My birth story - FINALLY! :)

Well it's been a week and finally I have had the time to write up my birth story as Dave is back to work today (boohoo to that...) - so, here it is! I will update the blog with other details shortly but basically Dex is WONDERFUL, doing really well, putting on weight like nobody's business (he's a piglet!) and behaving beautifully. We love him to death! :)

Dexter David Mitchell's Birth Story

(Warning: VERY LONG!)

Dexter’s birth story really begins with his conception (a story in itself!) and then our journey to deciding on giving birth at home into water. However, I won’t go into those details here – much of that pre-story is detailed in my blog at www.onthecoast.com/baby where you can read it if you would like to…

So I will just start the story from Friday 29th February, the point at which we started to really worry that our home birth would not be able to happen. At this stage Dexter was two weeks late, and we had to make some difficult decisions about how to proceed.

Backtrack slightly by two weeks, and I was 40 weeks pregnant with no sign that Dex would arrive any time soon. My home birth midwife and I were slightly concerned that my belly & fundal height were so small and we thought it best, considering we thought I would be at LEAST a week overdue, that I go and get a biophysical profile/ultrasound done to ensure that Dex was growing and that my placenta was working well. I had that testing done on Friday February 15th, my due date, and all was wonderful. Dex scored 8 out of 8 on the profile and we felt happy to continue the pregnancy to at least the 42 week mark if required, and then make further decisions from that time.

I had a horrible two weeks from that point up to Feb 29th. I tried every natural induction method known to man – sex, orgasms, nipple stimulation, walking, spicy food, evening primrose oil, raspberry leaf tea, black/blue cohosh (yuck!!!), rocking on a fitball and then finally – as a last resort - castor oil. I was under pressure from friends and family about how far overdue Dex was and whether he was in good health. I worried that I wouldn’t go into labour spontaneously and that I would have to go to hospital – which of course was something we wanted to avoid at all costs. Add to that the pressure of Dave being TOLD by his work that he HAD to take his 2 weeks annual leave starting from Feb 22nd, instead of from when the baby was born. It was just a very stressful time and by the time I was 42 weeks pregnant I was both emotionally and physically drained.

We decided that we really needed to monitor the baby to make sure he was still fine at this point. The concern was not only for his health, but for the fact that if I DID end up having to go into the public hospital for an induction, and had not had any monitoring, I would be seen to have been irresponsible and may actually have a difficult time if anything went wrong. My home birth midwife works part time at the public hospital I intended to use for a transfer if necessary, so she pulled a few strings and spoke to a few sympathetic midwives who were supportive of home birth, and I went in to the hospital on the Friday night to have a CTG and check on the baby.

We turned up at the hospital at 6:30pm as my midwife was finishing her shift, so that she and the lovely head midwife could look after us without any of the Doctors getting involved. The thought was that doctors would probably push to book me for an induction, even possibly right then and there! But we hoped that the baby would be well and that we could then wait over the weekend to see if labour would start spontaneously.

The CTG and other monitoring showed that both Dex and I were in wonderful health, everything was fantastic and that we should have no problem waiting a couple more days. The head midwife offered to do a stretch and sweep with her ‘magic fingers’ and I agreed. We hoped that this, coupled with more of the natural induction methods I had been trying for two weeks, would help to bring on labour.

Then she spoke with the Doctor on duty (she had no choice) and although he wasn’t completely happy with the plan, he agreed that seeing as the baby was healthy, I could wait the weekend and come back in on Monday (if labour hadn’t started before then) for more monitoring. At that time he would suggest an induction to be performed that day, but would accept if I declined and would instead order another biophysical profile to ensure baby was absolutely fine. If he was, we would book an induction for the Wednesday. If not, we’d do it right away. I was happy with this plan, and felt that if baby wouldn’t come by himself by Wednesday – which was 5 days away – then I would accept that an induction was required and I would feel I had tried everything I could to have my home birth before giving in and going to hospital.

Dave and I left the hospital feeling a lot more positive than we’d been in weeks – we had a plan now, and a final end date that we would meet Dex, one way or the other. We stopped in at our favourite Mexican restaurant on the way home and had a lovely dinner, and were in good spirits.

