Gabi's Birth Story

As I sit here typing with one hand and the other cradling my 6 day old, I can’t help getting very emotional over our birth story. It’s not any more special than any other moms story, but it is our own story, which I want to share with you. Before I start, I want to give you a bit of background on my previous delivery. It was a speedy 2 hour or so labor, where I ended up with an extremely painful episiotomy due to my body not catching up quick enough for my child's entry into the world. It was very traumatic and something I wished I would never have to endure again. During this second pregnancy, I did everything I could to avoid another trauma. I spent a lot of time finding the right doctor and the right midwife who understood my want to avoid any further traumas and who guided me and taught me what I needed to do to have as straight forward delivery as possible. 

Due to my first labor and delivery being so quick, we were sure that this second one was going to be pretty speedy as well. Everyone helping and working with us knew to have their running shoes at the ready for the moment we said, “baby is coming”. And everyone was ready. 

I had been having on and off again Braxton Hicks for a few days before my baby girl arrived. I was pretty sure that over the Easter weekend she would come, so we laid low for a few days, just waiting. There were moments when the contractions got pretty strong and I announced to everyone that I thought that baby was coming. However, as soon as I said that, the contractions just stopped. It was tiring, going on like this for 4 days. By Tuesday morning I had pretty much given up just hanging around at home, waiting and wishing for it all to just start. All weekend it felt like a big tease. I had spent Tuesday morning in the playground with my daughter. I sat on the swings with her enjoying the early spring day and the sounds of the birds. I even sat on the round about with her and we spun for 20 minutes just laughing and having fun. We cooked lunch together and during her nap time I just watched TV  and did a bit of laundry. In the afternoon I considered taking her to the park to go on her scooter but she said she wanted to watch a movie instead. 

Anyways, evening came around and we ate and had a bit of fun before bed time. At 8:45pm I was sitting  on the couch talking with my sisters when suddenly I had a very big contraction. My first thought was great here we go again, another false alarm. I went to the toilet and realized something wasn’t right, either my waters were breaking or something was really wrong due to the amount of watery blood. I told my husband to call the midwife and she said to come to the hospital immediately. For my husband this meant to run to the car right that second and I had to remind him we had a sleeping toddler upstairs and we couldn’t leave until he had called our friend to come over to look after our daughter. He was running around like a headless chicken, not really doing anything special, just moving about and asking if I had packed all his things for him. I managed to carry my own bags down from the bedroom to the kitchen to find him taking his blood pressure. I honestly couldn’t do much but laugh.

I still wasn’t convinced I was in labor once I had reached the hospital, by now it was 9:30pm. I still wasn’t having regular consistent contractions but my waters were definitely leaking slowly and I was only 2cm dilated. My midwife wanted to hook my up to the monitors to check my contractions and baby's heartbeat. Before we even had time to sit on the bed my contractions started, but this time I knew it was time. We went to the delivery suite where I changed and was ready. 

During a rapid labor women don’t have enough time to adjust to the contractions and the pain goes from 0-100 in a matter of minutes and there’s no time to give drugs at this point. I was mentally prepared for this this time and knew that no matter what I did, fighting against the pain was not an option. I needed to embrace the pain and continue to breathe and repeat my affirmations. 

After 45 minutes the contractions just turned into one long contraction, the pain was relentless
, radiating all around my back to my front. I was concentrating so hard to stay as calm as possible, but then I heard the monitor and turned to look at it and I couldn’t see the baby’s heartbeat. Being in so much pain didn’t matter at that point all I said was, “where is the heartbeat?”After about a minute the heartbeat popped up nice and strong. Baby girl had moved and the monitor couldn’t pick up on her heartbeat. It was around this time I felt the urge to push. 

It was during the pushing stage where I started to feel the contractions again, weirdly this is easier than the first stage. You know the end is near and this is when you can start to take control over your body and do something. Push. The midwife started to prepare for baby’s arrival and had to get the on call doctor to come into the room (standard protocol where I live although I had forgotten this and thought something was wrong but really there wasn’t). 30 minutes of pushing and baby still hadn’t appeared. I was tired by now, it was 11:15pm at night and I remember saying to my husband, its passed my bedtime, I’m too tired. Probably trying to justify why we hadn’t had the baby yet. 

The midwife asked my husband if it was alright if the doctor were to help me by gently pressing on my belly. He agreed, but I said no wait is that going to hurt? They said no, no its just a gentle push during your contraction to help keep the baby from popping back up, which she had been doing. Ok just once, I replied. In my head I thought that this literally meant ok one more push and baby was going to slide nicely out and it was all over. No, it was literally just to get half her head out. I still needed to work. I had to hold back from pushing again for a little while until the next contraction, which is complete agony as you sit spread eagled with half a head between your legs, but I did it, with the midwife reminding my husband not to say much to me during this time because he would never understand or feel what I was feeling right now. With 2 more pushes she was out. It took her a few seconds to start breathing and once she did she was given to me. And that was it, 90 minutes from the first real contraction to her being placed on my tummy. 

No tears, no cuts, no stitches, I had done it. I had listened, I had practiced, I had prepared in every way to make this as trauma free as possible and I had done it. I don’t consider the doctor helping me as any kind of defeat, it was perfect, he knew what to do and knew it wasn’t going to harm any of us, even if it did hurt more than a gentle push should. Lexi Mira, came into this world peacefully on April 3rd 2018 weighing 3200g and 53cm. If every delivery were like that I would do this 100 times over. It was absolutely perfect, I had full trust in my midwife and in my body’s ability to do this without pain relief and without any cuts.