I was 41 weeks exactly when my contractions started at 3am. I’d had a membrane sweep the day before because I refused to be induced chemically. I lay in bed for a couple of hours just listening to music & ASMR & just cruised through them.
My Mum had traveled down the North Island to stay with us in the lead up to the birth, so at 5am I woke her up to let my husband sleep a little longer. I had a scan booked at the hospital that morning because I was 41 weeks & they wanted to check that everything was still fine. I called the midwife team & told them I was in early labour. They recommended that I still get the scan.
During my pregnancy, it was impossible to find a midwife. Many had left due to burnout & others were fully booked thanks to a post lockdown baby boom. I ended up going with the community midwife team through the hospital.
At 8:30am I waddled into the hospital with hubby in tow. We were in the waiting room when the receptionist saw me have a contraction. She came over to ask if I was ok. I told her I was in labour & she spoke to the sonographer who didn’t want to do the ultrasound because of how hard they need to push & that it would be uncomfortable for me. She recommended that I head straight up to L&D. Luckily we brought our hospital bags with us.
We headed upstairs to the delivery unit & the midwives were wondering why I was there, but they shrugged it off & admitted me to a room. It was around then that I realised I’d left all the expressed colostrum in the freezer. We were told that I could only have one support person (Covid times) so I asked if it would be ok if my Mum dropped it off. My Mum arrived & the midwife team told her it would be okay for her to stay. The relief I felt in that moment knowing that my husband & Mum would be there was amazing.
My labour “progressed” painfully, as I felt all the contractions in my back. Every contraction made me feel like my lower back was being torn apart. No position would ease the discomfort. I refused an epidural because the thought of a needle in my spine was worse than the pain (at the time).
My Mum was back & forth with a heat pack & my husband was trying to relieve the pressure by pressing my hips & tickling my back & shoulders. I was strapped into the monitoring machines which made it hard to move & get comfortable.
I lost track of time but I knew it was the afternoon by this point. I’d had little sleep & was reduced to taking short burst naps between contractions.
The obstetrician came & broke my waters & gave me pitocin to speed things up as I was progressing too slowly & the baby's heart rate was dropping. She said there was meconium in the fluid, which wasn’t a good sign.
The first midwife we had on duty was really lovely, but her shift ended & the next woman to take over was, to put it lightly, extremely unpleasant. She was bossy, pushy & belittling. (My Mum told me after that she wanted to hit her). I started to beg for an epidural at this point. That’s when the specialist came in & finally made the call for an emergency c section. This has been something I really wanted to avoid, but I was so exhausted at this point that I wanted it to be over. Next thing we know the room is full of staff & it was all go. They were going through the consent paperwork & I was crying through contractions, just agreeing to anything. The unpleasant midwife was trying to shave me for the surgery & I was asking her to wait for my contraction & vomiting to stop but she kept pulling my legs apart. My only protest I could muster was to pee on her hand.
The surgical team was really lovely & they could tell we were anxious. I’d never seen my husband look so frightened as he did at that moment. He was in the scrubs & trying to comfort me at the same time. The spinal block was horrible for me, but once the pain vanished, I felt like I could breathe again. I was finally able to feel excited about meeting our baby girl again. Then the tremors started! This was an interesting experience, but completely normal, I was assured.
The rest of the surgery went by really quickly. Then the obstetrician asked if I was ready to see my baby. She held her up over the screen & I saw her vibrant red hair. Then she was whisked away to a resus table. It felt like an eternity before she started crying. The relief I felt in that moment was amazing. I was told she would need to go up to SCBU & be put on a CPAP machine.
I’d lost 1.5L of blood & I was still being closed up. My husband was so torn between staying with me & going with our daughter. I begged him to go with her. It wasn’t until much later that he told me he was scared I was going to die & that this would be the last thing he saw of me.
I was wheeled off to recovery where I was given multiple doses of fentanyl for the pain. It was excruciating when the spinal block started to wear off. The obstetrician came to check on me & ended up having to reach into my uterus & scoop out a huge clot. She only gave me gas & air as I’d already had too much pain meds. This did absolutely nothing & I cried so much.
During all of this, my Mum was upstairs with no clue about what was happening. No one could tell her so she sat there for hours, waiting for word.
I finally became more coherent & I asked for someone to find my Mum & tell her I was ok. They were so reluctant to let her into recovery to see me, but I begged them. I knew my husband was with our daughter & I needed my Mum. They let her in & it was so lovely to see her face. She had to leave, but one of the young nurses looking after me was so lovely. I remember her bringing me over a lemonade ice block & it was the most delicious things I’d ever tasted.
My husband was finally able to come down & see me. He told me our daughter was so beautiful with red hair. That’s when he told me that no one had told him how I was until 10 minutes before he saw me.
I was ready to go back to our room. On the way, I was wheeled into SCBU to see my daughter. I saw her connected to all these machines with wires & tubes coming off her. I could hardly see her face. I was in a hospital bed so all I could do was touch her foot. I wasn’t able to hold her for the first 12 hours of her life. I’m so relieved that I had all that frozen colostrum.
The next day, after a horrible sleep with tubes attached to me & my catheter jug needing to be emptied multiple times, I was finally able to get out of bed. I was brought in a wheelchair & taken down to SCBU to finally hold my daughter. It was so surreal & so wonderful. The person I’d hoped & prayed for, for 8 years, was finally here in my arms. It was really awkward to hold her with her monitoring wires, lines & feeding tube. The colostrum ran out pretty fast so we tried breastfeeding. It was a tough time & it took two weeks to really establish. She was fed through a tube for the first few days using my pumped milk. I was able to feed her using a nipple shield, but they were reluctant to send her home. We were able to take her home after a week.
I’d been discharged two days in, after an iron infusion for the lost blood. I was kept in an old converted day lounge that was full of junk & old furniture & I was tucked away in the corner right by a huge window facing the parking building. It was mid summer & this room felt like a glass house. It was at the completely opposite end of the ward from SCBU so walking there & back multiple times a day was really tough. I was experiencing the hormone drop & I was so sore & so lonely. I wasn’t allowed visitors due to covid restrictions & only one parent was allowed in SCBU at a time, although the nurses let us in so many times. The nights were the worst. When my husband had to leave, it was so hard being alone, in pain with a baby that won’t latch. The SCBU nurses were amazing. The night nurses were angels in disguise, & were a big comfort during all of this.
This was so far from my “dream birth” that even typing this has brought up a lot of strong emotions.