textbook� stuff, and it bugged me. Poor Neil! I didn�t snap at Neil too much though. Mostly those who were closer to me at the time, like the poor midwives or my mum! They all smiled and laughed it off, and I was never actually nasty, just irritable. I love that we have that on camera! :) I got a couple of grainy, grayish stills off the camcorder of what was happening at this stage. Mummy was wiping my face between contractions in the first one. It�s VERY grainy though. And the second one was Mummy and Sue saying reassuring things. I was asking her if it would take much longer! Sue was using this really soft tone, it felt like balm to my ears, and I remember she said, �I hope not, Sunshine!� Man, it hurt.
During that last hour or so I started to get very distressed and saying I couldn�t do it, that I couldn�t bear the pain, and I was aware that I was talking very whimpery and whiney all the time. Whenever anyone asked me anything, like did I feel this or that, all I could whimper was, �I don�t knoooow!� I just felt like I didn�t know anything anymore and everything was bewildering and beyond my ability to cope with. I started to snap at people and they thought maybe I was fully dilated because of those transition signs and the fact that I was feeling so much pressure in my rectum. They kept asking if I had an urge to push, and I kept growling/yelling, �I don�t KNOW!!!� The second midwive kept on getting me to stand so she could listen to Arthur with the Doppler, and I knew how important that was, but it just about drove me out of my TREE. To this day I feel irritated at the very memory of that midwife, even though she wasn�t irritating towards me � I just felt like I did not want her to be constantly touching me and I didn�t feel like I knew her like I knew everyone else there. She felt like an irritating stranger and I wanted her to not be in my house at all! I snapped at everyone! I did start to bear down sometimes when I was shouting at people (who�d have thought, nice little me?!), like at the end of yelling, �I don�t KNOW!� the word �know� would turn into �knowwwwrrrrggghh�! Hehe! So they were encouraged by that and said I should push if I felt the urge. But I didn�t really.
They said the only way to really know what was going on would be to do another internal but I didn�t want one, because I said I couldn�t bear the pain. In fact that was the main issue, I just plain could NOT bear the pain. It was getting worse and worse in my back, and they were pressing on it for me � Neil was a star, he pressed my back till it nearly broke from the pressure, hehe! But it was easing the pain less and less as time went on, and I couldn�t cope at all. In the end I got out of the pool to squat and push, but the pain was unbearable and I couldn�t push past or through it. I can�t even describe how it felt. It was just whiter than white hot, and it felt like my whole lower back was being torn apart millimetre by millimetre, with a thousand rough slivers of glass. I tried to push but the tearing feeling got worse. My voice got all high-pitched every time I talked and all I could do was beg for someone to please help my back. The LAST thing I wanted to do was transfer to hospital, but they gently suggested it to me because they said they could see the pain was distressing me too much and they wanted to help me go over my options. They said if we transferred then I might even end up delivering in the ambulance rather than having a long painful hospital birth! I was beginning to lose the goal in my mind of having my baby at home, and just longing for something to stop the pain. I ended up saying I wanted to transfer, after they let me think of my options, so they called for an ambulance. I don�t really know what time this was, but I was amazed to find it was after midnight! I think it was even after 1am. So Arthur would not be born on November 8th like I had wondered. But at least I knew that one way or another it was Arthur�s birthday right then, a few minutes into November 9th. He HAD to come that day.
Well, all of a sudden I hit this big whammy of �ooohhhh I failed at my homebirth!� and that combined with the tiredness and pain and so on, just got too much and I completely lost it. I cried and wailed, and all my breathing attempts turned into higher and higher pitched shrieks of pain and cries that I couldn�t bear it, somebody make it stop, etc :( Man, it did suck. It�s kind of uncomfortable to remember it! I just have NEVER felt anything like this pain, ever ever.
Well the ambulance turned up and 3 paramedics came in to escort me out. Everything became a flurry of activity with people trying to dress me in a nightie or robe or flip flops or something, all of which had me yelling, �Noooo, leave me alooone!!!!� and stuff like that. I had a huge contraction in the front doorway, which I�m now mortified about because it was 1am at least and we live in a quiet cul-de-sac so I know the neighbours must have heard my indignity! The huge burly paramedic rubbed my back because I was shrieking, �Somebody pleee-eee-ease help my back, oh somebody help help help!!� and yeah. I feel so embarrassed now, but urgh it was the worst pain ever. I don�t really remember everyone else in the situation. I know Neil wasn�t in the ambulance with me because he followed in our car. Mummy and Sue came with me and I was made to lie on a stretcher and yelled at people angrily about how my bump wasn�t supported enough, and with every contraction I was basically just shouting and crying that I couldn�t take the pain and begging for someone to make it go away and press on my back, etc. The nice paramedic rubbed my back and got severely yelled at for rubbing in the wrong place. Everyone was so nice to me. Urgh.
