Pregnancy:
We always new we wanted to have a family and we agreed that we would start trying straight after we were married. Fortunately and miraculously we fell pregnant straight away. I hadn’t done much research at this point, so we had just elected to go to our Public Hospital with the MGP program in the regular Birth Suites. Many months later, by the time I’d done more research and decided we wanted a physiological birth, it was too late to change to the Birth Centre.
I felt incredibly fatigued in that first trimester, but my morning sickness symptoms were fairly mild. At 12 weeks, I developed a hormonal thrush and when I was tested with a urine sample and swab, I was found to have GBS. In order to help with the thrush symptoms naturally, I stopped eating sugar, started taking a probiotic, and exercised everyday. I was always a runner, but I continued running 10km up until 30 weeks, and then slowly started to cut back the distance, until I was just walking 5kms up until the day I went into labour. I was heavily pregnant in December and January, so I also loved the hospital hydrotherapy classes and exercising in the pool at my mum’s house.
To inform myself as much as I could, I would listen to a podcast everyday; Australian Birth Stories, Positive Birth Australia, The Great Midwife Rebellion. A friend and I were 6 weeks apart in our pregnancy and both signed up to a two day hypnobirthing course with our partners, went to the hospital info classes, and read Active Birth Skills, Birth With Confidence, The Birth Space, and the hypnobirthing book.
In the final weeks of pregnancy my partner and I put together preferences and had a really clear idea of the drug free water birth we would aim for. We had a labour cheat sheet of strategies we would use – affirmations for my partner to read to me, snacks to feed me, positions to encourage me to try, different spaces in the house that we would use, and more. Each day I was walking, listening to mindfulness meditations, using lavender oil, doing perineal massage, and doing labour yoga.
Early labour:
On Thursday night, February 2 at 8:30pm, I lost my mucus plug. Relieved and excited was an understatement. I know mucus plug timeframes are wildly varied. But at least I knew, something was on the way. Overnight I started feeling light period cramp contractions, and noted they were roughly half hourly. But they were easy to sleep through, and I knew a long early labour or even prodromal labour was a possibility. So I continued to rest.
That morning, I went for my usual walk. Noting, the period cramps were now slightly more intense and were averaging 5 to 10 minutes apart. When I got home, I thought I’d make sure my oxytocin was high. I made my favourite breakfast, put the aircon on in the bedroom, made it all dark and watched Schitts Creek. The contractions were slowly increasing in time and intensity, sharper now than period cramps, and more consistently 5 minutes apart. I wasn’t religiously timing them. But every half hour or so, I’d make a note of it.
At 11:00am my waters broke. Thankfully I was wearing a pad at the time, but it felt like someone had just tipped a cup of water into my pad. Sure enough, it was a clear, pinky, odourless substance. I changed pads and had a tiny bit more leaking following.
Because I was flagged to have GBS during the pregnancy, I had discussed at length the policy around antibiotics, inductions, and the subsequent timeframes allowed following waters rupturing. Normally, if your waters break, they’ll allow a 72 hour time period for baby to arrive before there is cause for concern of infection. However, with GBS the hospital policy only allows 12 to 24 hours. With this in mind, I called the hospital and told them about my waters. They asked I come in to hospital and check the baby, and check that it was in fact my waters.
My partner was out doing errands and arrived home at 12:00pm. I hadn’t updated him about my contractions or my waters over the morning. So it was a shock to him how much the labour had progressed.
We got to the hospital at 1:00pm. I agreed to the CTG monitoring to check baby and the contractions. Baby was fine and my contractions were still 5 minutes apart. The 20 minutes of CTG then turned into 90 minutes whilst waiting in the assessment room. After which time, nobody had come back to check on me, so I took the pads off.
I was getting more uncomfortable as time passed, laying on my back, breathing through the contractions. I had my eye mask on and was repeating affirmations in my mind.
