The Sophie Bean is 9 weeks old and I am trying to remember back that far to before she was born. I feel like she's always been around.
My recent google searches reveal my preoccupations:
"baby breast feeding"
"baby eye colour"
"baby poo frequency"
"baby green poo"
"crying baby"
"baby hiccups"
etc. etc. etc.
I basically can't think about anything else, struggle to talk about anything else and definitely haven't managed to DO anything much other than look after her. I've discovered you can get orange flavoured drops for baby farts and nose drops for baby boogers. But I do love it.
Leading up to her birth in those looooong two weeks she was overdue I became quite obsessed with birth stories and interviewed all my friends for the details of their births and spent a LOT of time reading the stories on this homebirth site as I had decided to try to have her at home. So in the spirit of sharing here is my birth story.
Her due date of Friday 14 November came and went as did 41 weeks. I had a scan on Friday night at 41 weeks which showed everything was fine. I was hugely emotional looking at the baby on the monitor that I would meet very soon. I was having reflexology, accupuncture, popping raspberry leaf tablets and listening over and over to my hypnobirthing CD (very relaxing in the lead up but pretty much useless in the face of contractions!). From more obsessive internet reading, I could tell that she had her back facing either to the side or to my back so I was also sitting on excercise balls and making a token effort to crawl around on the floor from time to time. And generally lumbering around feeling very cranky. On Saturday the midwife visited and offered to do a sweep which I jumped at.
Finally about 3am on Tuesday I woke up with what felt like bad period cramps at regular intervals. My heart started beating more quickly as I realised something was happening. I lay there until morning trying to figure out how regular it was happening and getting quite excited. Steve woke up and asked me if anything was happening and I said "not really" so he'd go back to sleep as I wanted him to conserve his energy! In the morning the midwife came to visit and did another sweep. She thought I was about 1cm dilated and said that I could be having the baby later that day. By the afternoon contractions were more regular and starting to become sharper and Smithy and I went for a long walk to the park. I kept having to stop every four to six minutes to pause and breathe. Mum and Dad were staying with us so they went to spend the night at Steve's sister's which in retrospect was v. good considering the unholy noises I was making throughout the night!
I had a bubble bath and we settled into an evening of TV watching. 24 Redemption was on and we kept pausing it every five minutes or so. I was bouncing up and down on an excercise ball and then later it was too painful to sit so I was pacing around and leaning against the wall and a chair. About midnight we abandoned TV and I ended up finding a position on the landing where I would brace my back against the wall and push on the banisters through contractions. Steve was being an awesome support counting out loud through contractions, getting me water and applying lip balm. At this point things were getting really quite painful but I had been given the strict "rule" of having three contractions in ten minutes 45 seconds long before calling and it didn't seem to consistently at that point. But by 2am I was struggling and Steve called the midwife pager and left a message about timings and my apparent pain! The lovely Mary called back very quickly and got the lowdown from Steve then asked to speak to me. I was having a contraction and gasping and crying while we spoke so she said she would be right over.
So about 3am Wednesday morning Mary arrived and I was really happy to see her calm face. She did a quick exam and said that I was about 5cm dilated which I was pleased with and that she thought the baby had moved around to a better position which was encouraging (although I'm not sure this was actually the case!). By this stage I was screaming/groaning/making various weird noises through contractions. Mary was trying to get me to breathe the gas and air which did help a lot but I couldn't get the hang of it and was a bit scared of it at first. I had another bath which really helped but once I got out it was really painful again and I was feeling a bit agitated and out of control. I came back into the bedroom after the bath and a few contractions en route to find Smithy sitting on the bed looking a bit pale. It was a really long night for both of us!
At 7am Mary did another exam and I remember her saying that it wouldn't hurt if my waters broke as it might speed things up. Next minute I felt a really weird sensation as my waters broke and I felt quite panicked that it was going all over the bed. It felt like a flood and a huge release of pressure in my belly but I think in reality it was more of a trickle. Mary said "the good news is you're 8cm dilated, but the bad news is there is a small amount of meconium in the waters so we have to take you into hospital". She was monitoring Sophie's heartbeat the whole time which was fine so I felt fairly calm but was struggling a bit to process this new development.
Luckily I had packed and repacked a kick-ass hospital bag in the last week or two so I managed to get into some tracky dacks (I think I was just wearing a daggy size 20 t-shirt) and my gortex walking jacket that I'd had on in the afternoon while Mary called the ambulance and another midwife, Rachel to take up the baton from her. They both arrived in about 20 minutes so I climbed into the ambulance with Steve, Rachel, the two paramedics and the luggage and sat gulping on gas while we made the five minute trip up the hill with sirens wailing.
When we arrived in the labour room I was a bit dazed at the sudden change in atmosphere. I refused to get on the bed so the midwife somehow managed to strap on the monitors while I stood leaning against it. Then she suggested that I could sit on the loo and thought it might be time to push so I sat there for an excruciating hour pushing and bellowing like a wounded cow until it finally dawned on me that being in hospital meant that I could have an epidural. Genius!
