Hi all
I'm not going to namecheck as so much has happened since I last read this thread/posted on the ante-natal thread.
Here's my birth story:
Started having contractions at 2am on Tuesday morning. They were fairly irregular - anywhere between 10 and 5 minutes apart and not all that strong. At 11am we headed into the birth unit (40 minutes away from where we live). I had a vaginal examination and they said that I was not dilated at all and that my cervix was still posterior. This was a bit crap. We were sent away and went out for lunch and hung around as I didn't want to go home. Managed to get a brief nap of 30 mins or so as the contractions calmed down during the afternoon.
We then popped back into the birth unit and agreed to go home and wait to see if things would happen. I continued to have contractions which were getting closer and closer together. DP went to bed and got some sleep as I figured there was no point in the two of us being awake. At 2am I was sat at our dining room table leaning over a chair, dosing between contractions which were about 7 mins apart. At this point I called the local hospital just for some reassurance. Despite going to two sets of ante-natal classes, I didn't realise that slow labour could take so long and be so painful. The hospital were lovely and convinced me that all was normal and to relax a bit.
I eventually got fed up at the dining table and went through to lie on a beanbag in the living room. I was finally managing to catch a wee bit of sleep when my waters went at about 4:30am. Not a huge, floor wetting gush, but half a pint or so. Thankfully I had a pad in! I woke DP and called the birth unit. Unfortunately the unit had another lady in who was having to be transferred to the big hospital so they did not have enough midwives to take us. We had to go straight to the big hospital. I called them and DP showered and we headed in.
We got to hospital about 6am. I puked almost immediately. I was struggling a little with the pain so was given paracetamol and something stronger (not sure what, a tablet, co something?). Contractions were less than five minutes apart. I was examined and was 3cm dilated. I was not comfortable in bed and the contractions were beginning to feel like I was needing to poo. Going to the toilet was pretty difficult as contractions seemed to intensify when I was sitting down.
I'm a bit sketchy on the timing through the day, but I know that I stood up the entire day as lying/sitting were just too painful. I started the gas and air about 2 or 3pm when I was 5cm dilated. By 5pm I was 9cm dilated. (What a long day!) I started pushing about 8 or 9pm. I was up on the bed, leaning forward over the back of it.
After I'd been pushing for over two hours my face began to feel funny and tight. I asked DP if my cheek was swelled up and he said yes. He pointed it out to the midwife. Within ten minutes my other cheek had also swollen up and my left eye was puffy too. The midwife was quite concerned and went to get a doctor.
The doctor came to see me and immediately decided that I had 'subcutaneous emphysema'. He explained that I'd pushed so hard that I'd punctured my lung and that I would have to stop pushing. He also explained about a pneumothorax and suggested that I might have one. This is when there is air in between the chest wall and the lung due to puncture and can be fatal. It's also known as a collapsed lung. There were a number of people milling about from then on, and the midwife sister came through and one point and suggested that it was only an allergic reaction and I'd be fine if I had antihistamines. (This was clearly not the case, the woman was off her head).
The doctor told me to stop pushing and also to stop using the gas and air. Not a good combination, I was in agony.
The anaesthetist (sp?) came to see me and the doctor started talking about giving me a chest x-ray. I told the doctor that there was no chance they were giving me an x-ray until the baby was out. It was decided that the baby would be delivered with forceps so I was rushed through to theatre pretty sharpish and had to sit still with no pain relief while they put the spinal block in. I was taken to theatre ahead of a woman who was having twins delivered by emergency section and the procedure was overseen by the senior consultant anaesthetist.
There was real concern that I'd need a c-section as they did not want to have to intubate me because of the possible collapsed lung. I still don't know what would have happened if I'd had to have an emergency section - I think there would have been full scale panic.
When I was in the theatre, DS's heart rate started to drop and they were quite concerned, so things speeded up even more. I was rolled onto my left hand side on what seemed like a very tiny bed to support my weight.
The spinal anaesthetic was absolutely amazing. I could not feel anything from my boobs down and all the pain was completely gone. I did not even know when I was contracting.
DP was allowed in to hold my hand and watch. The doctor got the forceps sorted out and DS was born in three contractions. He was popped onto my chest and DP said 'it's a boy'. We had been convinced he would be a girl so my first word was 'really?'. I stroked his skin and he was so soft. He didn't breathe straight away, so the midwife picked him up and took him over to a side table. I told DP to go with them as I did not want DS to be alone. He started breathing pretty quickly after that.
DS was bundled up and put on my chest and we were wheeled through to the recovery room. DP called my parents to tell them and my mum's first reaction was 'it's a boy, really?'. We had been in recovery a couple of minutes when two people came through with an x-ray machine. DP was asked to take DS out of the room while I was x-rayed and the woman in the next bed was given a lead jacket to protect her as she was still pregnant.
