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Birth story: very late and *extremely* long



 
 
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Old December 10th 03, 06:23 PM
Sidheag McCormack
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Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long

Here is my very late (DS had his 6 week check this morning, passing with
flying colours) and very long birth story. In brief, I planned a home birth
with independent midwives (I'm in the UK: this is the way of having private
midwifery care, which gets you more continuity of care than you can get in
the NHS, for example), and ended up transferring for the last few minutes
of a very long labour because of lack of progress in the second stage (8.5
hours from being fully dilated and feeling pushy to birth!!) The only
intervention I needed in the end, though, was an episiotomy. Then I had a
post partum haemorrhage, just to round off the story :-) One respect in
which this story is unusual is that I don't feel wholly positive about how
my "homebirth with IMs" plan worked out; I'll talk about that a little at
the end.

On to the long version:

Dramatis personae:
DH - dear husband
DS - dear son
MW1 - "my" midwife
MW2 - her partner

After reaching 41w5d with little sign of impending labour, I was very happy
on Saturday morning to realise that I had started to have a show; bloody
mucus. The night before I'd had quite a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions,
sometimes 3 minutes apart, with the odd painful contraction thrown in, but
it had come to nothing. During the day nothing more happened for a while,
but at least I took this as a sign that things were likely to happen before
too much longer. On Saturday night I went to bed fairly early, and was
woken around midnight by the first painful contractions. At this stage I
could quite happily manage them lying on my side, though I had to
concentrate and breathe through them. Because of this, I count my labour as
beginning at this point. I felt very happy because things were beginning to
happen at last. I didn't exactly sleep between them, but I did relax and go
off into a dozy state. I wasn't timing contractions at this stage, but I
think they were coming every 10-15 minutes; the gaps were decent, but there
was a pretty large number of contractions between midnight and 5am, which
was the point when I found they were strong enough that I could no longer
deal with them lying down. To begin with they lasted only around 30-45
seconds, but they quickly built up to lasting up to 2 minutes, which was a
surprise given that they were so far apart. I often had to get up and go to
the loo after a contraction, so I wasn't getting all that much rest between
them. At 5am when I could no longer cope with them lying down, I got up and
went into the sitting room with my TENS machine which I managed to put on
with DH's help (then he went back to sleep). Contractions were coming
around every 8 minutes at this point, but then around 6:30am fizzled out
for a while, and went back to a level where I could cope lying down. I
mailed MW1 about 8:20am to say that everything had stopped, and that
sufficed to start it up again :-) although the intervals were now 10-15
minutes. Already it was clear that this wasn't a typical labour;
contractions were subjectively jolly hard to deal with, and objectively up
to 2 minutes long, even though they were so far apart, which seemed odd.
However, I felt confident at this stage that my body knew what it was
doing, and there was no doubt in my mind that I was in labour. I exchanged
several emails with MW1 and she encouraged me to use the pool when I felt
the time was right. I stayed out until perhaps 6pm, and then got in. At
some stage this afternoon I managed to do a vaginal examination on myself;
I seemed to be only about 1cm dilated, but pretty well effaced, so I was
not too despondent. I still felt confident.

As the time approached when it would stop being evening and start being
"the middle of the night" DH and I several times debated whether to call
MW1 and whether to ask her to come. I reckoned I was only about 4cm dilated
at this point, but I had the impression that things were going fast now -
it was a while since I'd had any hope of being able to talk through
contractions - and I expected to have my baby before morning. Indeed I
remember talking about how 26/10/03 was not such an interesting birth date
arithmetically speaking as 27/10/03, and wondering which the baby was going
to choose; I thought it might, with luck, be quite close. How wrong I was
:-(