At about 10pm that night, I started having pains. They were strong tightenings of my abdomen, different to what I had felt previously. We started timing them and found them coming every 10 minutes. I thought it may be the start of labour. The pain was uncomfortable but manageable. After a few hours the pains came every 5 minutes and were lasting up to a minute. From everything I’d read, I thought I may need to call my midwife. I did so at 2am, feeling terrible at waking her up, but wanting to be safe rather than sorry. I told her what I was experiencing and she said that she didn’t think it was truly labour, but possibly pre-labour, and that the pains were probably strong Braxton Hicks rather than true contractions. Not having anything to compare this to, I had no idea myself but in hindsight I realize she was correct. She suggested I get some rest, said that things could be starting but that these kinds of pains are often stirred up by a stretch and sweep, and that it could even last days before true labour began. Of course that wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I took her advice and went back to bed. The pains continued till about 3:30am when I finally fell asleep and when I woke 4 hours later they were gone. If I’d known at the time that those 4 hours sleep would be the last I’d have for 3 days, I might have gone back to bed and had some more!!!

We spent Saturday March 1st hanging out at home, and I continued to have some mild contractions throughout the day at unusual intervals. Nothing was regular, but there was definitely something going on. Dave and I just relaxed and watched a movie, hoping that labour could start in earnest at any time.

Around 5pm the pains started to become a bit more intense, and I noticed they were coming every 15 minutes. However I could still breathe through them, still talk through them, so I knew it wasn’t REAL labour.

But two hours later, at 7pm on March 1st, that all changed. I started having REAL contractions – still fairly mild, but I had to breathe through them and I couldn’t talk to Dave when they were at their peak. We timed them and found them to be 10 minutes apart. This continued all night long, right through to Sunday morning. I got no sleep at all, and Dave didn’t get much either. The contractions would vary in intensity and also in duration. At times they would be 5 or 6 minutes apart – sometimes much further apart. I searched the internet for some answers and determined I was probably in early labour, but that this could continue for some time.

I called my midwife to let her know what was going on. She agreed that it seemed promising and to let her know if they got more intense or closer together/lasting longer. She dropped by that afternoon to check out my progress. I was hoping I would be somewhat dilated, and looking as though labour was well underway.

Unfortunately, I was only 2cm dilated, and the cervix although soft and spongy and anterior, was still about 1/2cm thick and the baby’s head was high. My midwife sadly told me that she didn’t think I was going to have the baby any time soon, and that I should try to conserve my energy whenever possible. She checked out my contractions and agreed I was in labour, but still only in the early stages. She said that although the contractions were obviously quite strong, they weren’t doing enough to prepare my body and send me into active labour. We had to wait until they became harder and faster, and that could happen in hours or even in days!

The contractions continued all day Sunday March 2nd, and all through the night. I sent Dave to sleep in the spare room as I knew it would be a long night. The pain was very difficult to deal with, and so regular that I could only get a minute or two of a catnap between each one. By the time I got up the next morning, I had been in early labour over 36 hours and I was dead tired. I felt emotionally and physically drained, and I started to worry that when labour DID kick in properly that I wouldn’t have the energy or the mental strength to deal with it. I started to doubt myself. In hindsight, I realize that these feelings are completely normal and it was probably a sign that things were going to start gearing up but at the time I really felt like a failure.

I called my midwife that morning and spoke to her about it. She suggested that she would come by again and check me out, that maybe I had progressed if I had been labouring all night. She arrived around 9am on Monday morning, March 3rd, and after doing an examination we found that nothing had progressed. NOTHING! I was mortified – I had prepared myself to only have had marginal progress, but NONE? And after a night of no sleep and very painful contractions every 10 minutes? I felt very depressed and worried that my body was failing me.

My midwife asked me what I wanted to do. I was already in labour, so we were no longer going to have the baby monitored at the hospital like we had originally planned. So I could (a) wait and see what happened, (b) I could go to hospital to be induced or (C) we could try to kick start this labour. I asked her what she meant by that. She said we could try EVERYTHING we could to bring the contractions on harder and faster – that it would be painful and challenging – but it might make my body go into active labour. I agreed we should try this before resorting to going to hospital.

