Can I share my birth story with you please?

[FoulsomeAndMaggotwise]

DD is nearly 4 months old, and I thought I was starting to forget but it's been going round my head all day today.

Second pregnancy, ds was nearly 19 months.

I had a S&S at 40+3 and within an hour was getting strong contractions, this was at 10am. Laboured all day and by 10pm I called the midwives out for my home birth. Shortly after that the pain was so strong I wanted to get into the pool for some relief. I started getting the feeling to bear down, and the pain in my back was so intense, I thought I must be 10cm and ready to push. So I got out the pool to be examined. I was only 6cm! After 14 hours of hard labour, only 6cm. I kept saying "this doesn't feel right, this is different to my first, it's not progressing properly" but the midwives just said I was progressing as they'd expect.

This went on for a few more hours, the pain got even worse and there was no relief from it. I didn't get those little breaks in between contractions where you can gather yourself and get comfortable. The pain in my back was constant and intense. The MWs asked where I wanted to be but there was no position that offered any relief. I kept getting hair in my face and brushing at my face to get rid of it. I started on the gas and air.

The urge to push was so strong now, but it felt wrong somehow. I was involuntarily bearing down, I couldn't breathe. It was like when you have really bad diorreah and your stomach cramps up to expel everything and you have no control over it. This hair kept getting in my face but I couldn't get it off, my skin was sore from where I was brushing at my face.

The midwives examined me again and I hadn't dilated any further, so they manually dialated me. The pain of having to lie on my back during that process was insane.

My leg started to go numb, and I got tingling in my other leg and my arms and face. The invisible hair wasn't hair at all, it was too much oxygen in my blood from hyperventilating for so many hours.

With each contraction now I felt sick, and started vomiting from the pain. I couldn't grip the bed or the pool properly because of the numbness in my arms.

I was still bearing down and pushing but nothing was happening, so they examined me again and found that my cervix was stuck around her head like an elastic band. So they had to stretch it over. Then they broke my waters in the hope that it would speed things up. I'd been in labour now for 17 hours. I can't explain the pain. I'd had a pervious birth with no drugs at all but this was so much worse. I'm so ashamed to say it now but I actually wished the baby would show signs of distress so that they'd take me to hospital and I could have a c-section.

Once my waters had broken they wanted me to push, even though the urge wasn't right. I felt an urge but it wasn't the right kind, I can't explain it. Anyway, they realised I had a blockage in my bowel and needed to clear it before the baby could come, so I had to poo. That just went on forever. Dh was holding my hand and the MWs were encouraging me, when it finally came I felt like we should name the bloody thing.

I went up to the toilet for a wee and as soon as I got to the bathroom she started coming. I was pushing her out on the toilet. The MWs heard and came rushing up and she was born within seconds. She wasn't breathing so they wrapped her in a towel and rubbed her roughly. She was so white and silent. They took her downstairs and left me and dh. He was crying. I kept telling him to go down and make sure she was ok but he said he couldn't leave me. Eventually I heard her cry.

It turns out she was back to back. She had turned in the womb and the cord had wrapped around her neck so she was in shock when she was born. I had nerve damage in my leg from where she had been pressing on my spine for 20 hours and my pelvis is still giving me a lot of pain.

But I feel so so lucky that ee were both ok, I knew nothing about back to back labours at the time so I didn't appreciate how lucky we were, having a home birth and all, but I've since done some reading and it's scary. I have two pregnant sisters and I keep thinking of them and I guess I just needed to get this out.

Thank you for getting this far! Sorry it's so long and probably a bit jumbled.

Argh, just wrote a long post and it disappeared.

Glad you're both doing well plummy - sorry about your arse though :)

It's funny, all this talk about luck and hypo-birthing, I read Ina May and I used to believe in that to a certain extent. My first birth was an easy one. It was long, but I had no pain relief and I used to feel really proud of that. Whenever I read birthing threads when posters would talk about how you were just lucky if you didn't need pain relief, I would think "how dare you belittle my experience". It's only now that I understand what they meant. They weren't belittling, they were being factual.

When people would talk about positioning being key to pain levels I would think "well ds had his hand up by his head so he wasn't in a great position" - I mean seriously, what a twat I was. It's in no way comparable.

Now I look back on that first birth with no sense of pride or achievement (every birth is an amazing achievement, but I no longer believe I did anything special). I just feel so incredibly lucky.

I used to think pain was a scale of 1-10, and I had a drug free birth at a 9. Now I realise it's more like 1-100, and that's why I could have a drug free birth at 9. My pain with the second was insane, intense, unbearable, horrific, but probably only a 50. I'm aware now of how much variation there can be and how much more pain your body can experience.

I don't blame anyone for feeling proud of having a drug free birth though - until you have something worse to compare it with you just can't comprehend it, and I wouldn't expect anyone to.

That probably doesn't make any sense at all!

Oh and I've booked myself in to see an osteopath for my back.

It all makes perfect sense, honestly!

And glad you're seeing an osteo for your back, hope it does help. Might take a couple of sessions but it should be well worth it :)

Foulsome you are spot on with the pain threshold scale, spot on! The creaking of my pelvis bones as ds sideways head tried to burst them apart was ghastly. My second labour with dd hurt so little (and she was only 27 weeks) I genuinely thought it might be Braxton Hicks which I'd never had with my son. I was so unruffled at antenatal triage they assumed the same - BHs caused by a uti maybe, it was only when I had a ve just before being discharged, that the mw nudged her colleague and said nervously "can you see what I can see?" It was my membranes bulging and the top of dds head! Just to keep things exciting dd then turned breech and her hr went crazy so I still ended up with another emcs! But I was drug free til the surgery long after transition despite spending my entire labour flat on my back covered in monitors, and being significantly more anxious for dd than I was for big fat term ds. In fact I was probably wriggling my leggings off as they whizzed the trolley down to theatre during transition. It just didn't hurt! Even more remarkable was how undo aged I felt after labour. I was by dds side as soon as the section meds wore off and back in jeans within 72 hours. Utterly crazy. Interesting fact Ina Mays labours were three hours, 90 mins and 45 minutes respectively, no wonder she had such an utterly skewed view of the process. Just a shame she became the mouthpiece for a generation of maternity best-practice. So many women have been let down. If we want to follow her practises we absolutely need to know the positions a baby is adopting during labour.