Around 11pm we decided to call MW1 and after some discussion with her
agreed that we'd like her to come then. With hindsight, this was my first
big mistake. What I wanted was for someone to check that DS (as he would
be, of course we didn't know he wasn't DD at this point) was coping well
with the long, strong contractions. I didn't want anyone else around
supporting me: I was already feeling the need for privacy, for DH and me to
have our own space, which was to intensify later. I wish that I had rented
or bought a Doppler and learned how to use it, so that we could have done
some checking on DS's state ourselves; if we had, I would have quite
happily continued labouring overnight. As it was, I realised immediately
after the phone call that I'd made a mistake, or at least that what was
happening didn't feel right to me, and I almost suggested calling back and
asking MW1 not to come after all. But I wanted that check on DS :-(
Contractions got a bit less strong from then on and felt less effective,
and indeed when MW1 arrived around 1am and examined me (at my request) she
found that I was still only 3-4cm. She told me that I was in very early
labour, not in active labour yet. Given the dilation this was, I suppose,
accurate technically, but I found it very upsetting; it seemed to dismiss
my experience, which was that I'd been having painful contractions for over
24 hours now. I felt - however irrationally - that I was being told I was
making a fuss about nothing and that I couldn't be feeling what I was
feeling. (I have a lot of issues around being told what to feel, and it
seems that I haven't dealt with them as well as I'd hoped! I had not
realised that this might be a problem in labour, but it was, in spades.)
From here on things went downhill fast.

MW1 got me to get out of the pool. Contractions were now intensely painful.
I took my blood pressure, which turned out to be 147/101. This surprised
me, but I was pretty sure it was stress, partly of MW1's arrival and partly
of the sudden increase in painfulness of the contractions caused by getting
out of the pool. MW1 was clearly very anxious about this. We took it again
a few minutes later; I tried to relax in the meantime, but "the meantime"
included another very painful contraction which I had no idea how to cope
with on land, and I was panicky because I "knew" this would happen - I'd
noticed in pregnancy that my BP was easily affected by stress, though it
had been normal throughout, and MW1 had been twitchy about it before,
though always agreeing on reflection that it was behaving normally. The
repeat measurement came in at 143/93, and I feel that from then on it
didn't matter what later readings were, I was labelled as having
hypertension. In fact later readings were 142/84 and 147/82, which
considering I was in labour seemed, and seem, to me to be unobjectionable;
but my fate was sealed by those two readings just after I got out of the
pool.

I think that measuring my BP during labour at all was my second big
mistake. I wish that I had had the courage of my convictions and decided in
advance that I was not going to. I knew that there was a small risk of
pre-eclampsia developing in labour, even with no previous signs of it; but
in fact I think I should have elected to take this risk in order to avoid
the risks involved in extra stress and pressure for intervention. At the
time MW1 told me that I was now also at high risk of placenta abrupta,
which would have been very serious. At the time I accepted this - though we
nevertheless declined to take the advice to transfer - but now I am no
longer so sure that I understand this or believe it. The connection I have
been able to trace between PA and hypertension is that hypertension in
pregnancy - not labour - increases the risk; but the mechanism seems to be
that over weeks, the hypertension causes the lower layer of the placenta to
degrade. If this slow process is the only one involved, it isn't clear why
hypertension during labour only - i.e. just for hours or a day or two -
would increase the risk of PA, and I have found no empirical evidence that
it does. Anyone else know more about this?