We were advised I needed to be induced because of the GBS. The hospital policy was for immediate commencement of artificial hormones and IV antibiotics. With lots of too and fro, discussions with the midwives and two obstetricians, it was agreed that we would go home and continue labouring at home for the 12 to 24 hours. My partner and I understood the risk we were taking; if our baby was infected with GBS, we were running the chance of it contracting meningitis, pneumonia, or sepsis, with consequences as fatal as death. But through resources from podcasts like the Great Birth Rebellion and our hypnobirthing course, I knew the statistical risk and was weighing up the pros and cons of exposing our baby to prophylatic antibiotics.
Active Labour:
We got home around 3:30pm and my contractions quite quickly intensified. I was worried my contractions would stall with the drive, so I wore my eye mask and continued on with my relaxation tracks in the car. When I got home I put the TENS machine on.
Between 3:30pm and 5:30pm my partner timed a few of the contractions from 5 minutes, to 4, to 3 minutes apart. I was in our bedroom, the room was dark and the aircon was on. I had noise cancelling headphones, playing worship music, it felt best to stand and sway during the rest period, and then when I felt a contraction coming I would turn the TENS on boost mode and lean down on the end of the bed. At this point it felt better doing it on my own. My partner would try to give me gentle massage or affirmations, but I felt better able to cope on my own.
Transition:
The contractions then stepped up a notch again, I needed to go to the toilet, and opened my bowels. I tried to couch down on the yoga mat, bending over the ball, but threw up during the next contraction. It was a 35 degree day, so I’d been having cold watermelon, cucumber, and coconut water during the labour. It all came up.
I staggered over to the bed and starting using my voice. I laid on my side, a big pillow between my legs, one hand with the TENS, and the other holding my partner’s hand. He started coaching me through each contraction wave. At the halfway mark of the contraction he would prompt me that we were on the come down of the wave and it was almost passed. Every time a contraction came I buried my face into a pillow and went very low and primal with my noises. Initially the noises was me fighting the pain, but my partner was prompting me to stay calm, keep the oxytocin up, and use positive language with the contractions. So I started saying “yessssss” every time they came.
In hindsight I was transitioning at this point. But being a first pregnancy, I didn’t think it would happen so quickly.
The contractions were 2.5 minutes apart now and my partner phoned the hospital. They advised him to bring me in, in the next hour. Then they heard me having a contraction in the background and said “Is that your wife making those noises?! – she needs to come to hospital now!!”.
When he told me the conversation, I couldn’t respond. I knew that I wanted to labour at home for as long as possible, so all I could manage to say was, “Not yet!”.
He started getting a few things into the car. But having him leave my side and not hold my hand was really hard. I remember feeling fear thinking about having to do the next contraction without him.
I managed a few more contractions on the bed, until the overwhelming sensation came to push. Without being able to vocalise anything to my partner, every time I had a contraction I could feel myself trying to push. At that point all I could manage to say to him was, “Hospital”.
He panically packed everything into the car and I got in the car. I couldn’t sit down, because I felt like the baby’s head was between my legs. I was crouched, propped up on the edge of the seat with my head in a pillow on the dashboard. I was still having huge contractions, still pushing in the car and I threw up again. He got the car detailed the next day, because apparently there was vomit in the gear box, the aircon vents, the seat and the dashboard. I obviously didn’t hold back.
We made it to the birth suite with huge contractions in the car park, the foyer, the lift and the reception area. Luckily it was 6:30pm, and barely anyone around.
When we got to the birth suite, they were expecting us. Since talking to the hospital earlier, my partner hadn’t been able to get back in touch with them to let them know we were on our way. So when we arrived, there were no rooms available in the birth suites. I was having huge contractions in the reception area, with loud primal noises. Apparently the poor receptionist was looking at me wide eyed whilst frantically call one of the midwives.
Thankfully it wasn’t long before we were ushered into a birth centre room. The rooms with big beautiful spa baths, double beds, and large showers.
And my partner, being the fantastic advocate he was, feebly said “In our birth preferences we were really hoping for a water birth”. The midwife looked at him and exasperated and said, “The baby will be here before the bath is full”.