So between 9am and 4pm I rocked on my fitball, did nipple stimulation, and induced some incredibly intense contractions. I was in an awful lot of pain, made harder because I was bringing it on myself. I would be consciously working on bringing on a strong contraction, knowing how much it was going to hurt, and trying to make it as strong as possible. All the while I was physically exhausted – during the contractions I was leaning over the back of my lounge, moaning and breathing and wailing. After each contraction I would lean back and try to have a small rest before starting over again. Dave would feed me water and Gatorade, but I couldn’t eat and hadn’t done so since dinner the night before. I threw up with the pain on several occasions and was getting dehydrated, even with the fluids I was trying to have between each contraction.

But the contractions never really picked up of their own accord or found any ongoing pattern. At times they would be 5 minutes apart and lasting a full minute each, sometimes I’d have contractions one on top of the other. At other times they dropped off to 10 minutes apart and weren’t too bad at all.

After 7 hours of this, my midwife checked me again and sadly told me that I was about 3cm, but the baby’s head was still quite high. She worried that he may be posterior, and therefore his head was not pressing down on my cervix enough to bring on the active labour we needed. I was absolutely exhausted and mentally I felt completely drained. We weighed up all our options, and very sadly I told Dave that I thought it was time to give up on our home birth dream and head to the hospital for an induction. It was very sad, and I cried. I felt like a failure but I knew that I was losing my faith in myself and my body, and needed some help to bring my baby into the world.

My midwife told me that she thought this was the right thing to do, that medical interventions are there for a reason, and that she thought that after 46 hours of spurious (non-progressing) labour, no sleep, no food, and dehydration I would probably require some pain relief to get through the intensity of an induced labour. She explained that they would probably break my waters first, and that this may bring on labour without needing drugs. But if they needed to use the drugs to bring it on, that it would come on very fast and hard with little warning, and if I didn’t have an epidural there was a good chance that I would not have the energy to go through with the labour, the baby could become distressed, and then the Doctors would push for a caesarian. This is something I most DEFINITELY did not want.

So I agreed that I would get an epidural before they induced me, so that I could get some sleep and try to avoid further interventions. By this stage all I wanted was to have my baby in my arms. I had been through two of the most difficult and stressful weeks of my life and I just did not have the energy to fight anymore. Once this decision was made and we had packed my bags into the car, I felt more at peace. It was now 5pm and I would meet my baby sometime the next day. My midwife thought it would probably be in the morning sometime. I was happy about that – the 4th March seemed like a good birthday for my baby. 4 is our lucky number, so maybe things would start going our way from now on.

I had a few contractions in the car on the way to the hospital which was HORRIBLE, and we finally got there at 5:30pm. We crossed the border and were now in NSW so it was 6:30pm daylight savings time, and the shifts were just about to change. We checked in, monitoring was started, and Dave and I were left in the birthing suite for a while by ourselves in the dim light and the beeping machines. We suddenly felt calmer and realized we had done the right thing by coming here. We let our families know what was happening – up till now we had held off saying anything while I was in early labour, but it was nice to be able to let my parents know that the baby was going to be here soon.

The midwives hooked me up to an IV with fluids, a CTG to monitor baby’s heartbeat and another monitor for my contractions – I was stuck on the bed and couldn’t move! The doctor on call turned up and checked me out. She said she would break my waters, then they would order the epidural, and then start the syntocinon drip to start labour. All that would take a few hours, and I should have my baby mid-morning the next day at the latest.

At this stage my contractions had dropped way back to about 20 minutes apart and weren’t too bad. Apparently this is very common when you arrive at hospital in labour. Adrenalin kicks in from the fear/anticipation you feel arriving at the hospital, and this slows down the labour process. So I was feeling much better at this stage, although incredibly tired. Dave took a few pictures of me at this point and you can see how exhausted I look.

