When chelsea met darcy
Chelsea experienced her fair share of medical hurdles during both her pregnancy and birth.
At 12 weeks she needed an emergency appendix removal and doctors thought she also had a placental abruption, which turned out to be a subchrionic hematoma (a type of bleeding that occurs between your amniotic membrane). After birth she had a 8cm blood clot in her leg and a retained placenta.
She welcomed her first baby, now 11 month old Darcy, after 12 hours of labour, 2 hours of pushing, an episiotomy and a kiwi cup vacuum.
Chelsea tells her birth story in her own words…
My pregnancy started and ended pretty well (apart from the massive cankles and occasional round ligament pain) however we hit a bit of a road bump at 12 weeks.
We were out for dinner and announced our pregnancy to some family friends after our 12 week scan earlier that day. I then started to get some sharp pains in my belly so went into the bathroom. I sat on the toilet knowing something wasn't right and waited for someone to come in looking for me as I couldn't move. Josh and I headed home and I got into the shower to try ease the pain. I knew something wasn't right and thought I must have been about to experience a miscarriage. Josh (and my Mum) finally convinced me to head up to emergency. At this stage, the baby was fine, they did some checks and said to come back in the morning for a more intensive scan. Following the scan, the doctor said I had a placental abruption and also needed emergency appendix removal.
We had no idea what a placental abruption was so asked for more information. Once the doctor provided a print out to Josh and I, we both burst into tears and headed straight to the Canberra Hospital. I was immediately prepped for surgery and briefed on the risks to the baby. Josh and I both accepted the fact that the baby was unlikely to make it through the surgery, until a lovely midwife called Laura (I'll never forget her), gave us some hope. She reassured us that appendix removal during pregnancy was surprisingly common. I was ok with the appendix situation, it was the placental abruption that was absolutely freaking us out.
Laura had a look at my scan results and again reassured me it looked more like a subchorionic hematoma, which wasn't as serious. Laura then checked the baby's heartbeat and promised she would be there to check the heartbeat again after surgery. I remember waking up after surgery to the most calming voice saying "Chelsea can you hear that, that is your baby's heartbeat". I shed many tears that day but that moment really got me (and still does). I couldn't wait to hug Josh and tell him everything was ok, but the doctors had luckily passed on the good news to him while I was in recovery. I had to wait a few (long) days to have another scan, but it was a massive relief to hear the subchorionic hematoma (not placental abruption) had reduced.
One day after my due date I had a check up and requested a stretch and sweep, to find out I was 3cm dilated! I spent the rest of that afternoon curb walking and bouncing on a fit ball. 2am the next morning I lost my mucus plug and started experiencing contractions. We laboured at home for about 5 hours until my contractions were 1 minute apart. Once arriving at the hospital, I asked to be checked straight away, to find out I was only 4cm dilated. I thought I would have progressed a lot further. I put on a tens machine and sat on fit ball while Josh squeezed and massaged my back. I then decided to get into the bath however I didn't fit very well so sat on a chair in the shower. I still feel bad about how much water I used as I spent many hours under the shower while Josh held another shower head on my belly.
I told the midwife I needed something for the pain so they offered me the gas which seemed to take the edge off a bit. I asked to be checked again and was 7/8cm so they needed to break my waters. I refused to leave the shower as the gas was there. Josh still laughs about how the midwife coaxed me onto the bed saying the gas machine was better out in the room. By this stage, I really wanted another form of pain relief, however once my waters broke I was told I was now ready to push so I got back in the shower. Josh said I started to make some more intense (animalistic) noises and the midwives then said "we are on" however it then took another 2 hours to push my baby out.
I tried all the positions, on the toilet, kneeling on bed, back in shower however ended up on my back with Josh and midwives holding my legs up. By this stage I'd been in labour for nearly 12 hours so they gave me some fluids and all I remember was the midwives telling me to push like I was doing the biggest poo. It felt soooooo weird and like I was going to tear completely! They ended up releasing my bladder twice and I was starting to get really frustrated as the head was right there but after every contraction it would then just get sucked back in.