The midwife put a padded mat and a bean bag on the floor and got me on all fours. She told me that the babies head was on view and that we would start to push together. When she told me this I was so relieved. I knew that if she’d told me I was only 4 centimetres and that there was still hours to go, I wouldn’t have been able to continue.
Second Stage:
My legs started to tremble, the midwife assured me it was adrenaline and that I needed to try and relax. I found at this point I needed lots of reassurance. I was constantly asking her if it was going okay, what position to try next, and how far the head was coming out. I didn’t think I wanted coach pushing, but at this point, I felt like I needed it. She gave me prompts to get into different positions and talked me through contractions. At different points I was using too much energy in my voice and needed to channel that better into pushing. I was becoming fatigued, and at that point, the midwife encouraged me to lay back on the beanbag. I knew about optimal birthing positions, but at this stage, I felt that’s all I could manage. Her head would come out a little further with each contraction and then recede back in. The midwife was holding the CTG to my tummy, and with each contraction and push the babies heart rate was rising. The midwife urged me that the baby was becoming distressed and that I needed to get her out with the next push. But she didn’t come and her heart rate would escalate further.
The midwife recommended an episiotomy, but I kept declining and saying, “No, just let me push one more time, I can get her out on the next contraction”. But every time, she didn’t come and her heart rate would go up again and it became tachycardic. The midwife didn’t bully us into deciding, but she gave us an ultimatum and said, “Either I give you an episiotomy now, or I’m calling the doctor in”. I knew that if the doctor came, then they would certainly do an episiotomy, and perhaps even forceps or a vacuum. So we agreed to the episiotomy with the midwife. She put in the local and made the cut.
Up until that point, I felt in control of the pain. It was pain with a purpose. But the episiotomy was by far the worst, I screamed in that moment like I never had before. Thankfully, with the next contraction, she came out and my partner was there to catch her and with tears streaming down his face, announce that she was a girl.
He handed her to me and put her straight on my chest. I ushered her to my nipple and she latched straight away. At that point the midwife wanted to cut the cord, but we declined and asked to leave it attached.
Third Stage:
After she was on me for 15 minutes, cuddling and latching, I started to feel some contractions again. I wanted a physiological third stage, so the midwife propped myself and my baby up onto a birth stool and the placenta came away almost immediately.
We were in awe of her and the placenta. While sitting on the stool, holding her, I could feel the blood trickling from me, then we could hear it. It was like a tap running. Looking down, I started to feel a little light headed. The midwife helped me off the stool and I lay down again on the mat with my baby still on my chest. I was still bleeding so the midwife recommended I have the syntocinon injection to stop further haemorrhaging and we agreed.
Because we were in the birth centre, my partner was able to stay the night in the double bed. That was a really beautiful and special experience. Because I had GBS and arrived too late to have the recommended antibiotics, they wanted to monitor my baby 4 hourly for 48 hours for any sign of infection. I was more than happy with this compromise versus having the antibiotics. The second night I spent on the maternity ward. I was in a four bed bay, but I really wasn’t as bad as I thought. Most of the newborns are fairly quiet and sleeping. And the other patients visitors were always respectful of the shared space.
Post-partum:
Thankfully my breastfeeding journey so far has been a really good one. I did the hospital based breast feeding class during the pregnancy, so that coupled with more support from the hospital midwives and an at home LC meant that we got off to a really good start and she exceeded her birthweight in the first 7 days.
The baby blues hit me really hard on day 3 and 4. I wasn’t previously a highly emotional person. But on those days, I couldn’t stop crying. I wasn’t really sad about anything, but I was constantly tearful and overwhelmed. I learnt early on that I found visitors too much and got better at saying no to people coming over in those first couple of weeks.
On day 5, I started walking the block again, first 2km and then slowly built up again. My body has continued to recover well and my episiotomy scar is a faint pink line.
My partner had two weeks off. When he returned to work, a friend of ours set up a meal train for us and family and friends brought us meals for three weeks following. It was such a help and we felt so grateful for our community during that time.
I’m so thankful for the journey thus far.