The doctor came back to break my waters and when she went to do so she found that they had already broken! She asked me about it – and I thought back to the night before when I had been having contractions all night while Dave slept in the spare room. I had been going to the toilet after every 2nd or 3rd contraction to pee, but I thought at the time that I was peeing an awful lot considering I wasn’t really drinking that much water in between. I realized that my waters must have broken then. The doctor put me on some antibiotics seeing as we couldn’t be absolutely certain when I lost my waters, and told me that she would organize for the epidural to be done shortly.

About 9pm the anaesthetist came in and discussed the epidural with me and got me to sign off on getting it. He said he was waiting for his supervisor to arrive, and that he should be there soon. Well – as it turned out his supervisor didn’t come for another hour and in the meantime the following happened…

Suddenly, just after the anaesthetist left, there was a knock at the door and my parents walked in. They just wanted to give me a kiss and a cuddle – apparently Mum was beside herself with worry and just wanted to see me quickly. She got Dad to drive her all the way there for just a few minutes. That was really sweet.

But while they were there, all of a sudden I had the WORST contraction I’d ever felt up to that point – it went on and on and on, and then came again immediately! I had about 4 contractions in a row, about 2 minutes apart, all lasting about 90 seconds and they HURT. I was in agony, I threw up repeatedly and couldn’t talk or breathe. It hit me so suddenly and so unexpectedly that I was totally unprepared. My body had suddenly and violently gone into active labour SPONTANEOUSLY without any need for induction! The midwives thought later that maybe the fluids helped – that my dehydration had been stopping labour from starting in earnest. Who can tell – but all I know is that suddenly I was dealing with full-on labour and it was completely unexpected. Of course it had to happen while my parents were there! They were horrified and left quickly.

My midwife was there with me, as was Dave, and they were both trying to help me get through the contractions. But I had a really hard time dealing with them because I was lying on the bed and hooked up to machines, so all I could do to cope was to roll on my side and clench my fists. And that just didn’t help at all. At one point I asked to go to the toilet – and the contractions that I had sitting on the toilet were actually more manageable – but I wasn’t allowed to stay there because they couldn’t monitor the baby’s heartbeat while I was in there.

I went through this for an hour before they were able to administer the epidural. Compared to the contractions I was experiencing the epi was a walk in the park! They had to do it twice, but I don’t even remember that – Dave had to tell me later. However, they started with a very low dose of pain relief which did absolutely nothing to help, and it took yet another hour for them to come back and top it up. When they topped it up however, they had me on my side and the catheter in my back was in too deep, so it ended up completely numbing my left leg (the side I have osteoarthritis in my hip) and the left side of my abdomen, but hardly affected the right. So there I am, still feeling these intense contractions on one side only, and they started getting even more intense and I could feel this strong sensation around my bottom which felt really strange.

By this time it was 11:30pm, and finally the head midwife called the anaesthetist back and told him that it wasn’t good enough, that I was still feeling pain on my right side, and that he had to fix it up. He pulled the catheter out of my back by a few centimeters, topped up the epi again, and then finally I was pain-free. My home birth midwife had gone to have a sleep as she was due to have a shift the next morning at 7am, and after the epi the idea was that I’d have a few hours sleep while the induction progressed. It was expected to take quite a few hours to go from the 3cm dilated I was when I arrived at hospital to the 10cm I needed to be to start pushing. My hospital midwife, Pam, told me she’d let me sleep shortly but she just needed to check out a few things. She put in a catheter and did an internal and found that I was now 5cm, so all those spontaneous contractions had certainly helped me along. By this time it was 11:50pm.

So Pam was fussing around me, checking the monitors and looking with a confused expression on her face at the read-outs. She told me after a while that my ‘belly is funny’ and she can’t feel my contractions – apparently my abdomen just always feels firm, and so the monitor can’t pick up when I am contracting. This is a bit of a problem when you’ve had an effective epidural, as you can’t feel them yourself. She was also trying to palpate my tummy to feel them herself, but was having little luck. She called a couple of other midwives in to check, and they all were saying how unusual it was and how difficult my belly was to read.

This went on for a while, and I was dying for them to leave me alone so I could rest. Dave was lying on a pull out single sofa bed (that was really uncomfortable!) and he wanted a rest too, but he didn’t want to fall asleep while they were still fussing over me. He was so protective and sweet during the whole process, and wanted to monitor every little thing they were doing and asked them all kinds of questions to make sure we knew everything that was going on.