MW1 asked whether I could go to bed and doze between contractions, so as to
get some rest because I was in very early labour. My memory is that I said
a definite No to this - it was clear to me that I had no hope of dozing
between these contractions, since I certainly couldn't cope with them lying
down - but somehow nobody heard me and I found that I had agreed to do this
anyway. However, somewhere in this discussion contractions stopped, so I
thought maybe it was worth a try. MW1 was to stay overnight in our spare
room, as she lived a long way away. As soon as we got the bedroom door shut
- privacy again! - they started up with a vengeance. I pottered briefly,
and then obediently tried to go to bed. I think I stayed there for three
contractions, getting up on my knees for each contraction and then trying
to lie down after it was over. It was awful; when a contraction started,
instead of getting ready to deal with it, I was scrambling around trying to
get into a reasonable position, and then I was wasting some of the time in
between trying to lie down again and rearrange the pillows. Finally a
lightbulb came on above my head. Why on earth was I doing this? I'd
replaced a situation that was working - being in the pool, able to move
around easily to deal with contractions and relax in between them - by
something that manifestly didn't work at all. I remember the relief when I
realised that what I was doing was illogical, that I was the only one
really in a position to realise that it was illogical, and that I had the
power to do something about it. I went back to the "pool room" and got back
in the water, and felt immediately better. DH came in and put on some Bach
for me (Goldberg Variations: Gould, 1981 performance). He stayed and talked
for a while, then went back to bed for a little sleep. I remember that he
left the door ajar and that I got out of the pool and shut the door; my
need for a closed, safe space was intense. After a few minutes I took my BP
again and got what, to me, was a reassuring number; this confirmed for me
that the earlier readings had been caused by stress, and I never felt
worried about my BP, as opposed to worried about other people's reaction to
it, again. I played the Bach CD twice, trying consciously to regain my
sense of it being my own labour and my own space, with some success. I
stayed in the pool all night. I said later that I'd dozed between
contractions, but that's an imprecise description; it would be better to
say that I went into some kind of almost trance-like state between
contractions; I felt very calm. Contractions were strong, long and felt
effective. I examined myself several times over the course of the night and
was pleased to find that I was making steady progress. Around 4 or 5am DH
woke up and came to see me; by then I wasn't wanting music played any more,
so he fetched a blanket and came and slept some more on the futon. I
watched him sleep and tried not to make so much noise as to disturb him,
though in fact he seemed able to sleep through any noise I wanted to make.
I liked to watch him sleep: it helped to anchor me.

By the time it was really morning, I could only feel a small rim of cervix
left. I reckon I was at least 8cm dilated at that point (7:30am). A
question I feel I should have a better answer to is, why on earth didn't I
tell MW1 this when she got up? I think the concrete reason was that before
I got what felt like an opening to do so, she had already told me again
that I was in very early labour, not in active labour yet (because the
contractions were still so far apart, I suppose). So to mention 8cm would
have been to "contradict a grown-up" - I didn't feel that I'd be believed,
and I certainly didn't want a VE to check, so I said nothing about it. MW1
insisted that I should get out of the pool and stay out, and I agreed. I
managed to eat almost half a banana, but I was feeling too sick to eat any
more. Much of the morning was taken up with blood pressure stress. I was
surprised to find that MW1 was not reassured by my later BP reading, and
felt that she had to talk to her supervisor and advise transfer. We
declined; I could see no good reason to transfer, since it seemed to me
that bar a couple of rogue readings when I was under a lot of stress, my BP
was essentially normal, and certainly nowhere near a worrying level. (I had
said before labour that I would not be concerned unless my diastolic stayed
consistently well into the 90s, and at the time, MW1 had agreed. I felt
bemused and even betrayed on finding that 142/84 was now considered
worrying.) Although this was an easy decision, in the sense that I was
never tempted to accept the advice to transfer, I found the whole situation
incredibly stressful. I felt that I and my labour were being judged a
failure; I didn't really understand why, and I desperately wanted to be
left alone to get on with it. I still felt that my body might be able to do
it right if only it were allowed to (as it had been overnight). MW1 told me
she couldn't leave me alone because of "the situation" and that in fact MW2
was coming to back her up. It did cross my mind that since we were in my
home I could just tell her to go, and I was tempted to do so, but I thought
that this would in practice be committing myself to an unassisted birth,
which at that point I didn't feel up to doing. She - as it seemed to me at
the time, though my perception is hardly unbiassed - went on and on about
the risks of preeclampsia and placenta abrupta until I wanted to scream. In
the end, DH did sap and ask her to stop repeating herself, and finally no
more was said, at least in my hearing.

