HELP - Any midwives who can decode this for me??

[Lostinadaydream]

For a number of reasons, I've just had my medical notes released to me for the birth of my daughter.

I'm looking through and trying to suss out what was going on here.

Are there any midwives here who can explain the graphs to me?

Any help grateley appreciated :)

Pic attached

It's a CTG reading. Top one is the baby's heart rate. Bottom is your contractions. Top one is showing a very irregular pattern, heartrate looks decelerative and bradycardic/low, however, which could be due to the fact that you were most likely pushing at this point. We can see from the handwritten note at the end that your baby was born by kiwi soon after. Hope you're ok, OP.

Thank you so much for replying and explaining. Here's a little snapshot of beforehand. I can see where they've written that they rang the emergency bell. I believe her heart rate dropped and that was the reason. I wasn't pushing yet at that point. I didn't get any urge to push at all, I just pushed when I was told to for the last couple of minutes when they attached the auction thing.

I've since had another child and felt the urge to push which so I know for sure I didn't feel that with my first labour. Do you mind me asking, how bad does the heart rate look there? I'm quite traumatised by my first labour and I'm going to see if I can have some kind of meeting to go over that but I'm just trying to peace it together in the mean time.

Sorry for the typos.

The normal heart rate would be between 110-160. Baby's heart rates can drop during labour, particularly during contractions, but the important thing is that they recover to a normal rate when the contraction has passed. You can see that your baby's heart rate was low and wasn't recovering, which was why they had to get her out as quickly as possible. In this instance, kiwi was the quickest option.

I can completely understand how traumatising this was. I hope you get the answers you need, but without sounding flippant, sometimes these things just happen. I'm happy to hear that your baby girl came into the world safely even if not as smoothly as we would like!

Hi Lostinadaydream

Really sorry to hear your delivery was so traumatic. As has been said, there are signs on that piece of CTG that indicate a quick delivery was needed, but really I'd recommend getting an appointment with either either the consultant midwife or consultant for a debrief and they can go through step by step and explain anything that isn't clear. Quite a lot of abbreviations are used and I think it'll be an unnecessary stress to try and piece it together yourself - someone should be available for you.

Hope you get the answers you need

Can I ask how you got you notes released? Thanks

Thanks for the replies. hopefully once I've spoken to the relevant people about it, it'll allow me to move on from it. I know people have to experience much worse as far as labour goes.

fanfrickintastic - I had to contact medical records and ask for them. I also had to pay a small fee (admin fee I think it was).