Posting in the hopes that writing it down might help me work it out myself!
in light of recent news coverage and so many awful tales on here, I’m worried that perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic. I got through the birth relatively intact and my baby is a big healthy and happy girl. So I feel I have no right to feel the way I am.
Recently I had my fourth baby. Having always had pretty simple labours before, I naively assumed this one would be the same. Pregnancy was awful but no major health concerns. Just SPD and horrific being pregnant with so many other small children to care for.
So it was expected that this would be a fairly low risk and low drama birth in the birthing centre, in a pool and my biggest concern was that they might for any reason try and take me out of the pool at any point. Because with SPD , Labour is (in my experience) far more unbearable if it’s not in the water.
I had my first contraction at 5am and started running a bath, expecting to chill out in there for the majority of Labour and only go to the birth centre at the end. But before I could even get in to the tub, the contractions were coming rapidly and intensely and I didn’t really get to time them. They were one on top of the other and absolutely excruciating. I knew something wasn’t right so we got someone here immediately to watch the children and we headed in to give birth a lot quicker than I’d expected to.
it’s important to mention that the previous week I had a false alarm. This happened a few times the week prior (he was very overdue, like all of mine were). In the false alarms , when I called the maternity triage number it took 50 minutes of being on hold before I got through the first time. And 39 minutes the second time.
The reason I mention that, is that when the real event happened, I didn’t even bother calling. There was absolutely no point. All I could think of was getting to that hospital as fast as possible, and we live five minutes away. So there was no point in sitting on hold to triage for ten times the length of time it would take to get there.
It meant no one knew we were coming in. But it’s apparently ok to turn up, you don’t have to inform them.
When we got there, the doors were locked. I presume for security. But there was no one anywhere to be seen. I was on all fours in the street outside mooing like a possessed cow, my husband was hammering on the door and repeatedly pressing the buzzer. Nothing. For over ten minutes we were left out there. I couldn’t stand up or move, and it took my husband calling the main hospital and begging them to send someone to the door.
when they came, I can’t fault them. A lovely lady essentially just manhandled me into a room, stripped my clothes off me and got ready to catch a baby without knowing who I was or what the circumstances were. She eventually wrapped a monitor round my middle because she presumably thought by the signs that baby would be crowning, and then realised she wasn’t.
monitor didn’t sound great. I’d say we waited about ten minutes of a barely legible heartbeat which was agonising to hear, and by then I felt delirious with pain and distress because it was too fast and too powerful and I was very scared.
I don’t remember a lot beyond this. I know that the red button was pushed and the room filled with people. I remember them running down a corridor with me on the bed screaming that I didn’t want a c- section and them shouting over me to say ‘have to go to surgery, category one section, no time to gain mums consent’ and I know some poor woman who was already in theatre prepped for an emergency section was wheeled back out to let them wheel me in. (I don’t blame them for going against what I was screaming. They were professionals acting in a medical emergency and I was in no fit state to be thinking clearly. I was terrified , in agony and in shock I think)
I remember lots of people and hands all over me. I remember being held down as I tried to get up and writhed around with the pain. I remember people sticking stuff to me and someone pouring liquid in my throat and pushing a mask on my face. I very much didn’t want any of that, I am quite phobic of all medical/clinical things. But I understand they had to do that and I’m glad they didn’t pussyfoot around listening to my resistance. I do remember very clearly saying over and over that he was coming NOW and being told he was not.
I was being told very sternly to stop pushing and was very distressed because I could sense that this was critical to let them do whatever they were doing but I absolutely couldn’t stop my body pushing.
I believe that when the surgeon began inserting the catheter, she realised I wasn’t wrong afterall because suddenly the tone changed and she was shouting for the other staff to stop me going under the anaesthetic and get the mask off my face NOW.
I knew he was coming, I’d said it over and over , but perhaps doctors who have women in for a category one section are no longer even thinking about a vaginal birth.
he was born vaginally there and then, in theatre , with no assistance (I mean no forceps or the suction thingy). Just pushing, and it was about three pushes. Very quick, very painful and very scary because unlike my previous births there was no lovely midwife talking me through the pushes etc. just lots of strangers looking panicked and telling me to stop pushing and trying to put me to sleep.