The doctors started to get serious saying Chelsea, concentrate you need to push this baby out. I was trying so hard and remember crying out "why isn't it coming out". They ended up doing an episiotomy (and telling Josh to look away for that) and using kiwi cup to vacuum the baby out. Our little baby was placed on my belly and it was a good 60 seconds before Josh asked what it was! A baby boy! I thought it was a baby girl all along so I couldn't believe it.
My cord was short so he wasn't on my chest and I was shaking so much so I couldn't hold him. I then haemorrhaged so the midwives were pushing on my belly and I then received a local in order to be stitched up. I'll never forget the pain of the local wearing off when I was being stitched up. I was sucking on the gas that hard that I started to go loopy and asked Josh what happened to our baby boy. The cherry on top was being told I needed a bunch of tablets to be inserted rectally (how good). We then attempted the breast crawl and he latched straight away which was so surreal to watch.
Just as we were about to leave hospital a couple of days later, we discovered I had developed a 8cm blood clot in my leg. A scan confirmed it was only superficial, so I had to do clexane injections (well Josh did and hated it) and wear compression stockings for 6 weeks.
A week or so later I had some weird pains in my belly and knew something wasn't right. I had another ultrasound which confirmed retained placenta so I went in for day surgery for a D&C. Luckily this hadn't impacted my milk supply and I was still able to feed Darcy.
What do you wish you knew before birth?
The midwives at Queanbeyan Hospital were absolutely amazing (real life angels), I didn’t want to leave them! Going through the public system I understood we wouldn’t have a midwife in the room the entire time, but I was pretty surprised (or maybe scared) that they weren’t in the room much at all, just a few occasional checks.
If you could, would you do anything differently?
Hmmm nothing major, maybe try more positions once my contractions started which may have helped move his head into a better position.
What did your partner do that really helped during labour/birth?
Josh was absolutely incredible. We did the Australian Birth Stories online class together so he really tried to make me concentrate on my breathing, even though I didn't open my eyes much or listen to him (so he tells me).
What advice/honest truth would give a mama-to-be about birth?
Birth is absolutely hectic but so raw and beautiful at the same time, I actually can't wait to do it again. In the moment I told Josh we were only having one child but the next day I wanted another 5 (damn hormones)! However, my advice/honest truth is not birth related but rather my learnings from the last 11 months...
Don't just focus on the birth knowledge: For me knowlegde is power, so I did alot of reading/listening to podcasts regarding birth as I just wanted to know as much as I could. However I wish I also researched a bit more on the 4th trimester. For me, the first 8 weeks were really hard. Darcy was very unsettled and on top of that I was learning how to be a Mum - how to breastfeed, how to care for my nipples, how to sterlise, how to settle my baby for sleep, how to pump....so alot of googling which I wish I did earlier, rather than focus on the labour (which is just one element)!
Do whatever works for you and your baby: I used to be rather judgemental and think to myself "I'm not going to do that when I have a baby". Ha, what an idiot! I'm now such a supporter in you just do whatever works for you and your baby. I copped a bit for sleep training my little boy, but it was truly the best thing we ever did (for him and us!). I've got mates that will say "oh she won't take a bottle" or "we are still co-sleeping". Who cares, you just do whatever works for you and baby. It's not going to be forever, but it's easy to say.... I have to keep telling myself this when Darcy decides not to eat any dinner!
Be vunerable: I'm tremendously luckily to have many girlfriends who are also on this motherhood journey, so it's been incredibly special to be able to support eachother, share advice and mostly important, vent to eachother! Recently however, I've started to share some "intrusive thoughts" (learnt this from a podcast) that I've had ever since Darcy was born. It started in the early days when I would breastfeed him in bed overnight that I'd fallen asleep and he was under the blankets, but in fact he was sleeping in his bassinet next to me. I then used to worry when walking him around town that a car would speed around the corner and hit his pram and mostly recently that I fainted when walking down the front stairs and he crawled onto the road. It's so strange but when researching it I found it's extremely common, so once I started telling girlfriends about it I was so surprised (and relieved) to hear that they had experience similar thoughts!