The sole anaesthetologist on duty took awhile to arrive and then took three attempts to get it in but ....ahhh bliss. I had my first exam by a doctor and and she said that I still had 1cm to go. She was quite keen to whip me straight in for a cesearean as "the theatre is free now" but conceded I could go on a syntocin drip to get fully dilated. The midwives were glowering at the doctor across my bed at the suggestion of the C-section and encouraged me to continue. I really wanted to try to deliver naturally so decided to try the drip. They told me it would take about 2 hours and then I would wait an hour before trying to push again. So about 2 in the afternoon I started on the drip. I watched my contractions and Sophie's heartbeat on the monitor. Steve went off to find a snack at this point and go for a walk and update parents on what was happening. He came back with some trashy mags and the two midwifes sitting with me poured over Hello and OK!. I couldn't concentrate on that depth of reading material ;). We chatted and decided on her name and I dozed quite a bit.
At about 6pm Rachel had to leave to attend to another birth and one of the hospital midwives bustled in and took over. She reorganised the whole room and retied the monitors on me. A new doctor had also come on shift and did an exam and said I still needed the drip for longer. I was topping up the epidural from time to time whenever I started to feel contractions again. Later, I had another exam and they said I was fully dilated but needed to wait for an hour or two to give the baby a chance to descend further so I wouldn't have to push so much. So FINALLY about 10:30 the midwife said that I could try to push. She was very enthusiastically cheering me on and telling me when I was having a contraction and when to push, saying "Excellent...GOOD WOMAN!". I remember her telling Steve to have a look at the baby's head at one point and that she had lots of dark hair. I looked at the clock above my head and it was 11:30 and I said to myself that I was going to have the baby before midnight.
Midnight came and went and nothing was budging. Sophie's heartbeat was remaining completely steady throughout the whole ordeal so everyone was still calm. I guess the drugs were keeping me calm.
The doctor came in and examined me again and said that they didn't think she was coming out without some help and I could either have a c-section or try ventouse and forceps. I thought having come so far I would give it a last ditch effort for the now somewhat less "natural" delivery and said I'd try the assisted delivery first. I was prepared for theatre and had to sign a consent form. There was a comedy moment when Steve put on the biggest set of scrubs they had and the trousers were skin tight. Someone managed to find some bigger ones from another section of the hospital so he could walk!
I was wheeled into the bright lights of the theatre and had my epidural topped up. There were a lot of people in the room chatting to each other and cheesy tunes playing on the radio. I was a bit dismayed to be told that I still had to push with the ventouse! I pushed again through two contractions ("Good woman"!) and they tried to suction her out but she still wasn't budging. I was then given the option of foreceps but I wasn't keen as I knew that would mean a serious episiotomy and I still might have to have the c-section anyway. At that point Steve just said "no" quite firmly which was awesome and within about 5 minutes they had put up the curtain across my chest and were starting the c-section.
There was a very weird sensation of them rummaging around in my belly and at one point quite a lot of pressure and pushing at the top just under my ribs. I think she was STILL keeping her legs braced against the side! I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with all the sensations then I felt a big relief of pressure and a strange empty feeling as she was pulled out at 1:20 on Thursday morning.
They held her around the side of the curtain and I had a brief glimpse of flailing arms and legs and wide open eyes. I said to Steve "Is she OK?" and he said "She's beautiful". They took her over to the side to do the AGPAR test and she scored a 10. Then they handed her to me wrapped in a towel. I could hardly see her as she was right up under my chin in front of the curtain but I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. Then I saw a smear of black stuff on my arm and Steve opened up the towel to find a huge poo! So they took her back to clean her up while I was stitched up. Steve went off with her as she had to have antibiotics and after awhile we met back in the recovery room.
Sophie lay in my arms staring up at me and I felt completely elated and a bit stunned. The midwife came in and helped me feed her which she seemed to take to quite well. Steve and I sat there both completely exhausted just staring back at her in awe.
Steve called our parents and his sister and I texted my sisters and best friend Robbo. A bit later Robbo called me and I had a long conversation with her telling her about the birth. When I spoke to her again a few days later I asked her if I had made any sense and she said "not really!".
Steve then had to go and I was taken to a ward where there wasn't a space for me but I was parked in front of the curtains in front of some other beds. Sophie was in a little hospital crib beside me and she was crying a bit and I was conscious of the other people a few feet away. I picked her up and held her. At about 5 in the morning we were taken to the antenatal ward in a room with three other women as the postnatal ward was full.
Smithy was an awesome birth partner throughout the whole thing. He stayed with me and looked after me the whole time and was totally supportive with any decisions that we needed to make. Sharing the experience with him made it such a positive and enjoyable experience, despite the pain at times!
This picture was taken in recovery about an hour after she was born and corny as it sounds was really the best moment of my life.
And a cuddle with Daddy in recovery...
In the days and first weeks afterwards I went over what happened in my head quite a bit and when I told people the story I would get a bit teary sometimes. It obviously didn't go the way I hoped and I kept wondering if I had made the right decisions at some points but mostly I just felt so happy to have her with us safe and sound and so gorgeous and perfect that it really didn't matter. I really don't know now if I would do anything differently - probably not.