We got to the hospital, I don�t know HOW I made it through the 3 minute journey, honestly! I couldn�t believe how bad the pain was getting. I just wanted an epidural and FAST. That�s all I could think of. I got wheeled to Delivery on my stretcher/trolley thing, wailing and screeching all the way � how awful! And once in my room, they told me the anaesthetist was in emergency surgery so I would have to wait. They offered me gas and air (entonox) but I hadn�t wanted to use it incase it made me feel sick or something. But yeah, eventually I used it, and it made no difference whatsoever. I felt completely in despair and begged and cried and shouted and shrieked for someone to take the pain away. When the obstetrician arrived, he wanted to examine me and I said I would not let him do that till I had some proper pain relief because I couldn�t take the pain. He said I HAD some proper pain relief, pointing to the gas and air mouthpiece that I was waving around in my hand. I shouted at him (rather rudely I�m afraid) that it DID NOT WORK!!!! He left abruptly as though he was not taking anything more from me, and I didn�t see him again (thankfully, I didn�t like him!).
I finally got my epidural after about 45 minutes which felt like a thousand agonising years! It took about 10 or 15 minutes to kick in, after which I just could have kissed the inventor of the things! I still had pain, but none at all in my abdomen or back, only in my groin on top of the rectal pressure feeling. And I could cope with that, even if I had to breathe through it. The NICEST obstetrician lady came in, and she was soooo nice and sympathetic (and pregnant, actually!). She did an internal and found me to be 8cm still, with a big lip of cervix. Another doctor did an internal a bit later because they couldn�t tell which way the baby was presenting. In the end they discovered he had turned to posterior during my labour � can you believe it?!!! He�d been in a perfect position for delivery for like MONTHS, and then 2cm before I�m fully dilated in labour, he goes, �Well, time for a little roll methinks!� What a pickle ;) I love him though.
Sue and the second community midwife left somewhere around this point, or maybe even before my epidural. They were so nice and I was sad to see them go, even though I was hugely distracted by other things at the time. Sue left me with lots of encouraging words about how well I was doing and how everything was going to be fine, which was really helpful to hear. My contractions were dying off a bit and we had to wait for Arthur to turn. I was exhausted beyond belief, having already missed a night�s sleep, and it being about 4am by this point after 2 days of labour pains. So they gave me 2 hours with a darkened room and gave my mum and Neil some mats and pillows to lie on the floor and get a bit of sleep for themselves. I couldn�t sleep. There was a lady next door crying out and yelling in labour, and I felt soooo empathetic that I was just longing for HER pain to go, so I couldn�t relax! I heard her pushing but I don�t remember what happened with her. Anyway Arthur was doing fine all this time, amazing boy! Then they set up a syntocinon drip to speed my labour up. I also had a lot of ketones in my urine (not good) so they gave me IV fluids and stuff. I hadn�t eaten anything much the day of my labour, and my fluids were not great by the evening either.
Well by 8am, a few hours later, I was contracting more regularly, but I had had to have 3 top ups of the epidural as it wore off around every hour, and the pain got unbearable again. I also developed a fever which was a bit worrying, and it went up quite quickly so I got an IV drip of antibiotics. Fun fun, all these drips in my arm, epidural in my back, strapped permanently to a fetal monitor on my back in bed � absolutely EVERYTHING in the world I ever planned to AVOID during labour! Oh well. I just didn�t care any more. It didn�t even seem to matter to me, and I didn�t feel disappointed or sad at all that I wasn�t at home. I just wanted it to be over, and to have my baby. I felt sure I wouldn�t be able to dilate fully or push him out, and that I�d end up with a caesarean section. They told me it was a definite possibility that this would be the outcome :(
But at 8.15 the nice nice obstetrician came back and examined me, and said I was fully dilated, and Arthur had turned!!! Yay!! The paracetamol they gave me had brought my temperature down to normal, and although my blood pressure had gone up to 160/90 (yikes!), it wasn�t worrying them for some reason. The day staff took over and I had a lovely midwife and a great student midwife who chatted to me for a while about being a student midwife :) I had been feeling really quite ill and out of it most of the night, but when they told me I was fully dilated and I realised I might be delivering Arthur vaginally after all, it perked me up no end! Also the paracetamol reducing my temperature helped probably. Here is another grainy photo from the camcorder (we left the camera at home when we transferred to hospital), of me chatting to the student midwife who was monitoring Arthur on the machine:
It was so exciting to think I was finally going to meet Arthur! I remember asking the midwife, �How am I going to get him out?� because I genuinely couldn�t figure it out! I had no urge to push and no energy at all, and I suddenly didn�t know what would happen next, since they just declared me to be fully dilated and ready to give birth! She replied with a very no-nonsense tone, �You�re going to push him out!� And that was that. I felt in awe of the very idea at that time! It just didn�t seem possible, but at the same time, to be told that I would push my baby out by a skilled midwife filled me with joy because I had soooo wanted to give birth to him myself, and not to have intervention to get him out.
