Birth story - Sanja and baby Frankie

For me a very positive birth experience!! ❤️❤️

***Pregnancy 🤰🏻***

I am one of those people that did not enjoy pregnancy at all! We had IVF to have our little girl and it took first try which I’m so grateful for! I developed ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome 2 days after the embryo transfer and it got so bad that I had to be in hospital for a week and have the fluid drained because it was pushing into my lung space and kidneys. The rest of my pregnancy was fairly uneventful, just extreme fatigue and nausea. At 28 weeks during a scan they found out my cervix had shortened significantly to less than 1cm so they just monitored it a little more closely from then and everyone expected bub to come early.

***Labour and birth 👶🏻***

So Frankie defied all odds and ended up not only making it to 40 weeks, but went 3 days over 😂😂

The day after my due date which was a Thursday I went in for a stretch and sweep. I’d had no signs of labor and was 100% over being pregnant - because she was such a long baby she’d been all up in my ribs from 20 something weeks onwards and I was doneeeeee. The stretch and sweep was painfree and easy, the midwife said I was already effaced and 1cm dilated but she could stretch it to 3cm so she was really hopeful it would kickstart things.

On Friday I still hadn’t had anything happen, but I did notice more discharge but thought couldn’t possibly be my waters because it was just a tiny trickle.

Saturday still nothing but thought I would just call and ask about the discharge - the midwife said better come in just to make sure it’s not my waters, but don’t expect to stay, just a quick check.

We went in to the hospital about 11am to get checked, they did some sort of test and yep it was my waters that had been breaking really slowly since Friday or maybe even Thursday evening. Because they’d been breaking for over 24 hours there was an increased risk of infection now and the hospital policy is they have to induce you after 18hours post waters breaking (which I was well over).

So my partner Alex quickly went home to grab our things and organise care for our 3 dogs because we hadn’t brought anything assuming it was just a check up. The midwife started me on IV antibiotics which I would have to have until Frankie was born.

I was absolutely devastated by this stage because if they induce you with pitocin you’re not allowed to have a water birth and that was what I’d really really wanted and even had dreams about since being pregnant. Id also heard from friends that labor when you’re induced was much more painful and intense so I was freaking out about needing an epidural (I’m really scared of needles) and being moved from the midwife led unit to the obstetrician led labor ward.

My midwives were super reassuring, I had an amazing midwife that I’d seen a couple of times during my pregnancy and who had done my stretch and sweep, and an awesome student midwife taking care of me. They gave me so much confidence and belief that I could still have the birth I wanted in the MLU and really built me up. I focussed on going with the flow and just letting things happen as they unfolded because I kept thinking back to the hypnobirthing videos saying that stress can slow down labor and I wanted to help things along as much as possible.

Alex came back with our bags and they broke my waters which was also painfree and easy. The midwife checked my cervix and I was 2cm dilated. I was started on the pitocin drip at 2pm.

I really knew nothing about inductions because I had not anticipated needing one at all so I expected it would take quite a while. I settled into bed with Alex and we watched The Office and ate lunch, the contractions were spaced out and only mildly uncomfortable. The pitocin was increased gradually until I reached “established labor” which was 4 contractions every 10minutes. This took a couple of hours, by that stage it was about 4pm and I was still just using my up breathing and squeezing a comb and the contractions were still manageable. I was really focussed on recovering in between the contractions to allow my body to rest and relax like it talked about in the videos.

Around 5pm the contractions had gotten a lot stronger and much closer together so Alex popped on the TENS machine we’d brought with us and I hopped on a gym ball and that helped a lot. Even though things were moving fast I figured I still had ages to go, I told Alex not to bother setting up any of the music/lighting/diffuser we’d brought because I wasn’t in enough pain to think it would be over soon. I was also REALLY focussed on my breathing 😂😂, I didn’t even really talk to anyone at this point I was just really concentrating on breathing and controlling my stress response.

At about 6pm the contractions were soooo strong and only about 45seconds apart, I couldn’t recover between them anymore and was really really struggling. The main midwife also had just left because of a shift swap over which made me panic a bit but my student midwife was still with me. Because I wasn’t able to “recover” between the contractions i started to lose my breathing pattern and panic. It was about 6.30 at this stage and I started crying and asking for the epidural because I couldn’t cope with the pain any more with breathing.

I was fixated with thinking about how much longer I had to go because the midwives had told me they didn’t plan to check how far I’d dilated until 9pm. Since it was only 6.30 all I could think about was surely its going to be so much longer of this pain and it’s going to get worse and worse. I asked if they could check how dilated I was now so I could judge whether I wanted an epidural or not but the nurses were reluctant to do so as they said it could be misleading. My student midwife was great bless her soul, even when I was screaming at her to get me an epidural 😂, she made me try other things first like changing position etc. She suggested I try going in the shower but I really didn’t want to take off the TENS machine as it was the only thing helping with the pain now that my breathing was out the window. The nurses gave me gas to try but I didn’t like it because it interfered with the natural flow of my breathing which made me feel panicky, but I did like biting down on the tube! That seemed to help give me something to focus on.

She convinced me to try changing positions at about 7pm by going to sit on the toilet to see if it would help and I made up my mind that when I came back from the toilet I was going to insist on the epidural. I was struggling so much and in a real panicky state which I now realise was the “transition” portion of labor.

As soon as I sat on the toilet I got a convulsive feeling in my stomach and unbearable urge to push. I was convinced something was wrong because it had happened so quickly, I’d only been in “established” labor since 4-4.30 and it was only 7pm. The midwives reassured me to go with whatever my body was doing and got me quickly over to the bed to get into whatever position I wanted and said to just go with the feelings of the convulsions and let my body push when it wants to. At this point I WISHED I had practiced down breathing more because I really had no tools to rely on during the pushing stage and couldn’t figure out how to breathe to help my body.

For some reason I’d convinced myself that once I got to the pushing part it was going to be pretty easy and much less painful than the contractions. I was wrong 😂

I was on all fours holding onto the headboard, screaming, biting, giving up every few minutes, but after 55 minutes she was here!

Her head circumference was large, 36.5cm, I think that’s why the pushing felt so painful and I was convinced I’d torn off something down there 😂😂

Amazingly though I had no tears, just a couple of labial grazes, no complications post birth for either Frankie or me.

Even though it was painful at parts (I don’t consider that necessarily negative) I felt really positive after my birth and grateful that I’d had such a good experience. Doing the course had made me excited to give birth instead of scared and I had tools to use during the birth which gave me a sense of “control” and helped me cope. I also trusted my body was doing what it needed to do and felt grateful that not everyone gets to experience something as life changing as giving birth! Alex even said after that it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen and he wished men could get to experience it 😂

Thank you for reading! ❤️