And what was happening to my contractions during all this? Unsurprisingly
[adrenaline acting against oxytocin?] they went a bit haywire. By
midmorning I was having contractions which I was finding very hard to cope
with, but they didn't feel as "right" as the contractions I'd been having
overnight had, and in fact I didn't start to feel like pushing until gone
11am. In the meantime, out of the pool, I couldn't cope with contractions
in any position other than bolt upright, sometimes holding onto DH.
Eventually I had another flash of trusting my instincts and decided to get
back in the pool even though to do so was to "disobey orders". (I know it
shouldn't have felt like this, but it did!) This felt good; I was able to
use forward leaning positions again and everything felt much more
manageable and "right". Almost immediately though I wanted to try Entonox
too, and MW1 came and helped me learn to use it. Some time around now MW2
arrived; I forget exactly what the sequence of events was. Using the
Entonox was easier than I'd expected and I didn't have any bad effects from
it, once I'd learned how to breathe it at the right time and not for too
long. (If I took too few breaths, I found myself dumped in the middle of a
contraction with suddenly no help; if I took too many, I felt woozy. But
getting it right didn't prove too hard.) I did my own VE (easy in the pool,
hard anywhere else!) and was relieved to find that I was fully dilated.
Surely, I thought, my baby would soon be born...

From here on I am very hazy about timings. I was told to resist the urge to
push whilst I could, but from the beginning I could only resist pushing if
I was breathing Entonox. In fact I could *always* resist pushing if I was
breathing Entonox, up until the end of labour. Was this because my labour
was weird, I wonder, or is it typical? If the latter, maybe I should not
actually have resisted so much. Once I did start pushing I could very
quickly feel a bag of waters bulging at the introitus, but getting beyond
that seemed tricky. I got out of the pool to go to the loo and my waters
broke while I was there. I hoped that crowning would immediately follow,
but it didn't. Back in the pool and squatting, I did immediately manage to
push something which turned out to be caput to the introitus. I was not to
get further than this for many hours (even the crowning caput disappeared
temporarily when I got out of the pool).

When nothing further happened, MW1 and MW2 suggested that I get out of the
pool again, and I agreed. I never did find a comfortable position to push
in out of the pool, though - somehow nothing felt secure. The caput
advanced by fractions of millimetres, they told me, but I couldn't myself
feel any progress at all. I was defecating with every contraction which I
found humiliating; DH was dealing with it and I wasn't holding back, but I
hated it. (My body had done a good clear out job near the beginning of
labour byImy reckoning, but that was a long time ago now.) I started asking
about alternatives; first response was that it would be an epidural and
syntocinon, because the contractions were still not coming very often -
every 5 or 10 minutes? The baby was still LOL as it had been throughout
pregnancy, had not rotated. MW2 was worried about deep transverse arrest,
and they wanted me to do something to help the head to rotate. There
followed a weird stage in the bedroom after someone suggested that I lie
down and get some sleep - I remember wondering how on earth anyone thought
I could do that. I felt as though people were imagining I was making up the
pain. (MW2 later told me that rest had been no part of the plan and they
just wanted to help DS rotate; but MW1's contemperaneous note says that she
suggested I "try resting/dozing". Some communication problem!) I found I
couldn't lie on my right side as they wanted because it caused a totally
excruciating pain - the worst I have ever experienced including throughout
the labour - in my rectum. I was told to try the knee chest position
instead to attempt to turn the baby and to take the pressure off my rectum;
this helped. MW2 examined me and found that now the skull was (finally!) at
the introitus. I think the baby was found to have turned about this point,
with the help of the knee-chest position. Everyone got very excited. There
followed a stage of people holding me up in uncomfortable positions,
promising me I could do it etc. etc. I never felt I was really getting
anywhere; the positions felt unstable, I wanted something really solid to
hold on to, but never managed to articulate this. Finally when I went back
to using entonox during contractions (which I hadn't been allowed to do for
a while) we got lots of hair visible, they said. I went back in the pool
for a while. Contractions were excruciating; I had to push but I really
didn't feel I was making any progress at all and it all felt wrong, like
pushing against a concrete block. MWs kept getting excited and being
encouraging, but then the small progress I apparently made during
contractions would be undone between them. At last an ambulance was called
for transfer; the idea at this stage was to transfer for ventouse.
Ambulance came; there was a contraction where more progress was apparently
made (I still couldn't feel any) and I was again convinced to postpone
going in. An episiotomy was discussed, but the perineum was not extended
enough to make this realistic. MW2 was clearly much less gungho about
avoiding transfer than MW1, who was "promising" me that I could do this at
home. Finally we gave up; the ambulance people helped me onto a chair and
give me more entonox of theirs. We got into the ambulance and I moved onto
the stretcher on my side. I felt tremendous relief that we were going to
hospital where someone would help me. I remember wishing I had not allowed
myself to be put off - perhaps the stage where the alternative being
discussed was an epidural and syntocinon would have felt like a better
transfer point to me, though I suppose it might well have resulted in c/s.
There was a gush of fluid about when we got out of the ambulance. At the
time I thought I'd urinated and was very embarrassed but actually I think
it was amniotic fluid. I was carried into some labour room, put on my back
for monitoring - baby's heart rate still absolutely fine, as it had been
all the way through. I pushed with entonox and apparently there was much
more head than there has been - I think the gush of fluid corresponded with
a change in DS's position. There was also fresh meconium for the first
time. They said I'd be able to push the baby out just with a small
episiotomy. The midwife asked whether we'd tried different positions, and
we said we'd tried everything. I wonder whether I should have tried pushing
on my hands and knees though, before going for the episiotomy, now that the
head was further out? But by this point I'd had so many experiences of
having made a little progress that didn't really lead anywhere that I had
no confidence this time would be any different, and was keen for someone to
help me birth my baby. Everyone seems to agree that the episiotomy was
necessary. I was asked about third stage and asked for physiological, but I
was told that they would suction the baby immediately and take him/her to
the resuscitaire; I didn't have the time or energy to argue. Incidentally
my BP was absolutely fine at this point - 107/75 if I remember rightly.
About 20 minutes after we'd arrived (i.e. at 19:40), DS was born! He had a
nuchal cord and a hand up by his head, which was the only explanation we
ever found for the lack of progress. His cord was immediately cut - somehow
I hadn't realised this would happen, although they'd told me he would be
suctioned immediately which implied it - and he was suctioned; it sounded
horrible, but he was very quickly brought back to me and we experimented
with breastfeeding etc.