Then at about 12:50pm Pam comes in with two other midwives and they start fussing more. Apparently the baby’s heartbeat is dropping at times, and taking a while to come back up. If this were happening DURING a contraction then it is not quite so serious as it is normal for the rate to drop a bit when the contractions are squeezing the baby. But they suspected that it was happening AFTER the contractions, which wasn’t good. The problem was that because they couldn’t tell for sure when I was contracting, they couldn’t tell when his heartbeat was dropping. Pam didn’t want to call the Doctor unless it was really necessary so she was getting second and third opinions from the midwives. They were all pretty sure the heartbeat was dropping after contractions, which is a sign of fetal distress. They seemed a bit worried and Pam told me that she would probably have to call the Doctor and that if the baby was in distress there was a chance they’d want to get him out right away. She hadn’t yet started the syntocinon, so the induction hadn’t yet happened – and therefore the quickest way to get him out would be a c-section.

Just before all of this happened, Dave decided he was hungry so he headed out to the vending machine to get a snack and was gone about 10 minutes.

While he was gone one of the older, more experienced midwives said to Pam “When was the last time you checked her?”. Pam says, “About an hour ago when I put the catheter in, she was only 5cm, and I haven’t started the induction yet”. The older midwife says, “Well you know the other reason the heartbeat could be dropping after contractions…” and Pam raises her eyebrows and then looks at me and says she wants to do an internal. I get into position and they help raise my legs up (because I can’t feel them!) and she has a look to see how I am doing.

Next thing this HUGE smile comes across her face and she says “Tracey, your baby’s head is ready! You can push the baby out – you did it all by yourself without induction!”

OH MY GOD! I can’t believe it – it’s just on 1am and my baby is ready! Everyone starts fussing and all I can say is “Where’s Dave? Can we wait for Dave?”. Pam says “We won’t be ready for a few minutes but we can’t wait too long.”

Then she comes over to me and says quietly, “Tracey, we have to call the doctor because the baby’s heartbeat is dropping, but I think he’s ok and he just needs to get his head out. He might have been waiting there for a while and we didn’t know because we couldn’t see your contractions had picked up. I know you can’t feel anything, but I think you can push your baby out. When the Doctor gets here she will use the vacuum but you can do it ok? Will we try to push the baby out?”

Suddenly I have ALL the energy in the world and I tell her YES I will push out my baby. Dave walks in and sees the fussing around, the lights back on, my legs up in stirrups and frowns at me. I tell him “Look down there!” and Pam guides him down to see a fuzzy head just ready to start coming out. He calls my home birth midwife who is sleeping upstairs and a few minutes later she arrives just as Pam tells me to start pushing.

We don’t know when my contractions are coming but I tell them my instincts are telling me to push, so I try even though I may be pushing against the contractions. Pam tells me we have to get the baby out NOW because he is in distress, so I push with all my might just as the Doctor arrives and starts getting the vacuum ready. I don’t want that used on my son, so I am determined to push him out before she can suck him out!

So there I am, not being able to feel anything below my waist, but telling my body to push. I am gripping my legs, and pulling them hard and concentrating on the sensation of pushing. Next thing the baby is crowning and I pause and look down with a huge grin on my face as I see the top of his tiny head. Dave thought it was hilarious that I’ve got this little head poking out, blood everywhere, people fussing, monitors bellowing – and a huge grin on my face! He was able to record all of this too, so we have it on video, and it’s quite funny to watch!

As soon as the top of his head is out, his heartbeat regulates and sits solidly at 140bpm for the rest of the delivery. I like to think that after waiting for so long to come out, he finally decided he was ready and everything just went SO fast after that - nobody thought I would progress so fast, so he was probably waiting there to come out for a while and his heartbeat dropping was his way of letting us know that.

So now the doctor is just about to put the vacuum on Dexter’s head and Pam says to me quietly “Push if you can Tracey, push if you can…” and so I push just as she is putting the vacuum on and out pops his head. I am so elated! I am grinning and telling Dave to “move down the end so you can film him coming out!” It all seems so surreal. They’re waiting for a contraction, and I tell them I want to push anyway so they tell me to go ahead.

