Birth story - Mum and baby Boy

I started the digital pack about halfway through the pregnancy and will say upfront that I had a very positive attitude all along. My mom and sister both had “punctual”, uncomplicated, relatively quick natural births so I felt pretty confident.

Well, it ended up being a little more complicated than I would have hoped, but I am still walking away from this experience in awe of my body and with immense admiration for my little champion son - who kept his cool throughout the whole labor process and made a vaginal delivery possible against the odds.

The first “blow” came, when I was told that I was Group B Strep positive and would have to have an antibiotic drip during labor to make sure my son was safe. The second hit to my confidence came when I just got supremely uncomfortable from week 38 and when my due date passed...the waiting got really harsh. I felt especially impatient and frustrated because from week 38, I was 1-2cms dilated and my cervix was down to 1/3 and soft so it looked like things might start any day.

Anyway, the day I had sort of come to peace with him being overdue and had made outside lunch plans with my husband, 40+8, my waters broke. I had to go to the clinic to get on the antibiotic drip immediately, things looked really promising when they checked me and light, regular contractions were detectable on the CTG. My husband and I spent a very comfy day watching movies and talking at the clinic, and taking a lovely sunset walk. By nightfall, contractions hadn’t ramped up naturally and my doctor said she would really like to use a little prostaglandin on my cervix to start things sooner rather than later - again, because of risks tied to the Group B Strep.

Again, this felt a little disappointing and made me question my body, but I got over it through the night and by the morning, I had started dilating at a good pace. I spent the next hours in the birthing pool, relaxing on a birthing ball, breathing through contractions and having my husband by my side. By the time I reached 6 or so cm, around 3:30pm however, the fact that I hadn’t slept much during the night due to period-like pains and frankly my frustration with my body, came back to bite me and I felt really tired. Using my BRAIN I asked for an epidural to give me some time to gather my strength before moving on to the the next stage of labor. They did a thing called a “walking epidural”, which - in my experience - just takes the edge off the pain and doesn’t slow down contractions, you can still feel them but they are much more bearable.
I had never ruled out this kind of epidural and it turned out to relax me and have me fully dilated by around 6pm.

All in all, looking back I am really happy with how this phase went now. The breathing really works very well and the midwives told me that my husband and I were a great team and that I was handling everything very coolly and “gracefully”. I bet they tell everyone that, but it still helped my state of mind, haha.

I moved into the delivery room feeling super calm and happy and was waiting for contractions to move him into the right position to come through my pelvis. The evening sun shone on my face and I felt nothing but love, still doing the breathing and in a kind of meditative state.

This is when things got a little complicated. Somehow his head was positioned in a way that wouldn’t allow for it to go through my pelvis, but just caused an immense amount of pain in my left hip (I don’t even want to know what this would have felt like without the epidural). I am eternally grateful to my midwife, who - instead of immediately suggesting a C-section, just looked at his heart rate and then spent a fair amount of time coaching me to get into different positions and get his head through my pelvis with strategic pushing. And it worked!! I am so, so proud of him for keeping his cool to make this possible, and equally of my strength to manage against the frankly mortifying pain. Still, even while cursing biology for making birth so difficult, I felt safe with my husband by my side and working hard in beautiful sunset lighting. The first time the midwife made me feel his little head was absolutely crazy. Without pushing, things would have most likely not progressed at all anymore.

Anyway - this used up a lot of my strength and I ended up needing a little help for the final two pushes so my amazing doctor used a soft mini ventouse while the midwife massaged my perineum to keep it intact. They both coached me on pushing and breathing and it was great to have that to concentrate on as I was using up the last of my “super-human” strength. The ventouse did not cause any bruising or swelling on his head at all, about which I am really happy.

I cannot describe the feeling of seeing him come out of me, seeing this full-grown baby enter the world from inside of me and then feeling him on my chest for the first time, with my husband in tears next to me, telling me how proud he was of me and full of love. I did delayed cord clamping and my placenta came out 2 minutes after my son, I barely felt that anymore. Same for the couple of stitches I needed.

I know this is one of those not-so-perfect positive stories and I will say that I hope for my next birth to be a little more straight forward, if we choose to have a second child. However, as I said in the beginning, my biggest takeaway is that even when things get difficult and don’t go according to plan, I think every mother will walk away from birth in awe of herself and what she can achieve. Like Amy Schumer said: ‘women are the SHIT.’

Oh and also everything that came after has gone absolutely perfectly: good sleeper, champion eater, just a few small stitches on me and healing nicely, body and belly recovering at record pace, no hormonal blues, etc. I guess I earned it, haha.