Whilst I was holding him we waited for the placenta; I wasn't that keen to
have a long third stage but everyone was happy to wait for a bit. We didn't
have good signs of separation - a gush of blood, but no cord lengthening -
so they got me squatting over a basin. Quite a bit of blood but no
placenta. Because of the blood the midwife recommended moving to active
management which I was happy with so they gave me 10 units of syntocinon;
eventually the placenta came. People started talking ever so calmly about
"a trickle" and various kinds of controlled panic broke out; the room was
suddenly full of people evidently doing their choreographed PPH drill. I
ended up with another 10 units of synto immediately plus a synto drip set
up in one arm and fluid in the other. They said I'd lost 800ml at the time
and the PPH was eventually recorded as 1 litre, but Hb measured half way
through the PPH gave me 91 (9.1, depending on your units) and the next day
62 (6.2), so probably I lost more than this really (there were a lot of
clots that only I ever saw). Because of the drips (if I remember rightly?)
they catheterised me; this was one of the interventions I really dreaded,
but in practice it wasn't too bad. The episiotomy was stitched, with the
hospital midwife and MW1 discussing technique - I was quite interested and
wished I understood the technical terms involved! (Incidentally although it
was "small", 6 weeks later it's still not fully healed; definitely confirms
for me that episiotomy shold be avoided if at all possible!) DH held DS for
quite a lot of this time, and they looked very sweet together.

The hospital midwife arranged for us to stay in the part of the hospital
where we were, even though we were technically not "low risk" enough to be
there; this meant we got a room to ourselves and DH could stay overnight
(in a chair). I was extremely grateful for this, since the possibility of
being left without DH was one of the main things I hated about the idea of
a hospital birth. I was told I could have DS in bed with me, but I didn't
really feel safe doing so given how tired I was and that the bed rails
didn't really look as though they would stop him falling out, so he was in
his fishbowl except when we fed and cuddled. I probably got more sleep than
DH that night, which hasn't happened again since :-)

