I've been meaning to get around to writing this for ages but the timing has never been right. Michael is currently fast asleep on his Daddy so I guess now is the time.
On the evening of Friday 11th August, Phil and I had been watching the Big Brother eviction on TV and afterwards I started to get some niggling pains - low back-ache and some cramping. I really wasn't sure if it was anything or not and we went out for a walk. When we came home I took a shower and went to bed and the pains stopped. At 4am I woke up a split second before my waters broke. We are not talking a little trickle here - it was more like Niagara Falls. When I look back over my labour experience, I think this was the most shocking thing of all. I tried to rouse Phil:
Catherine: "Phil, my waters have broken!"
Phil: "OK"
Catherine (slightly more urgently): "Phil, my waters have broken!"
Phil: "OK"
Catherine (now getting angry): "Turn the light on, you silly man!"
This got the desired reaction and we got up. I didn't start getting contractions until an hour or so later and they were reasonably manageable through the night until we could call the midwife out at 9am. I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but the plan was to have a home water birth. We had rented a birth pool and Phil had practiced assembling it the week before. Anyway, back to the story. By the time the midwife arrived the contractions had become very painful and frequent. I was dismayed to learn that I was only 1cm dilated. The midwife offered me the opportunity to go to the hospital and have an epidural. This was very surprising as the Dutch are very keen on natural childbirth and anecdotally it is easier to get blood from a stone than an epidural. I declined the opportunity to go to the hospital and the midwife left after telling us that she would be back to check on me in four hours.
This is the point where things started to move very fast. My contractions were coming almost continuously - I couldn't change position without having another one. I tried everything to help - yoga, my birth ball, the shower, a massage - nothing helped. An hour and a half after the midwife left I relented and agreed to go to the hospital. I would have done virtually anything at this point to escape the pain, I'm sure. I regret that I was not strong enough to resist accepting an epidural. I had had a completely medication-free pregnancy and still feel that on some level I failed Michael in this respect. The midwife made arrangements for me to go to Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum in Leiden. It took about two hours for Phil and I to leave the house because getting dressed and getting ready to go was severely hampered by my contractions. I honestly thought I would never make it the 30km to the hospital in the car.
Get there we did, and I even managed to sleep between contractions in the car. We were shown into a delivery suite and I was examined and found to be 5cm dilated. Progress! I was pretty out of it and found it very difficult to talk to anyone - I couldn't focus on anything but the pain. I was put on a monitor and a drip and we waited for the anaesthetists to arrive. A short time later, four of them arrived in green caps and gowns. I really don't know why four were necessary. One to site the epidural, and three to stand around in awed silence, maybe? I was then hooked up to more machines and a scalp monitor was put on Michael. This is regret number two. For whatever unfathomable reason, the epidural did not work - at all. I had full sensation in my legs. It was at this point that I got an irresistible urge to push - everyone was standing around waiting for the epidural to work and it took some time to get this urge taken seriously. I was examined again and found to be fully dilated. This was half an hour after arriving at the hospital. I had dilated 5cm in half an hour - still makes me wince to think about it! The anaesthetists told me that they didn't know why the epidural hadn't worked, but they cheerily wished me luck and left.
The doctor then told me that I could push. I think the last bit of sanity I had left me at this point. Not five minutes ago I was waiting for blissful numbness from the waist down and was now being told to push. I was exhausted and distressed and ending up pushing for almost two hours. They gave me an injection to increase the frequency and strength of the contractions - this didn't help. Michael's heart rate was starting to dip when I had a contraction so the doctors decided that I would need some additional help to deliver him and got a ventouse kit. This was agonising, and I had to have an episiotomy (mercifully, with a local anaesthetic) but it was effective and Michael's head was born a short time later. I have frequently read that delivering the head is supposed to be the hard part and that the body is just supposed to slither out with the next contraction. No such luck. Anyone who knows Phil and I will know what broad shoulders he has. Little (or not so little) Michael has inherited his Daddy's shoulders and got himself well and truly stuck. In being born, his right collar bone was broken. He was cleaned up and put on my tummy and the cord was clamped and then cut by Phil. This is regret number three as I did not want the cord to be clamped until it had stopped pulsing. As I mentioned, I was too out of it to really object. I don't hold the broken collar bone as a regret as this would have happened regardless of the labour experience - he was just too big for my little pelvis.
My poor little boy had a raised area on his head and a killer headache from the ventouse. He also had to have the sleeve of his sleepsuit pinned to the button area to prevent him from raising his arm and turning his broken collar bone. We spent a night in the hospital getting to know each other and we were discharged the next day after the paediatrician had examined Michael.
There are a lot of areas of my labour experience that sadden me greatly. I see pain in my little boy's eyes when I look at the photos that were taken of him immediately after the birth and even now I find it difficult not to cry. At the end of the day, Phil and I have been blessed with a beautiful and healthy little boy and this is the best gift we could ever have.
No comments:
Post a Comment