the birth story

I figure if I don't get it down now I may not remember the details, so here goes... On Thursday the 19th at around 3 in the afternoon my waters broke...not the big gush like you see in the movies, but a steady trickle that had me calling the midwife in my OB's office - they told me to give it an hour to be sure then call back. Later that afternoon they told me to go ahead and come in to the hospital as soon as I could get organized. I gave Craig a call, got his voicemail, luckily he was already on his way home.

It wasn't a panicked rush, but still a bit stressful as we knew this was it - I was having some mild contractions (as I had for several hours the night before), but they were still about half an hour apart. We got to the hospital around 6:30 pm and got settled into the delivery suite room. At this point my contractions were about 15 minutes apart and I was 2.5cm dilated, and they hurt, but not so much that I needed drugs yet! We were both starving as we completely forgot about dinner - of course we had missed our chance with the hospital dinners and the midwife, Sindy, wanted to wait and see how things were going with me before giving me any food. Craig managed to get a little snack from the cafe, but not much as they had cleared out their dinner service as well.

I was hooked up to the CTG to monitor the baby's heart rate and my contractions - I was actually having them a bit more often as there were smaller ones in between that I couldn't feel, but we could see them on the monitor. By around 8:30 the nurse took mercy on us and brought some toast as things were not progressing. Somewhere in there Dr. Keogh, my OB, stopped by and told us that we could choose to induce now if we wanted or we could just wait and see how things progressed over night. We decided to wait as I was fairly keen to have things happen naturally.

Throughout the night my contractions got stronger and closer together, I used the nitrous oxide to help cope w/the pain (not that it really does anything!). Around 3am they were 5 minutes apart and we were hopefully that the birth was imminent. However the contractions then slowed down to 10, then 15 minutes apart again. Poor Craig was trying to get some sleep on a love seat in between timing contractions (and listening to my Darth Vader impression w/the nitrous!).

When the nurse brought in a full breakfast in the morning we knew things weren't happening any time soon! We had to wait for Dr. Keogh, who was delivering a baby in another room, to come check on me and give the go ahead to be induced. It was strange listening to other women going through the pains of childbirth around me and hearing the occasional baby crying. We both wished we had stayed home for the night and gotten some decent sleep, but I reckon the pain might have been a bit tough for me.

Finally around 10am the doc gave the go ahead to induce and put a cannula in my arm so they could start the cyntocin. After this the contractions ramped up very quickly and w/in half an hour they were 2-3 minutes apart, I was in heaps of pain, and the nurse had called for the anesthesiologist so I could have an epidural. By the time he came in I was in unbelievable pain, the gas was no help at all - so I don't remember much about the procedure except that the initial shot did sting quite a bit and there was some pressure from the epi needle, but I really didn't care at that point!

They started the epi at a low dose and it didn't cut all the pain - I was 9.5cm dilated and feeling a lot of pressure from the baby's head. The nurse figured I would be delivering very soon. There's a stretch where it gets fairly hazy for me - the epi wasn't totally working so I was still sucking on the nitrous - which she took away from me and they decided to turn up the epidural. Unfortunately the baby went into distress at this point - they had me lay on my other side to try to help and I saw on the monitor that his heart rate was 66, which is really low, that didn't help so they turned me over again and gave me a shot of something to help raise the baby's heart rate, they also put a sensor on his skull which gave them a more accurate reading of his heart beat. After this he stabilized, pretty soon my OB showed up (I'm sure the nurse had paged him) and he was totally out of breath as he had run from the carpark. That's when I realized things were pretty serious. I remember asking Craig if the baby was alright and he couldn't give me an answer. Things get really hazy after that as my blood pressure took a big drop and they had to push some fluids through my IV and give me a shot. Finally we were both stabilized, they gave me 20 minutes or so to make sure things were okay.

They had turned off the cyntocin during all the drama so I was down to 7cm dilated, but once we were definitely stable they started it again and things progressed quickly from there. I was lucky that I only had to push for around 45 minutes - it was a strange thing to do as I couldn't feel anything from the waist down, so I had to visualize what I was doing. The OB and nurse said I was doing really well at it and they had a mirror so I could see what was happening (odd, but helpful and interesting to see it all). Craig was helping out by holding one of my legs (I couldn't lift them on my own) and the OB holding the other. It was all very surreal to see the baby's head come out all blue grey and gunky with blood and vernix and then a little pull by the OB and he was handing me my baby boy. I got my moment of saying "It's a boy!", which was so neat, and they placed him on my chest against my skin with a little blanket over him. Poor Craig got a little lightheaded for a moment - I'm sure it was all quite overwhelming. But he felt better right away and cut the cord and then spent some quality time with me and the bubs while the doc was stitching me up.

The worst bit after that was the allergic reaction I was having to something they put in with the epidural (maybe pethidine?) - I had been super itchy across my chest and my arms during labour, and now as the epidural wore off the itching progressed down my body - it was driving me crazy! I actually ended up with a bunch of scabs on my ankle from scratching it when I was settled in my room later.

After about an hour they took the bubs to be weighed and have a shot of Vit. K and a Hep. B immunization. I could hear him squalling out in the hallway and it was breaking my heart that I couldn't be there. It took quite awhile for me to get the feeling back in my legs so that they could move me to a room. Unfortunately they didn't have any rooms in the maternity ward that first night because they had 8 deliveries, so I was stuck in a tiny dark room and I didn't have my baby with me as they had to monitor his blood sugar levels for the first 24 hours. They brought him to me for a feed or two, although he ended up doing some damage after the first couple tries. He was sleeping a lot, so I got to get a decent chunk of sleep that first night (the last for a long time to come).

Okay, that's enough for now - at least I got the first 24 hours down in print!