The next day various people came to see us; DS was pronounced healthy and
had his hearing tested (one ear needed to be retested later because he was
too awake and the test timed out, but later passed). I gradually got rid of
the various things sticking into me, and was allowed to have a bath. I got
very wobbly getting out of it and had to call DH to help, but that was
probably mostly because I made the bath too hot. Otherwise, I felt not too
bad considering the blood I'd lost. The midwife who told me my Hb result
thought that they would want me to have a transfusion, but got the
registrar to come and talk to me. To my relief the registrar did not press
me, but asked me about how I felt, pronounced my pulse better than hers,
and said that if I was capable of walking out of the hospital then that was
a sign that it was reasonable for me to do so! We went home around 5 in a
taxi, and real life with DS began :-)

So how do I feel about the story? I have very mixed feelings. I'm very glad
to have ended up with a wonderful healthy son born with an episiotomy as
the main intervention. I think given the nature of the labour, under many
kinds of different circumstances I could have ended up with a caesarean;
I'm glad we didn't. However, I feel sad that, overall, I did not experience
the presence of midwives as supportive, rather as a hindrance, and I do
wonder how much difference the added stress made to how my labour went.
(Maybe none, but I'll never know: possibly without it, my body and DS's
would have behaved more harmoniously, or maybe not.) The main lesson I
would pass on is to take notice of your instinct when engaging a midwife. I
knew from the beginning that we didn't really "click" - I thought she was a
perfectly nice person, but just not someone I could really connect with -
but I talked myself into thinking this wouldn't matter or that it would
change as we got to know one another during pregnancy. This was a mistake.
Of course it was only one factor; things would also have worked out better
either if I'd had a more straightforward labour which would not have
exposed that MW1 and I weren't an ideal working pair, or if I had a
different psychology (I tend to be willing and able to make my own
decisions, but then to find any kind of conflict situation that results -
like not taking professional advice, in this case to transfer because of
the high BP reading - incredibly stressful). I don't know what I should
have done - at the time there was not a choice of IMs in my area (MW2 not
being happy to be first midwife to clients in my city though she does act
as second midwife over here), so my only alternatives would have been the
NHS or unassisted childbirth. Maybe I should have risked the NHS and been
prepared to fight for my homebirth if necessary, but maybe that would have
been worse. It's a pity there aren't so many IMs that you can guarantee
finding someone you do connect with. I do now have a much better
understanding than I had before of how people can choose to birth
unassisted, but I still wouldn't have been happy to do it for my first
birth, and I know DH would have been very unhappy about it! Fortunately,
perhaps, we have always intended to have only one child so we don't have to
decide what to do next time. There is a faint feeling that we should have
another child in order to do birth right next time, but I think it will
prove resistable!

Congratulations to anyone who read this far. I hope that it may have
provided some food for thought which may perhaps help someone else some day
to have a more straightforward birth than they might have.

Sidheag
DS Colin Oct 27 2003
  #2  
Old December 10th 03, 06:55 PM
Dagny
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Posts: n/a
Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long

Thanks for posting this!

I know what you mean about MW interfering, although I loved my MWs *my* MW1
got nervous after I was complete because she has had moms konk out from
exhaustion after labors as long as mine. I think my next birth with her
will go much more smoothly (if I have as favorable circumstances in terms of
the baby being reassuring and being healthy enough for a natural birth); she
won't have her doubts about my birthing ability and I will be able to have a
more hands-off second stage, which I think in hindsight would have made it
go faster and possibly less damaging to my perineum/rectum (I was doing
forced pushing for a couple of hours and ended up on my back).

-- Dagny



  #3  
Old December 10th 03, 07:58 PM
Welches
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Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long


Sidheag McCormack wrote in message
...
Here is my very late (DS had his 6 week check this morning, passing with
flying colours) and very long birth story. In brief, I planned a home

birth
with independent midwives (I'm in the UK: this is the way of having

private
midwifery care, which gets you more continuity of care than you can get in
the NHS, for example), and ended up transferring for the last few minutes
of a very long labour because of lack of progress in the second stage (8.5
hours from being fully dilated and feeling pushy to birth!!) The only
intervention I needed in the end, though, was an episiotomy. Then I had a
post partum haemorrhage, just to round off the story :-) One respect in
which this story is unusual is that I don't feel wholly positive about how
my "homebirth with IMs" plan worked out; I'll talk about that a little at
the end.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to anyone who read this far. I hope that it may have
provided some food for thought which may perhaps help someone else some

day
to have a more straightforward birth than they might have.

