Birth story - Caren and baby boy

* Use of words* Contraction&pain (not negative for me), postnatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome and severe heart defect & baby taken to NICU by ambulance without parents.

I’ve loved reading everyone’s birth stories while pregnant and am very excited to finally share mine!

Pregnancy wasn’t easy for me. I had severe hyperemesis with overnight stays at the hospital, loads of IV fluids, medication, losing more than 10% of my body weight and vomiting up to 40 times every day until birth.

I lost my mucus plug in the morning of October 4th. Contractions started late evening on the 5th. I was woken up multiple times during the night by contractions that I had to breathe through. They were very manageable though and I was able to get back to sleep after each one which was amazing.

At 6 am I couldn’t get back to sleep anymore and started timing the contractions using the Freya app (highly recommend!). They were already about 3 minutes apart lasting roughly 45 seconds.

By 11 am we had called the midwife on call who told us that she was at another birth and would send another midwife out to check on me. (There were 5 midwives in the birthing team and we had met each of them previously at check-ups at the birth center.) The midwife said that I seemed very calm and that she estimated that I was 2-3cm. She offered a VE which I declined. She advised me to cuddle up with my husband and get some more rest and to call again when I wasn’t happily chatting away between contractions anymore. She said that she thought baby would come the next day. Heck no I thought to myself. These contractions are already quite strong. Baby is definitely coming today!

Almost immediately after she left the contractions really intensified. They were almost exclusively in my back and my husband had to apply a lot of pressure to ease the intense feeling.

By about 2 pm I felt a lot of pressure and thought I needed to go to the loo. I was sat on the toilet gripping on to my husband's leg thinking that I was either a wimp and wouldn’t be able to do it much longer without some sort of pain relief or that I was actually already in transition. Apparently I said none of this out loud. I told my husband that I wanted to call the midwife again and that I thought it best if we were to leave for the birth centre soon as it was a 40 minute drive to get there. He told me that I was way too calm and that he didn’t want to leave too early or bother the midwife unnecessarily. (He had been told quite a few birth horror stories by friends and family so I think that’s why he didn’t take me too seriously.)

At this point I got a little bit desperate and reached down between my legs where I could already feel the top of baby’s head. That convinced my husband to call the midwife and get our bag in the car rather quickly.

At about 3.30pm I got in the passenger seat on all fours holding onto the head rest (there was no way that I could get into any other position!) and literally the second that my husband started the car my body started bearing down and I started making all sorts of interesting noises.

The birth centre is very small (only one birth room) and the midwife had informed us that the room was occupied by another lady in labour, but that we could either meet at the other birth centre the midwives also run which had a room with a birth tub available but wasn’t close to a hospital or that we could meet at the birth centre that we had originally planned on and use the meeting room until the birth room became available (really don’t think my husband made it clear to her that I was practically already pushing). I had a strong feeling that we should stick to our original birth centre (which is only 1.5 kilometres away from a big hospital...seems like I had an inkling that we would need it..).

My poor husband has probably never been so stressed while driving in his entire life and did speed quite a bit and ignored some red lights, but managed to stay incredible calm on the outside and actually got us to the birth centre just in time, where he had a little cry of pure relief that we had made it and didn’t have to call an ambulance or have the baby in the car. I didn’t realise any of this at the time because – you know – I was reeeeaaaally trying not to have the baby in the car.

There were two midwives waiting for us. They had prepared the meeting room where they suggested my husband sit down on the sofa so I could get back on all fours (really didn’t feel like getting into any other position, but also really wanted to hold on to my husband), hold on to his waist and make primal noises into his lap. I definitely wasn’t able to stay silent while pushing. It felt amazing to finally be able to fully give into the overwhelming pressure to push. The midwives had a quick look and saw that I was definitely fully dilated. With the next contraction my water broke and a few pushes later our little baby was born at 5.03pm.

I was so relieved and proud in that moment, but it all changed very quickly when I looked down at my baby. I felt straight away that something wasn’t right and that it didn’t look the way that I had expected it too (feel so bad saying that ). The midwives encouraged me to pick baby up, so I put aside the umbilical cord and saw that our baby was a boy (no surprise there really (we had felt all pregnancy that our baby was a boy), brought him up to my chest and laid down on the sofa with him while trying to push aside all the scary thoughts I was having.

One of the midwives massaged my tummy and pulled on the umbilical cord slightly and the placenta came out with the next contraction. The midwife checked the placenta and showed it to us in detail which was very interesting. I was examined and didn’t need any stitches thankfully. My bloodloss was very minimal and baby had an okay colour, so the midwives left the three of us to cuddle for a while. Sadly, baby wasn’t strong enough to latch and fel asleep almost immediately.

Later when the midwife came back to weigh and measure baby and to check his heartrate she explained to us that his heartrate was too low and that to her his eyes looked like he might have trisomy 21.

An ambulance was called while I had a quick shower and got dressed. At around 8pm they took our son away in the ambulance (I wasn’t allowed to go with him – thanks Covid!) and watching it all happen through the window will probably be engrained in my mind forever.

My husband and I got in the car and drove to the hospital where we got to see our son laying in an incubator with loads of cables sticking out. We were only allowed to visit him one on one which was so hard. We also couldn’t smell or kiss him because we had to wear a mask at all times. It was so hard having to leave him every evening. He would always cry and it broke my heart.

After a month we got to take him home and finally be together as a family. Since he’s been home he has been the happiest baby and is developing so much better than we were prepared for by the doctors in hospital. He brings us so much joy!

Now that he is five months old he is also finally able to exclusively breastfeed which makes me so happy. He had to have a gastric tube for the first four and a half months because he was too weak to drink enough on his own. I pumped and we fed him via a syringe. I’m so glad I kept pumping and practising with him. Never thought it would be possible to exclusively breastfeed after such a long time. So I am incredibly grateful for it.

Our son will have to have open heart surgery in a few months time which I am really scared about, but I’m hoping it will all turn out okay.

To my knowledge there aren’t any other stories of mums having babies with Down syndrome in this group, but if anyone has gotten a prenatal diagnosis please don’t be scared. There is a lot of help and support!

Lastly I would like to say a huge thank you to the positive birth company for giving me the tools to stay calm, make informed decisions and ultimately have such an incredibly positive birth experience which allowed me to have an easy recovery and be able to be on my feet at the hospital all day with my son from day one. The memory of how smooth the birth went and how great I felt during it honestly got me through the first few weeks, so thank you!