And next thing I know I have a crying, squirming, bloody little creature on my chest and I’m completely and totally in love. It’s 1:10am on 4/3/08, just 20 minutes after they first saw his head ready to come.

Everything I’ve been through the past few weeks, every stress, every bit of tiredness – it all evaporates the second I touch my little boy. Suddenly it doesn’t matter where or how he was born, only that he IS. Dave is standing beside me saying “Oh wow, oh my goodness, oh baby…” and kissing me on the forehead. All I can do is smile and talk to my son saying “Hello Dexter, hello baby, welcome to the world, Mummy loves you…” while he cries and cries.

Pam takes Dexter over to the heat lamps at that point, and cleans him up. Dave cuts the umbilical cord and films some more, while the doctor delivers the placenta. The placenta shows some signs of deterioration but it’s not too bad, so we know that it was still feeding Dex even though he was officially born 2 weeks and 4 days late. But Dex is so small for an overdue baby, and he still had vernix on him, so the midwives start wondering if maybe my dates were wrong. I don’t believe so, but anything is possible.

His stats at birth are:

DOB: 04/03/2008
Time: 1:10am (NSW DST)
Weight: 2880grams
Length: 48cm
Head Circ: 33cm

Once Dex is cleaned up they bring him to me and I get to cuddle him for about half an hour. His breathing is a little bit grunty, and they think he might have had a bit of fluid in his lungs, so they take him away to be under heat lamps and to get a bit of oxygen. Five minutes later he is fine, but because he was technically ‘in distress’ they want to monitor him for a while. Dave goes and spends time with him in the nursery while I have to wait for the epi to fade so I can get up and shower. I sent Dave home at this point (around 2am) so he could get some sleep, and I managed getting about 2 hours of sleep myself – the first in three days!

I ended up waiting in the birthing suite till 6:30am because my left leg got an extra dose of the epi, so it took quite a while to get the feeling back. I was helped into the shower at that stage, which was lovely, but then I found that although the Doctor had given me the all-clear and said I had no tears from the delivery, I did in fact have two small labial tears that required stitching. The Doctor came back and did that around 7am but I didn’t feel a thing because by this stage they had brought Dex back to me for his first feed, and I was completely distracted by my little man.

They took me into the ward and assigned me a bed, and I ate breakfast while gazing at Dex who was gazing back at me. He was so alert, and so calm! Dave came in a few hours later, the proud father, who couldn’t wait to hold his baby son and spend some more time with him. I cannot believe the change in Dave, and how smitten he is. He seems like a different person now that Dex is here, and all for the better!

Over the next few hours Dex had his paediatric checks, hearing check and I was shown how to breastfeed. Luckily Dex and I are naturals and we took to it immediately! The nurse asked when I wanted to go home and I said “right away!”. She got the all clear and we ended up being scheduled to leave after lunch, only 12 hours after Dex was born!

My home birth midwife, who was now on her shift, came in a few times to see us and we went over how everything had happened and agreed that we should have no regrets, that Dex was born the way he was meant to be born. She thought that because he was so small at birth, she may have had to resuscitate him if we’d had our home birth, and most certainly he would have need to be warmed up as soon as he was born. And the ferocity of my labour once it kicked in would have been manageable at home, but who knows how it may have panned out?

After a lot of thought and reflection, I’ve decided that I’m at peace with everything that happened. I can see now that my story on my blog and in the online buddy group I am part of seems to have inspired some other women to stay strong, trust their instincts and to do what they feel is right in their own pregnancies. I got so many lovely messages and emails when Dex was finally born that I see our story has touched many people, even as far away as Brazil! In that regard I think that maybe these challenges are sent to try those of us who have the ability to pass on the lessons to others and help them in their own journeys. But whatever the reason, now that I have my baby Dexter David here in my arms, nothing in the world can take away the joy and love that I feel for him every day. I’m just thankful he is here, and in the end his journey to being here is not as important as the journey that is ahead of all of us now that he’s arrived.