Sidheag
DS Colin Oct 27 2003

Shares a birthday with dd#1. Means that they'll have b'day at half term,
assuming your area doesn't change to 5 term years.
I would add that I had a bad time with dd#1, though not as bad as you.
(30hrs labour, with epidural + episiotomy) but #2 was much easier (if you do
ever start thinking that way) and I used only gas-and air and tens, and had
no stitches. I can't believe how you managed to do internals on yourself
while in labour! That must be an achievement on its own.
Having said that, I have found all the NHS midwives to be great (I've dealt
with 2 different ones for pregnancy care, and 5 in labour) and v. helpful.
Hope you recover soon.
Debbie


  #4  
Old December 10th 03, 08:18 PM
Ilse Witch
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Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long

Sidheag McCormack wrote:
She told me that I was in very early
labour, not in active labour yet. Given the dilation this was, I suppose,
accurate technically, but I found it very upsetting; it seemed to dismiss
my experience


I know exactly how that felt. The most important thing during labour
is to have someone take you serious. After all, you are not imagining
the contractions, and they do hurt! Your whole experience doesn't sound
to different from my labour, but I had much less options of doing what
I liked, since someone had decided that DS needed constant monitoring
and I was wired to a machine and in a hospital bed all the time. I
thoroughly, intensly hated that, and never understood why.

DS was also born with a hand next to his head, and I also experienced
very little progress at one point, which led to a cut. However, it
healed quickly and without any complications.

However, I feel sad that, overall, I did not experience
the presence of midwives as supportive, rather as a hindrance, and I do
wonder how much difference the added stress made to how my labour went.


Of course the stress of labour can make you feel uncomfortable with
just about everybody, but the way you describe your experience, MW1
was definitely not a person I would have wanted near me either. Her
insistence on all sorts of worst-case scenarios completely freaked
me out. You should definitely discuss this with her at a later
stage. Part of a midwife's duty is to recognize that you are not
well matched personalities and recommend another. Even in the
Netherlands, where the system is highly crowded, this happens.

There is a faint feeling that we should have
another child in order to do birth right next time, but I think it will
prove resistable!


You are dealing with this very well, and having another baby is not
going to help you deal any better. For all you know, that experience
might even be worse, since your expectations are even higher. Take
your time. Coping with a 'bad' birth experience is also a sort of
grieving, you had all these expectations, and they never came true.
In writing this down and sharing it, you are already taking steps
in getting over it. My birth experience wasn't what I expected, and
for months in a row I bugged people with it, but now I am at peace
with everything and ready to move on. And I have learned a lot
about myself and others as a benefit.

Enjoy your newborn son! Things go so fast in the first year.

--
-- I
mommy to DS (17m)
mommy of a tiny angel (Oct 2003)
guardian of DH (32)
TTC #2.5
War doesn't decide who's right, only who's left

  #5  
Old December 10th 03, 08:26 PM
Fer
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Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long

That was a great recount of your l & d, thanks for sharing!! Strange isn't
it that when it doesn't go as you'd like you can't help but feel that it
could have been better regardless of the healthy baby at the end?

You've summed up my concerns about a homebirth. I am concerned that they
'might' get in the way for I like to deal with pain myself. On the plus
side I do like my MWs far more than I could have hoped so *fingers crossed*
hopeful I won't have that problem.

--

Jenn
-WAHM
-DS Feb'92
-DD Feb'97
-Jellybean due June 25/04


  #6  
Old December 10th 03, 08:55 PM
Anne Rogers
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Congratulations to anyone who read this far. I hope that it may have
provided some food for thought which may perhaps help someone else some day
to have a more straightforward birth than they might have.


I made it, it almost moved me to tears.