Because I didn�t have an urge to push, they gave me an hour from when I was fully dilated, just resting and letting the contractions bring the baby down a bit, but they said I would need to start pushing at 9.50am. So I did! I was anxious that I would have no energy or strength to push him out, but I just kept pushing, 3 pushes to every contraction, as long as I could hold them, right down into my bottom like I was passing a MASSIVE bowel movement, and just took a huge breath between each one till the contraction was over. I was really encouraged when I could feel him moving down. The first hour of pushing was not that obviously productive though. I pushed the whole time lying on my left side, as it was the most restful way to do it, and I tried to doze between contractions to conserve my energy. Here I am pushing! And then resting between contractions, holding Mummy�s hand:
Neil was next to me a lot more than it seems from this account, but he was always the one to take a photo or some footage when it seemed like a good time, so there are lots of photos of Mummy by my side! I did SO value her presence though, just like I always knew I wouldfter the first hour I was worried that things were not progressing enough, and that I might still have the intervention I was dreading. My very efficient and confident midwife had been called out to attend a manual removal of a placenta in theatre during the first hour that I was pushing, and the student midwife helped me through that time. She was soooo lovely and encouraging, but she lacked the business-like manner that I seemed to need at that time. I was so happy to see my midwife striding back in after an hour had passed! I had worried that she might be ages in theatre. She listened to the student�s account of the past hour, and when the student said that she had not seen the head yet (though there were lots of other signs that Arthur was moving down, like the student subtly whipping bits of poo away every now and then - ew!!), she briskly lifted my upper leg way up in the air, peered under it and declared confidently, �The head�s visible!� What a RELIEF it was to hear those words!! After that, she held my leg lifted like that when I pushed and that helped loooads. I could feel the pressure changing as he came down, and it started to hurt in a sort of searing way as his head came down. People started saying they could see the top of his head, and that was just so wonderful to hear that I nearly cried and bawled, but I managed not to because I knew there wasn�t time or energy to spare for bawling about my baby�s head being visible! I needed to get him out, so I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. They were so encouraging to me, they kept telling me how fantastic I was doing, and how my pushing was so great, and how unusual it was that I was pushing so effectively on my first baby with an epidural in situ. I was proud of myself, I have to say I was surprised that my pushing was working so well for some reason!
Anyway, they let me feel his head in there, and it was like a squishy little fruit, with all the skin scrunched up because of how squeezed his head was in the birth canal! I am thrilled that I was the first to touch him in this way. They told me he had lots of black hair, which was another surprise! Neil was holding my leg by this point and Mummy was next to him so both of them could encourage me and also watch Arthur being born. The midwives got sterile (!) and unpacked the delivery stuff. I still hadn�t felt an urge to push, although the momentum was easy enough to follow after the first push with each contraction, so I could quite easily follow it with another push and another. Neil was fantastic, he kept telling me what he could see, and that really urged me on to keep pushing. It hurt a fair bit as he got near to crowning, but I didn�t get that ring of fire that everyone talks about. It just felt a bit hurty and stretched, that�s all. They said I was nearly there, and they would ask me not to push in a minute so they could deliver his head. Neil told me Arthur�s forehead was nearly out, and that he could see the top of his ear � it was amazing commentary! I wish I�d seen it though, but yeah, I was rather involved at the time! Then they said, �Don�t push, don�t push!� and that�s the ONLY time in my whole labour when I became absolutely overwhelmed with the urge to push! Hehe! I�m so difficult! So I was telling them I had to push, but I managed not to, and my womb actually eased his head out gently without anyone needing to do anything. I couldn�t feel the difference when his head was out though, which I had expected as a huge relief and a big difference from when he was crowning. Neil was going to cut the cord but they found it was wrapped around Arthur�s neck so tightly that they had no choice but to cut it before his body could be delivered. The only way I knew that his head was out was that they told me the cord was round his neck.