Again, I don’t THINK anyone screwed up. I don’t blame any of the doctors or midwives for what happened. I think each person did their job in a scary , very fast situation and they did what they are trained to do. Surgeons are presumably not trained to listen to women who say baby is coming, and guide them through pushes. They are trained to get that baby out fast, safe and alive. So I genuinely don’t THINK anyone was in the wrong.
I suppose that’s where I’m struggling. I don’t understand what happened. I don’t know why he came so quickly, I don’t know why he became so distressed, I don’t know why his heartbeat was so low. My full labour from contraction one to baby out in the world was an hour and a half. A very dramatic, painful and scary hour and a half where I felt like I was going to die and my baby was too. I was told afterwards that this was what everyone else in the room had feared too.
Due to his distress, baby was born blue, she was absolutely covered in meconium which went EVERYWHERE as she was born , so it was obvious right away that this was the reason she didn’t breathe. They did something called delayed cord something (?) so I rememeber her awkwardly laid on my chest, covered in this tar stuff and not moving or breathing or crying. And me wondering why no one was doing anything. I still don’t fully understand why that happened because she was then rushed off on a resuss trolley with lots of panicked looking doctors who had tried to get her breathing in theatre and couldn’t seem to.
After the stitching etc, we were wheeled into a side room (hopefully so the poor woman ahead of me could be taken back in for her section). And the thing is, we were left there for two hours. No one came to check on me after a fairly traumatic delivery. No one came to tell me anything about my daughter. I rang the buzzer a few times and a nurse would come , different one each time and they seemed surprised to see us, as though they didn’t know who I was or why I was in the room. I’d ask about baby and they’d say they would call NICU and then they just wouldn’t come back. For two hours, I had no idea if my baby had even pulled through.
She did. And after four weeks in NICU, she has come home and thrived. No lasting effects. She did well in NICU , required CPAP and various other treatments to make her lungs function etc but she is ok and so am I.
I immediately blocked it all out I think. I was focussed on her and the NICU stay was hard work as I was breastfeeding and that was harder in the hospital setting. I missed my other children and was probably too hectic to really process it all. I’ve felt ok. But a few things have left me feeling a bit shaken.
One day a woman on the tv was in labour, and while I wasn’t watching whatever show it was, the sound of that guttural howling in pain just felt too familiar. I got very hot and had a definite emotional response that gelt between a panic attack and something more tearful and sad.
The same happened when I lay back in the bath one night. Something about being laid back with a bright light above me triggered the same reaction. And then today I had it again while trying my first post partum workout. Laid on my back with my legs splayed and I just felt instantly sick and panicky and I know that it’s something to do with all that happened.
I was initially referred to a trauma birth service in the nhs but in the week it took to get my referral they were closed down due to funding cuts. So they don’t exist anymore.
I do have a perinatal debrief session upcoming but I have a feeling it will be quite clinical and short, and not really a place where I can process what happened.
I suppose what I’m wondering is whether I even need to process it. Am I being a bit of a wimp? I came out alive, so did my baby. And I was told this was very nearly not the case, because if I’d had just a few more seconds of the anaesthetic I’d have been out cold, baby would be crowning and therefore stuck and not able to be born via the incision or otherwise and things could have gone very differently.
I am tearful a lot. Very angry at husband for no real reason most days. I feel over stimulated and overwhelmed a lot of the time and am aware I’m trying to stay busy and feel in control by letting some old OCD habits creep in. (I do have a history of mental health issues but mostly eating disorders and WELL recovered now in adulthood)
Should I just thank my lucky starts, be grateful we are ok and pull myself together?! Or is this likely to not just go away, and I need to consider whether I can afford a couple of private therapy sessions? We are not well off enough that I would do this unless it was really likely to be necessary and helpful.
If you read all this, thank you. It’s a bit of a waffling one!