Hi all,
This is a long one but please bare with it, this is my trauma dumping lol.
I had my first baby 10 weeks ago. Before this I was always so terrified and anxious about childbirth and had gone through every scenario convincing myself I would die.
anyway, I was induced at 38 weeks due to GD, hypertension etc. I had the gel inserted and was 2cm. About 30 hours later I was still 2cm but they manually broke my waters. Then I was started on the oxytocin drip on the 8th August at 9am. This is where things went down hill. I started feeling pain pretty quickly but fairly manageable for like 2-3 hours. After that though, it was horrid. I asked for an epidural and it was sited but I still felt so much pain. They checked my back and it had actually fallen out. I was so against any drugs as I was always anxious about feeling out of control due to previous panic attacks on certain drugs etc. But at this point I was sucking on gas and air for dear life (I did panic and did cry throughout tho). Different anaesthetists came in and tried multiple times to site a new epidural (I had about 9 dots in my back by the end of it all) but no luck. I began to panic even more as I knew if I needed a c section in the end I’d have to be put to sleep and this was my biggest fear.
The anaesthetists came back and said my options were Pethidine, fentanyl or “excruciating pain”. I was so against all of it but was sold fentanyl as they said it wears off very quickly, it’s on a pump so I click when I get pain and it goes away, I can click every 2 mins etc etc. I started the fentanyl, it took me so far away with the fairies, I was basically a zombie that would just scream every time a contraction came. I also vomited several times. I then noticed that when I was pressing the button it wasn’t working. No one believed me and thought I was just not managing the pain well. But actually, the pump was timing itself out after 30 minutes. The fentanyl could only be controlled by the anaesthetists and they were sending each other WhatsApp videos regarding how to fix it whilst I was screaming in the background. It turns out that the pump, for labour, was new in this particular nhs trust. It was then realised that the pump would need to be reset every 30 min (none of them knew how to change the settings) and obviously being so busy, they couldn’t come back every 30 minutes so I was left without pain relief and in absolute agony.
In the end, they checked how dilated I was and I was only 5-6 cm this was at 7pm. WTF?? I was in that much agony for 5-6cm, am I just a huge wimp??. Then at this point, they all were convincing me to have a section, papers were stuck in front of my face and I signed. I was wheeled to the theatre room about 9pm, still contracting and screaming down the place. It seemed like they took forever to even put me to sleep because I just remember thinking “if you’re going to do it just do it because the pain is unbearable”. I begged them not to let me die several times and then next thing I know I’m awake and my daughter is with her dad. She was born at 23.25 on the 8.8.24. I was unable to hold my daughter for around 6 hours as I was put on morphine by this point and was told I was “too drowsy to hold the baby”.
My daughter is perfect and I’m so lucky that she’s healthy but I can’t help but feel so sad about the way she came into the world. Does anyone else have any experiences like this?
(sorry for the long post!)