So there I am, sitting in bed reading about Vikings and minding my own business ? okay, technically I was twiddling my nipples, but since everything else had already failed I didn?t really consider I was doing anything that provocative ? at 11pm on Saturday night when BANG! waters break. Dh fetches a towel and I waddle to shower to continue impersonating Niagara Falls while we consider options. I?ve had BHs off and on all week (I am 41+1) but nothing?s happening now. Eventually we settle on ringing my dsis, a MW who would mind ds while we did this thing, on the grounds that she would need to decide whether to go to bed or not. She said she?d just hide her dc?s easter eggs, then come over; if something happened it?d be good for her to be there, if not she?d have a cuppa.
By 11:17 I had started contracting, hard. By the time dsis arrived at 11:38 I was a wee bit frantic ? don?t remember it hurting anything like this much last time, and btw I was going every 2 minutes. With much dithering (?I don?t WANT to get in the car! Dh! Get in the fecking car!?) and many breaks for more swearing and rocking dh gets me on the road and runs a few red lights to arrive at hospital by midnight. They are waiting in the corridor. (I find out later that dsis has phoned birth suite and warned them I was showing every sign of already being in transition before leaving home.)
VE shows I am fully dilated but not really ready to push. Lots of pain but thought of relief doesn?t even cross my mind. Neither does it occur to me to get birth plan or anything else out of bag, though I do cross swords with sarcastic dr who objects to me refusing a canula. After a bit I?m ready to push, kneeling up on the bed or squatting on a birth stool. After a bit more two MWs urge me into ?dead beetle position? which I desperately hate but they insist is best for helping progress ?around the S-bend?. They keep trying to get me to feel the head but I am too busy during contractions and cannot feel a thing in between with my fingers in as far as they?ll reach. MW has been saying, ?there is some progress? but she won?t quantify; doc arrives after an hour to investigate and says baby?s head is still at +1, +2, somewhere up there with marked caput. I am gutted; this is where ds stuck and now it seems dc2 is at same point, only with shitloads more pain. If it had hurt as little as ds, I thought I?d be able to continue, but I cannot keep working that hard with so little to show; I am already shaky with effort. I wish I was more fit and twelve years younger. Doc says despite full-on contractions and gold-standard pushing I?m doing, he doesn?t think it?s coming out, and I cannot help agreeing with him. It is 3am.
Which is where it all gets a wee bit medieval. In the prep room they tell me that I?m not doing baby any favors continuing to push, and of course I must sit extremely still while they try to fit epidural. As I am flooded with massive contractions, the only way not to push is to scream my head off and though I try I cannot possibly sit still. After two failed attempts she rings for another anesthetist. During their next two attempts the pain is worse and I can feel it in my perineum; I begin to wonder if sitting upright not pushing has done the trick and I might deliver vaginally after all. If I have any regret, it is that I didn?t ask for another VE at this point, but as dh says thinking like that doesn?t help anyone. They lodge epidural on 4th attempt and it kicks in at once. Extremely grateful to be back in C21st.
Eventually we truck on into theatre and dd (shock!) is born at 4:37. She yells immediately. I see her but they won?t let us do skin-to-skin as it is too cold; the anaesthetist tech shows me his goosebumps. Dh notices the reflections in the op lights and nearly keels over after seeing, he says, a bit more of his wife than necessary. Dd is beautiful, lots of hair. 4165g or 9lbs 3oz, but somehow skinny-looking with it. Eventually dh gets to snuggle her for a bit and when they say we?re nearly done and dh / dd will wait in recovery, I order him to get his shirt off and unwrap her. They are taking so long I wonder if they are redecorating in there. Anaesthetic tech asks her name and we tell him, he remarks this is the same as Daryl Hannah?s worst film role and dh and I groan. The doc comes to debrief me and says he thinks we pushed the lower segment as far as posible and then some, and next time he would strongly, strongly recommend against vbac. His eyes are like saucers but he answers all my questions nicely. I don?t escape until 6.
In recovery the MW says the baby doctor wants to talk to me and unfortunately he hears me say ?I guess you?re calling him that because of his job, noy beacuse he looks about 9 years old?? . Paed says dd is grunting, and he wants her in special care for a look and possibly antibiotics and this is where I finally lose it ? the reasons I didn?t want a section coming true. Dh goes with dd and I lie sobbing for three-quarters of an hour, until finally distracted by recovery nurse telling me her birth stories ? identical to mine. Funny. I am desperate for dinner but they say they have no food on recovery ward (this is a fib, I spot nurse pocketing easter eggs later) but they?ll get breakfast held for me upstairs. I say stuff breakfast I want roast lamb and they say I might be in luck at lunch, but not before. Dh comes back and says dd fought off two attempts to get stomach sample (go, dd!) and he is going to move car from strict 5-minute dropoff zone. Then they say I can go see dd but we are being held up by shift change, so I start again. I want dh but he doesn?t come back, and nurses are trying to find out if changeovers have finished in other two wards involved in this case.
Eventually we get up to find dh is with dd who apparently stopped grunting the minute she arrived, needs no Abs after all, and will be in my room, they think, within two hours. In the event it is more like 3. Meanwhile the press office phones to say that dd is first baby born on Easter Sunday, the Cadbury Bunny is coming and so is the State Premier and please can they come take photos at 11? I try to explain I am a touch tired buit press slut won?t listen until charge sister takes phone and says they can do everyone else first and me last and she will kick them out after 10 minutes, got it? I love her. I get an hour snuggling dd (skin to skin at bloody last) before MW comes to comb my hair. Premier arrives in candy stripe shirt and cannot take her eyes off dd who I am stroking and smiling like, well, a gal doped to the eyeballs on morphine and babylove, so I ask if she wants a cootch and she does. I try not to fixate on Cadbury Bunny?s assistant?s Cadbury-purple PVC pinafore as it is just too kinky for 8am. They leave a laundry basket full of Cadbury?s finest which for the record I can?t stand (except the mint eggs ? must see if I scored any of those).
Five days in hospital provides a wealth of farcical anecdote and a traumatising 2am encounter with, I swear, Snow White?s evil stepmother masquerading as a MW, but I want only to share one more moment. It is ds?s 2nd birthday on the Monday. When he moved the car dh also had to phone round cancelling the party planned for Sunday arvo and I fret over wasting the cake and chicken I?d spent Saturday afternoon preparing. Instead my lovely dsis brings her dc?s and our mum, plus the cake iced just as I?d wanted with Makka Pakka, a big bunch of balloons, and ds?s presents. Dh brings ds and we have a small party. In the middle of opening his presents ds, standing on the armchair, suddenly notices dd asleep in her cot. He leans over to show her his new book, holding it open so she can see the pics. ?Dd,? he says. ?Dora, see??