My very long birth story. I just need to write it down.

[Londonmrss]

Please do not read this if you are avoiding negative stories. The result is a healthy mummy and a healthy baby, so of course I cannot complain. The labour itself has left me feeling traumatised and I am trying to work through this. This is not representative of most births. I believe I may just have been unlucky.

Hi all,
My beautiful baby girl was born at 11.15pm on Friday 26th October, her due date and she weighs in at 8lb. Here is my birth story.
I had spent my pregnancy very much looking forward to the labour and birth. I very much believed in my body's abilities to birth my baby in exactly the way we evolved to do. I was obviously open-minded about intervention should it be medically necessary, but felt that it would not be and that I might give birth much like any woman thousands of years ago. I was also lucky in that I had a totally straight forward and trouble free pregnancy. Even during the last few weeks, I was able to swim regularly and was walking approximately 5 or 6 miles a day and feeling really well. I never once felt any braxton hicks and very little discomfort (other than the standard weeing-5-times-a-night and can't-turn-over-in-bed-without-getting-stuck-business. I planned to give birth in a wonderful midwife led birthing centre.
On Tuesday 23rd October, I had an active day and then lost my mucus plug (wasn't expecting it to be that huge!) at about 11pm. Having never felt any contractions or signs of labour until that moment, I felt happy and excited that things might be finally moving. I immediately began having periodic back ache which turned into very strong back pain regularly from 1am. I also had the shits something terrible all night. By 3am these very strong pains were coming every 5-6 minutes. I obviously didn't sleep and just did yoga and breathing exercises through the contractions. By 10am on Wednesday morning we called the birth centre to let them know that things had started but that we were happy to stay at home for now.
Disappointingly by lunchtime on Wednesday the contractions had slowed to every 15 minutes, but were still extremely painful. By 3pm they returned to 40-60 seconds every 5-6 minutes. Occasionally they were every 7 minutes, sometimes every 3 minutes. The pain was quite extreme and not relieved by anything. It was to regular and intense for me to sleep.
By 8am the next morning they had continued and were lasting 40-80 seconds every 3-6 minutes. I still felt every bit of pain in my back. Even now, I couldn't feel my tummy contracting, but felt like I was being stabbed in both sides of my lower back. I did not expect this kind of agony. We decided to go to the birth centre as I was now struggling to cope with the pain.
At this point I was told I was 2cm dilated and therefore not yet in labour. How can I possibly have been regularly contracting, in intense pain for 30 hours and it not actually get my body into labour? I became very very distressed at this point. We went home and spent all day Wednesday walking to try and get labour started- we must have done miles and miles. When I wasn't walking, I was bouncing on my birthing ball just trying to cope with the pain. For the majority of the day, the contractions remained at around 40-60 long and came every 3-7 minutes. They occasionally came at every 6-8 minutes, but were mostly more regular.
As I was finding the pain even more difficult and I still hadn't slept, we decided to skip the birth centre and go straight to the hospital at 10pm. All my thoughts of a natural birth had gone out of the window and I just wanted an epidural to allow me to get some sleep. I was roughly examined by a rather rude midwife. I was still 2cm.
At this point I had a panic attack- I've never had one before, but this task now seemed impossible. They said they could not give me any pain relief until I was 4cm. This seemed like it would never ever happen, but we went home and somehow continued for several more hours.
Suddenly at 1am (still hadn't slept at this point), the rate began to increase. The pain was unbearable (still all in my back and spreading down my legs) and coming every 2-3 minutes for 60-90 seconds. We went to the birth centre.
4cm! Finally this had officially started, but by now I was so tired I didn't know how I would cope. I got straight in the birthing pool which provided a tiny bit of relief. However the intensity of the pain made me start to vomit violently and I begged for an ambulance to take me to hospital. It was now around 8am on Friday morning.
We arrived at the busy East London hospital around 8.30am where I immediately began telling everyone I saw that they needed to make me pain free. The contractions were coming at the same rate and I cann't believe the pain I had in my back. Due to the lack of availability of an anesthetist, the epidural was administered at noon. I can remember very little of the 3 hours leading up to this, other than at one point believing that I was dying- not only that, but welcoming it. I told my husband that he would be brilliant without me and I said goodbye. He was absolutely amazing throughout the whole process but he obviously found this incredibly difficult and when we've spoken about it since, he just burst into tears.
From noon, I knew that each contraction I could feel would be my last as soon as the epidural began to kick in, however when they performed tests at 1pm, they realised the epidural had failed and I was only numb from the knees down. I can remember very little of this, but my husband took the decision to get them to do another one. I remember nothing other than wanting it all to stop and believing that I would die. I hallucinated several times and had a genuine out of body experience.
By 3pm the relief began and I gradually became more aware of my surroundings. I could still feel the contractions, still in my back- but they were uncomfortable rather than agonising and excruciating. I was examined again. Still 4cm.
At this point they felt they need to speed things up to they put me on an induction drip.
I haven't mentioned anything about the baby. She was totally oblivious all the way through. Her heart beat remained at a constant 140, the waters were clear when they artificially ruptured them at 4pm- she was just chilled out and fine. Fuck knows how!
The rest of the afternoon was ok. I could intensly feel the contractions despite the epidural and had to use gas and air to manage them (I bloody love gas and air) but it was manageable. Frankly being able to feel a contraction and feel like my body might finally be doing what it was supposed to was great. I still hadn't slept, but there was no chance. My poor husband was also exhausted and yet just stayed with me rubbing vaseline onto my lips, helping me move my legs when I felt I needed to and telling me he loved me and I'm amazing.
At 9pm I was examined. 10cm 10cm 10cm!
They said they would like to leave it for a couple of hours and once I felt the urge to push, we would go for it. I still felt the contractions, but definitely felt no urge to push. I got sick of waiting though, so started to push at 10.50pm.
Here's where it suddenly got good.
Like everyone else in the world I'm sure, the pushing felt like I was trying to shit a watermelon. It felt like I would never be able to do it and I just wanted someone to come in with the tools and drag her out of me. The midwives and my husband were shouting at me to push harder, but I was only dimly aware of this. Something primal took over. I forgot my name, I forgot where I was or what was going on but I just pushed as hard as I could.
Something finally worked. After only 25 minutes of pushing, she came out. I had no tears, needed no stitches and hardly bled at all. Her apgar scores were 9 then 10 then 10 and we both burst into tears when we heard her first cry.