I had a friend tell me not long after I had dd that she didn't need any intervention or meds as she "has a high pain threshold". I didn't say much because, as you say, it's often not from a place of malice but from literal ignorance. I happen to have a bloody high pain threshold actually. During dd's labour, if you'd handed me a gun, I'd have used it. 31 hours of utter hell. I thought I was dying. Same friend wrote her birth story on FB and finished with a triumphant "I'm so glad I gave my baby the drug free, natural labour she deserved". I. Said. Nothing. Eight years on, I'm so very pleased that she had such a positive and lovely experience. I can say that in all seriousness. Back then, I wanted to howl.

Saulgood you are a better person than me. Mind ds's only six so I've got two years to go til I hit the karmic eight years, perhaps a wonderful transformation of my attitude to kindly serenity is just around the corner :D
I've heard some belters from my 'just breathe it out' friends including humph "well I'm sure induced contractions are painful but so was my labial graze". The whole business of birth is fairly ouchy but if birth experts ie mws say induction is particularly painful, then I'm prepared to believe it is particularly painful among the assorted pains of having a baby, including scratched fannies. Same acquaintance couldn't be seen for dust during the 81 days it took to get dd well enough to get home (before she was re admitted 6 weeks later) then re emerged to declare that they didn't think dd was that prem. Because an 800g baby is pretty much as hale and hearty as their own 11lber, must have been another positive thinking/mantra/affirmation exercise I missed. Oooooh I do sound bitter don't I. Sooo need to work on nod and smile, nod and smile. I am kind of joking about how cross this still makes me by the way. Getting there anyway.

When dd was still tiny and I was gripped by ptsd and pnd, my brother said to me "you took the easy route having a cs". I was not serene or calm that day. I totally and utterly lost the plot. His wife had just had a normal delivery and he was just full of joy and amazement at what she'd done. I have since apologised.

Nothing to admire here. The calm, serene acceptance was hard won. Back in the day I was very fragile.

I don't think many women genuinely aim to compare and you can't compare can you? I do think however, that there is a bit of a problem with accepted language around birth and it does leave you feeling rather disparaged. I am so sorry if any of you have felt criticised by other people.

Crazy - the drip part of induction is the worst, IME. I was induced both times but the first I didn't have the drip; the second I did and the difference was that you get no respite between contractions, waves of pain just rise and fall but never go away.

I went to the osteopath this morning, she said my pelvis is misaligned. It had to move to accommodate DD and it hasn't gone back right or something, so it's all crooked. She said when I bent down I was bending slightly away from the pain so I'm just reinforcing the crookedness.

I have to have weekly sessions but she says its correctable and it shouldn't take too long.

So, relieved to know there's no lasting damage, but frustrated that I can't exercise until I'm lined up properly (the GP already told me I couldn't diet while I was breastfeeding so I guess I'm doomed to be bigger than usual for the next 9 months or so).

plummy how are you getting on with Baby Jam? Hope everyone is ok today.

Hi Foulsome everything is going well thanks, I think the pain I am getting is actually the episiotomy rather than my back. Baby jam is good, feeding like a trooper. Despite the difficult time in labour I'd take this recovery over my last emcs any day of the week!

I'm glad the osteopath was helpful. You'll probably not realise how "wrong" everything is until they sort it out. It's like getting into a warm bath at the end of a very long and tough day. It's bliss to be pain free.

On another note, you absolutely can diet when breastfeeding. I mean, it's demanding on your body so you won't want to be entering into any very low calorie replacement type diets. Your milk isn't affected by dieting but when you're doing the demanding job of feeding another person, you can find that you end up depleted and exhausted if you aren't eating enough. You can eat sensibly and healthily and you'll find that your body will slowly go back and then you add in exercise when you're ready.

I know that when dd in particular was little I was a bit traumatised, she didn't sleep well and breastfed a lot. My feeding habits were bloody awful. I lived on sugar tbh. When she was around 10 months, I realised I needed to change that so I made sure I always had healthy snacks available (homemade flapjacks, smoothies, fruit, nuts etc) and DH made me lunch ever day and stuck it in the fridge so I didn't resort to crap because I couldn't find the time to make a sandwich. I also ate lots of healthy, slow-release stuff and used the slow cooker for around 75% of meals as it meant no faffing about at the hell end of the day when the baby's fractious and you're dreading the bedtime routine.

Doesn't actually matter if you're a wee bit bigger for a while. You've had a baby and it takes time to recover from that. However, if you want to gently diet, then you can. Sometimes, particularly when you've had a traumatic time of it, it can be nice to reclaim a bit of who you were before iyswim. Don't feel pressured though. Taking care of yourself and your beautiful baby are the priority.

BTW, you should never listen to randoms on the internet so here is the la leche league advice on losing weight while breast feeding.

Hi OP, sorry to hear your story. Lots of people on here with more relevant experience and advice, but just to say I would recommend you ask to have a debrief with a senior midwife. I had a different (and less serious) experience but found talking through my notes with a professional really helped, especially her advice about implications for the future. Best of luck x

Very pleased the osteo has been able to help you and that she has reassured you that you can be "fixed" :)

It does make the world of difference to be straight again, I promise.