Harris James was born at 2319 on Thursday April 21st and weighed 8lb 3oz. We were allowed to spend time together as a family and at 5am I sent DP away so that he could get some sleep. At this stage I had not slept for longer than 30 minutes since 2am on Tuesday, so I was completely and totally knackered. DS was a bit unsettled at around 7am so one of the midwives offered to look after him while I got some sleep. I still feel bad that I said yes, but I know that there was really no alternative. I napped for about 40 minutes and woke up desperate to have my baby back.
The anasthetist came to see me and told me that the x-ray showed that I did not have a collapsed lung, but that there was a dark area on it showing a 'leak' rather than a full scale collapse. She said that it should heal by itself but should I have any symptoms that I would need to seek medical help asap. Apparently this happens in 1 in 100,000 births, so is pretty unusual.
The doctor was amazing in diagnosing it so quickly. The situation could have gone much more seriously wrong had I been allowed to keep pushing/keep taking the gas and air. Gas and air thins the air in the lungs so more of it could escape through a smaller hole.
It took a couple of weeks for the swelling in my face to settle down and I was coughing quite a bit for a few days. Obviously I also had stitches because of the forceps delivery which also took a couple of weeks to heal.
We were allowed out of hospital pretty quickly (probably too quickly) on the friday night. Breastfeeding was not really established but we thought we were doing okay. DS was latching on for about 5 minutes at a time and I was feeding on demand. We had lots of visitors over the weekend, but on Sunday things started to go downhill. DS cried most of the day then cried the whole day on Monday. By 3am on the Tuesday morning DS was still crying and had only stopped to sleep. After some heated discussion with DP (lack of sleep and stress and worry), I called NHS 24 who sent us to our local hospital. The doctor did not know what was wrong with him, so sent us to the big hospital. She arsed around a lot and really pissed us off. When we got to the big hospital we were made to wait again.
The nurses reckoned that DS was hungry. They weighed him and he had lost 15% of his birth weight in 5 days so they advised giving formula. I was just so desperate for him to be okay that I agreed. I do not regret the decision at all, the poor kid was half starved. He took about 50 mls of formula (a LOT for his weight) and fell straight into a contented sleep. I felt like such a total failure. How had we not realised that this was what was wrong with him?
The nurses had me express milk and I got about 160mls first go. They were amazed. We were asked to stay in hospital so that we could get DS's weight loss sorted out. I continued to express and was feeding DS three hourly and expressing three hourly. By the end of the first day I had produced enough milk to feed him with EBM from a bottle entirely so he did not get any more formula. He gained weight very quickly and was back over his birth weight by day 7.
On the Thursday of that week we saw a breastfeeding midwife who said that I was doing everything right with regard to trying to latch him on and she thought that it was just that he had too small a mouth and I had too big breasts/too flat nipples. I felt a little better after this as it was not 'my fault' as much as I thought it had been earlier. She suggested trying nipple shields then topping up with expressed milk after each feed.
On the Friday we were allowed home again and made a fresh start. It took just over a week for DS to be taking entirely from the nipple shield and not requiring any bottle top ups.
Since then DS has been gaining weight at an incredible rate (9.5oz 2 weeks in a row) and is now weighing in somewhere around 11.5lbs at 7 weeks. I haven't had him weighed for a couple of weeks though so this is guesstimating.
The health visitor could not believe how much milk I was producing. She came in one day and there was a bottle on the table. She asked if it was my expressed milk (there was about 70ml). I said no, that it was what had leaked out of the left hand side while I was feeding from the right. She was slightly shocked and stopped pestering me to get rid of the nipple shields after that.
Over the past 24 hours we have been trying feeding without the nipple shields though, as they are too much hassle and it's been going pretty well. I'm hoping that this will continue and that we'll be off them completely in a couple of weeks.
DS has also had colic (on top of everything else!) so we've been using colief for the past 3 weeks. We had one day when he screamed in pain the entire day. I then tried infacol with his evening feed and he did two absolutely huge burps then stopped screaming and went to sleep. It was only after this that I spoke to the health visitor about colic and she suggested colief.
He has been much better on the colief. For the past week every night bar one he's only been having one night wakening - sleeping 10 til 2 or 3 and then 3 or 4 until 5 or 6. I'm beginning to feel a bit more human with the extra sleep.
DP and I are both completely besotted with DS, but have found things a little hard going at times. We've had a few arguments which we wouldn't normally have and we've been much snippier with eachother than normal. DP has been working almost every day since he returned from paternity leave (including weekends and 2 evenings a week) and does a physical job, so he is about as knackered as I am which isn't helping. I'm sure we'll get through this though and that it's just caused by tiredness.
I've also been working a few hours a week since DS was 3 weeks old. I don't get maternity leave so it's been necessary, if a bit crap.
On Monday I have an appointment with the consultant at the hospital to discuss the birth and how it went. I'm fairly certain that if I was to get pregnant again I'd be under consultant care, and I also think that they might suggest ELCS for any future babies, but we'll have to see what they say.
Sorry for the mammoth post. I'll be better at catching up from now on.