I am proud of the way my body handled the pushing stage.

But I feel really traumatised by the early and active stage though. After all that pain, I still didn't dilate. Why was all my pain in my back?
Ultimately I feel like my body failed me. It didn't do what it was supposed to do and I don't know why. I am a fit and healthy 27 year old. I know the most important thing is a healthy baby at the end of it, but at the moment I'm still having some unpleasant flashbacks and I somehow need to deal with the difficulty of the labour. Did I have a particularly bad one? Do other people handle the pain that I couldn't or was I unlucky? Why did that epidural fail?

At the moment we are fine and I am in love with her. She is so beautiful. We are struggling with feeding as she just shows no interest in my nipples and hasn't even attempted to latch once from the start. I am expressing colostrum manually and giving her that until we can see some breastfeeding help tomorrow. So I may also have to accept at some point that breastfeeding is not for us and formula feeding will not make me a failure but, well... we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I wish I had handled it better, and I wish I had been able to give birth in the wonderful birth centre in a natural way. I still believe that birthing should be a natural process, not a medical one but for whatever reason, mine had to be medical.

I'm sorry to anyone who has read all this! I just needed to write it down.

[Badvoc]

It sounds like you had a back to back labour which are well known to be very long and painful drawn out affairs.
You were unlucky in at respect but you did very well dealing with your pain and lack of dilation...
I was lucky. 2 labours, and although painful at no stage did I feel like I was going to die.
I also only pushed for a about 5 mins each time.
It's not your body's fault, it's bad luck.
Enjoy your new baby :)
Oh, and ff isn't the end of the world either :)

[squidkid]

Been thinking about you. Hope you are feeling a bit better about this with a bit of time, though I know you've had lots of other things to contend with. Reading it through again, it really does sound like one hell of a tough labour.

[janey68]

Well done.
I must say, it brought back memories of my first. I clearly remember wanting to die, and I've heard other women say similar when labouring naturally, so although it feels like a shocking and upsetting thing to admit, please don't feel bad about it.

I gave birth in a midwife unit so no epidural available (not that I wanted one anyway). I do wonder whether birth has become so 'sanitised' in the UK that many women simply don't realise how much it will HURT! Many tv programmes show women giving birth in about 10 minutes start to finish and meanwhile many celebrities don't even go through labour.. They book a csection and then reappear a few weeks later stick thin after working out with their personal trainer. Birth isn't like that- its long, painful and hard work, especially first time round.

I've also heard quite a few women saying that they were disappointed with their epidural- again, I think the problem is that many women go into labour expecting to have an epidural and expecting the whole thing to be pain free. If they then experience some pain they are shocked and that pain probably feels worse than if they never expected to be pain free in the first place. A lot of how we experience pain is to do with expectation.

Anyway you got through it, and did well so enjoy your baby and I hope you don't dwell too long on the bad parts