During my first pregnancy I experienced typical NHS
maternity care. My GP surgery offered shared care, which meant that my
antenatal appointments alternated between my midwives, who job-shared, and my
GP. In theory this should have meant that I saw no more than three people during
my antenatal and postnatal care, but in reality one of the
midwives was on long-term sick, with different midwives filling in for her,
and my GP was on holiday in the summer so I had to see another GP, all of which meant
that I hardly saw the same person twice during pregnancy and when I turned up
on the labour ward there was a completely different set of people again.
Looking back I realise that I was very lucky to have a very straightforward
and enjoyable birth, but unfortunately after the birth everything went
pear-shaped as one midwife after another offered different views on why my
baby wasn't feeding properly and finally advised me that the best course would
be to give her formula.
In my second pregnancy I knew a little bit more about the
system and opted for midwife only care and a homebirth, in the hope that I
would have the same care-givers throughout. The midwives still
job-shared, which meant that I had two people caring for me in pregnancy, but
at least neither of them was on sick leave and, in theory, having two
midwives meant there was more chance of one of them being on call when I went
into labour. Even so, as my due date grew closer I began to worry as I knew that it
was still pot-luck whether one of my midwives would be on-call, a problem which was exacerbated by my baby being due on Christmas
Day. Then, on Boxing Day I went
down with the flu and spent the next three days in bed with a raging temperature
desperately hoping that my baby didn't come until I'd recovered.
Just after 9.00 am on New Year's Eve, having been
contracting for 11 hours, I called the midwives office
and was told that Andrea, one of my midwives, was on duty and would be with me
shortly. I was very relieved, the thought of going through labour whilst
recovering from the flu was bad enough, but I felt it would be easier if I was
being looked after by a midwife who knew me and what kind of birth I wanted
Andrea arrived at 10.20 am and examined me, I was 3cm dilated
and the contractions were coming every 5 minutes. As the morning wore on, and
the contractions became more painful, I tried using Entonox (gas and air) but
it made me
feel stifled and nauseous to the point where I was being sick at the height
of every contraction and I was finding it very hard to cope.
At 1.00 pm Andrea asked to examine me again, I couldn’t
believe it when she said I was only 5cm dilated, as I had been sure that I was further on than this, so we
made the decision to break my waters. I knew from Andrea’s expression that there was a problem as
soon as she broke my waters, there was meconium in them which was a sign that the
baby had been in distress and we decided to transfer into hospital.
From the time we arrived at the hospital everything took on a
rather surreal feel. We were ushered into a
delivery room and I was put on a monitor. For some reason it couldn’t
pick up the baby’s heartbeat and they had to put a scalp monitor on him, which
was uncomfortable and
meant that I was unable to walk about and was stuck on the bed. I was desperate
to be upright and wanted to kneel on the bed but the baby's heartbeat dipped worryingly
if I was in this position. The baby was much happier when I was on my back but I was
finding it very hard to cope with the pain in this position and was being sick during the contractions again.
By this time I was exhausted, finding it very hard to cope and my
contractions were slowing so I asked for an epidural.
While we were waiting for the anaesthetist my contractions
virtually stopped and Andrea was talking about putting in a drip once the
epidural had taken to get them going again. The epidural only took down one leg
but suddenly my body flipped into second stage. Andrea was saying "We’ll
test your legs to make sure that you can’t feel anything and then we’ll put
in the drip to get your contractions going again" when she broke off in
mid-sentence and called to the other midwife "come and look at this"
– I’d pushed and the baby’s head was visible.
Within 20 minutes Kieran was born, he weighed 8lb 11½ oz
and was born at 5.10pm. Things had gone so differently from how I'd
planned them and I was very grateful to have had a midwife with me who I knew
and trusted and who I felt was on my side.
When I became pregnant again four years later I planned
another homebirth and, aware that, again, I would be at the mercy of the
on-call system when I went into labour I asked whether it would be possible to
be included in the scheme our trust has for student midwives in which third
year students caseload a pregnant woman during the pregnancy, undertaking all
antenatal appointments, under supervision from a qualified midwife, and are
on-call to attend the birth.
My midwife was Andrea again and I had a lovely student
called Jemma looking after me. There were additional advantages of being
looked after by a nearly qualified student, I was able to choose the time of
my antenatal appointments to fit in with when my other children were at school
and pre-school and my appointments were generally around half an hour long,
rather than the standard 10 minutes. This meant that I had an
opportunity to get to know Jemma and we were able to discuss what had happened
during my last labour, and why, and my hopes for this labour and birth.
Early
in the morning of August 3rd when my contractions were a regular 5 minutes apart we phoned the
maternity ward and asked them to send a midwife. Maxine, the on-call midwife
called us back and said she would be with us shortly, she arrived just after
2.30am. I consented to an
internal examination and was pleased to be told I was 4cm dilated; Maxine
phoned Jemma who arrived at 3.15am.
I spent the next couple of hours floating around in the pool with
Paul massaging my back during contractions and the midwives and my mum
sitting chatting quietly.
By
6.45am my contractions were slowing so I got out of the pool, strapped the
TENS machine back on and started walking up and down the stairs to
get them going again.
At
7am I consented to another internal examination and was found to be 9cm
dilated with a thin anterior lip and membranes bulging.
Maxine felt that the contractions had been slowing because Alex’s
head was not in direct contact with the cervix due to the cushioning bag of
waters so I consented to having my waters broken, but only after Maxine and
Jemma had assured me that, at this stage, the presence of meconium would not
mean that I would have to transfer to hospital. Luckily it wasn't an
issue as this time there was no meconium.
Almost
immediately the contractions became more intense and were coming more
quickly. During the
contractions I really felt I wasn’t coping at all well but in between them
I was absolutely fine. The
midwives had left Paul and me in the sitting room, with me leaning over the
birth ball, and had gone into the kitchen to make toast.
During contractions I was moaning and saying that I really didn’t
think I could go on and between them I was shouting instructions through to
the kitchen, telling the midwives that the children wouldn’t want butter
on their toast and that the jam was in the fridge.
Once
everyone had their toast Maxine said that if I wanted to have this baby in
the pool I’d better get back in, so off came the TENS and back in I went.
Maxine sat back after I got in the pool and let Jemma take over my care,
telling me I was doing brilliantly and very unobtrusively checking the
baby's heart-rate. Just after 7.30am I started pushing, it was a lot harder work than I
remember from the other two and I was convinced that it was my longest
second stage (although in fact it was only 12 minutes).
Alex’s head must have crowned about three times, the last time,
using every muscle in my body to stop him from slipping backwards, I put my
hand down and felt his head. I
remember saying, “its got hair” in wonderment and the midwives saying
“at least it’s coming out the right way”.
I
pushed out his head and then it seemed like ages until the next contraction.
It was most bizarre as I could feel this little head moving from side
to side having a good look around him under the water.
Finally, at 7.44 am, the next contraction came and out came his
shoulders, my baby slithered into the water and I lifted him to the surface
and discovered that he was, as suspected, a boy – all 9lb 5oz of him.
A few minutes later I handed Alex to Paul and got out of the pool, we
went into the sitting room and I latched Alex on for his first feed.
My mum had taken the older children to
the park and they arrived back just after Alex was born. Kieran had run ahead and
when Paul told him that the baby was a boy he rushed out into the street and
shouted at the top of his voice to Emily, my Mum and all the neighbours
“I’ve got a baby brother”.
The midwives left before 9am and the
rest of the day was spent at home getting to know our new addition and
introducing him to our family and friends.
This story can be downloaded as a pdf file from our resources
page
Back to birth
stories