I was aiming for a homebirth on the NHS, the way my care worked was that I
saw the same midwife for my antenatal and postnatal appointments, which
was good and if she was on duty I'd get her for the birth. As it turned
out, she was not on duty for any of the times I had a midwife visit (4 day
latent phase), though she did appear at one point when all contractions
had stopped but my waters had gone and booked an induction. I actually
really like this state of affairs, I got the continuous care from her, but
for the actual birth, which is very undignified it was a stranger, which
suited me much better, I'll be aiming for the same thing again, fingers
crossed with the same midwife.

Congratulations Sidheag, with the strange labour you had, I think you did
really well to get as far as you did with no intervention.

  #7  
Old December 10th 03, 10:46 PM
Cheryl S.
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Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long

"Sidheag McCormack" wrote in message
...
Indeed I remember talking about how 26/10/03
was not such an interesting birth date arithmetically
speaking as 27/10/03, and wondering which the
baby was going to choose;


I'm glad, and somewhat amazed, to read that I am not the only person in
the world who's thought about this. :-) DH looked at me like I was
insane when I mentioned I thought it was cool that DS's birthdate,
9/3/03, is a perfect square. (9=3*3).

Congratulations on Colin's birth! I'm glad it turned out mostly OK but
very much empathize with your regret over the stress caused during your
labor by having to deal with caregivers who were just not on the same
wavelength with you.
--
Cheryl S.
Mom to Julie, 2 yr., 8 mo.
And Jaden, 3 months

Cleaning the house while your children are small is like
shoveling the sidewalk while it's still snowing.


  #8  
Old December 10th 03, 10:53 PM
Shena Delian O'Brien
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Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long

Cheryl S. wrote:

I'm glad, and somewhat amazed, to read that I am not the only person in
the world who's thought about this. :-) DH looked at me like I was
insane when I mentioned I thought it was cool that DS's birthdate,
9/3/03, is a perfect square. (9=3*3).


My husband thinks about those things all the time. He's into initials
too. He wants to name our child with the initials "C.O.D" (which
prompted me to ask him if I got cash on delivery, lol) or "G.O.D" or
"L.S.D" hah...

  #9  
Old December 10th 03, 11:09 PM
Ilse Witch
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Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long

Cheryl S. wrote:

I'm glad, and somewhat amazed, to read that I am not the only person in
the world who's thought about this. :-) DH looked at me like I was
insane when I mentioned I thought it was cool that DS's birthdate,
9/3/03, is a perfect square. (9=3*3).


Oh, believe me, you're not alone. I have a fixation on numbers
since I am able to count. An analytical mind, I suppose...

--
-- I
mommy to DS (17m)
mommy of a tiny angel (Oct 2003)
guardian of DH (32)
TTC #2.5
War doesn't decide who's right, only who's left

  #10  
Old December 10th 03, 11:11 PM
Buzzy Bee
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Default Birth story: very late and *extremely* long

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 19:55:24 +0000, Anne Rogers
wrote:
but then again I might just have mucked up the snipping as usual!
Congratulations to anyone who read this far. I hope that it may have
provided some food for thought which may perhaps help someone else some day
to have a more straightforward birth than they might have.


I made it, it almost moved me to tears.


Me too!

I was aiming for a homebirth on the NHS, the way my care worked was that I
saw the same midwife for my antenatal and postnatal appointments, which
was good and if she was on duty I'd get her for the birth. As it turned
out, she was not on duty for any of the times I had a midwife visit (4 day
latent phase), though she did appear at one point when all contractions
had stopped but my waters had gone and booked an induction. I actually
really like this state of affairs, I got the continuous care from her, but
for the actual birth, which is very undignified it was a stranger, which
suited me much better, I'll be aiming for the same thing again, fingers
crossed with the same midwife.


I really liked the continuity of care I got (independent midwife, the
only way round here) and can't imagine having anyone else present at
my next birth, but unfortunately circumstances are we will have at
least one midwife we have never met at the next one (sent by the local
hospital, even though I refuse to have any antenatal care there). If
we opt for a hospital birth it will be a whole load of strangers, but
I very much hope I can have 'my' midwife with us as lead practitioner.

Megan
--
Seoras David Montgomery, 7 May 2003, 17 hours: sunrise to sunset (homebirth)

To e-mail use: megan at farr-montgomery dot com
 




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