Delivering his shoulders was uncomfortable � I remember saying, �Ow, it hurts!� - and then all of a sudden I felt the rest of him leave my body! It was amazing. We had arranged to have him put up on my tummy, and I looked down, and there he was being lifted up over me, this little person � perfect skin tone by the way, he was pink all over. His Apgar scores were 9, 10 and 10. As he was put onto my chest he let out his first cry � a tiny high-pitched squeak that finally gave way into a raspy cry. It was the most lovely sound I ever heard :) I was wearing a nightie but I just pulled that up so we could be skin-to-skin, and they covered him with a towel. Neil took camcorder footage of us at this point:
Video clip: 
I snuggled with him while they tried to deliver my placenta � they had to give me the injection to bring it on rather than the physiological third stage that I�d wanted, because you apparently have to if you have had syntocinon to speed up labour earlier on. Anyway it didn�t work, and I still hadn�t delivered the placenta after half an hour, so they put me back on the syntocinon drip. They applied cord traction and everything � basically every that I hadn�t wanted! Eventually the obstetrician came in and did an examination to find out where the placenta was, and with some considerable effort (!), she got it out. They were getting worried that I�d have to go into theatre for manual removal otherwise. Anyway that was a relief! I wanted to try feeding Arthur but they said the placenta was a far greater priority at that time, so I had to wait till 45 minutes after the birth.
I had a second degree tear (which I was surprised at, since I didn�t notice/feel a thing!) so the very cheerful consultant came in and stitched me up, which went fine. My estimated blood loss was 400mls, so not the smallest amount. I was anaemic after the birth, and I don�t think I have ever been anaemic before. Even during pregnancy I had an excellent haemoglobin count. I was suspicious because I was soooo pale in the few days after the birth. I know there�s pale and pale, but I was just this weird creamy colour all over, even my fingers, and I had never looked like that, so I felt fairly sure I was anaemic. I started on iron supplements at the midwife�s recommendation and felt better after a while.
But anyway! While I was being stitched up, Arthur was wrapped in a blanket and handed to his daddy for a first cuddle! Here is Neil with his little boy for the first time:
Then Arthur was weighed, which he hated! He weighed 3676g, later translated for me as 8lbs 1.5oz, which we were all amazed at, since there are no babies so far in either side of our families who weighed 8lbs or more!! He measured 51cm long. Here he is being weighed:
Poor Arthur! He was so cross to be all naked and cold and away from his snuggly mummy! After that he had his Vit K and had his temperature taken:
And then he finally got to come back to me and try breastfeeding again. He wasn�t interested really, he just licked and nuzzled a bit, which is fine. But they wrote it in my notes as, �First feed attempted � not interested� Tsk. Here is having a go at nursing (with my mummy looking on proudly!):
My dad came to fetch my mummy after that and she went out to meet him � we didn�t see him till the next day. I was so tired. Arthur was dressed, I can�t even remember who by, and then everyone cleared out and the midwife ran me a bath in the adjoining bathroom. I took my bath while Arthur lay in the little plastic cot seeming much calmer, and getting his first bout of out-of-the-womb hiccups! Neil took some more footage of him, and I got this photo from it:
So there is my birth story at last! Arthur Cameron was born at 11.28am on Tuesday 9th November 2004!! He is the most perfect baby I could ever have wished for. I love him more than I ever imagined possible. My little precious :) Labour was hard but I would go through it all again in a heartbeat for my little Boo. I remember feeling this way just days later, before I�d even left the hospital! I actually loved the whole �giving birth� thing, despite having a rough ride of it. My lovely midwife, Sue, visited us in hospital the next day, which was lovely of her. She said how sorry she was that she�d let me push when they didn�t realise I still had a lip of cervix. I wouldn�t let them do an internal and I was showing signs of being ready to push, but she felt bad that I had maybe set things back by pushing and she�d encouraged me to. She told me not to be put off, that I did amazingly well and that I was having no trouble before Arthur turned posterior. She said I would definitely get my homebirth next time, and that she felt sure it would be quick and easy after this one! :) I am not put off. I agree with Sue. I can�t wait to do it all again one day!
Recent entries.....
Babies 7 and 8! :) - 2016-01-10
Babies 6 and 7! - 2013-02-17
Baby #5 !! - 2010-04-03
Nearly 3 months postpartum! - 2009-10-05
6 weeks old already! - 2009-08-25