When EMMA met PEGGY
CW: This story involves Special Care Nursery.
I felt really empowered and excited to give birth. I had read books, talked to friends, listened to podcasts (highly recommend the Great Birth Rebellion) and really educated myself on all of the sensations and possibilities of birth. I wanted to try for a physiological birth. I did antenatal expressing, curb walking, ate the dates, drank the raspberry leaf tea, you name it I was onto it. When I hit 40 weeks and still no sign of baby, I decided to go in for a stretch and sweep, I ended up having 2 of these as I wanted to avoid an induction if possible.
So at 11 pm on Friday, 10 May (40 + 6) when my waters broke I was excited, I had my birth playlist, games, techniques everything to help me through what I assumed would be a long few days. But within 10 minutes my contractions came on hard and fast, about 2 to 3 minutes apart. My uterus was not relaxing properly in between my contractions and my pain was constant. This worried me a little bit so I asked my partner to call the midwives and check if everything was okay. The midwives encouraged us to head into the hospital, we grabbed half of our bags and made a dash for the car.
I wasn’t able to sit for the seven minute car ride to the hospital. I was on all fours bent over into the backseat. When we arrived at the hospital my midwife, Kate, met us at the car with a wheelchair, that I also had to lean over the back of as sitting was way too uncomfortable.
When we got up to a room I had an exam and was already 7 cm dilated. It was about 11:40 at this point and the pain was quite intense and I was struggling to practice my breathing techniques so opted to use the gas to help. I never got a chance to use my playlist, lights, scents, TENS machine or other techniques as things progressed really quickly!
I don’t think I opened my eyes at all during my labour as I moved from the bed to the floor to the shower to the bath and leaned on my partner, using him as a human stool. I also had absolutely no concept of time during labour but remember being in the bath and my midwife asking me if I was happy to birth in the bath, which was actually exactly how I’d imagined myself birthing. I hadn’t even realised that I was pushing my body sort of just took over and went from managing through contractions to trying to push this Baby out
Around 2am I had another exam and my midwife advised that I was 10cm dilated and if my body was pushing to go ahead and push. I pushed in the bath and the shower for around two hours managing with the gas and my extremely supportive partner, who was given no choice but to physically support my weight.
I remember asking my midwives how much longer I would need to be pushing for, l know now that was a silly question but at the time I thought ‘I’ve been pushing for so long surely this baby is almost here’ of course the midwives told me they couldn’t say how much longer I would be pushing for and there was no sign of babies head yet.
After around 2 hours of pushing, swapping between the bath and shower, the back pain hit, all I wanted was to lay back in the bath and take some of the pressure off but laying back hurt my stomach too much, I wasn’t able to bear it. I continued managing the contractions on my own and pushing in the bath but the back pain took me beyond my pain threshold and I needed some help. This is when I asked for some pain relief to help with my back and I was offered an epidural and although I had really wanted to feel all of the sensations that came with birth and pushing, I needed some relief and accepted it.
I was advised because I was already pushing the epidural may not work or take affect in time but I was willing to try to help baby along and get rid of this back pain. The midwives let me rest for half an hour before they came back in to start coached pushing, it would’ve been about 4:30am at this point.
I pushed using the stirrups, using my feet against my partner and my midwife but I really struggled to push with the epidural as I had completely lost the sensation I was feeling earlier. For about an hour, babies head was showing but creeping back in.
Then her heart rate started to elevate a little bit and I was also getting pretty tired. I had been pushing for over four hours when the doctor came in to check how things were going to make sure that Baby was okay. I tried to push a few more times while he was there and that’s when he recommended we do an assisted birth. I knew exactly what this meant as I done so much research to prepare myself for the birth of this baby and agreed to an episiotomy and forcep delivery. 8 hours of labour, almost 5 hours of pushing, two cuts and some pulls later our girl was born at 6:51am on May 11(41 weeks).
As they laid her on my chest, I started to cry and I looked at my partner, he was crying too. It was the most magical thing I’ve ever experienced. I heard our girl let out her cry and my midwife asked me what her name was. I couldn’t bring myself to speak because all I could do was cry, so I looked at my partner and we nodded at each other and he said ‘Peggy’.
They took Peggy to do her checks and noticed hers breaths weren’t as deep as they should be. They bought her back over to me and said ‘mum give her a kiss say goodbye Dad you come with us’ and all of a sudden everybody was gone, it was just me and the doctor left.
My midwife came back and explained that Peggy needed some assistance with her breathing and she had been put on the CPAP machine, which they called the snorkel to prepare me for the sight of it, and once I had been stitched up and was able to have a shower, I’d be able to go and see her again. I had done so much research and prep for labour but I had never thought about what would happen if I didn’t get to have those golden hours breastfeeding and enjoying time with our baby once she was born and I did not know what to expect.
Peggy ended up being on the CPAP machine for almost 9 hours before it was removed and I was able to see her again four hours after birth, she was in the special care nursery for three days. During that time the nurses taught my partner how to feed her all of the expressed colostrum that I had, to change her nappy and all of her medical information. I cannot thank them enough for the kindness and support they showed my partner and I during this process, being first time parents it was really scary.
On Monday afternoon Peggy was brought to our room on the ward and we finally got to experience what I had been waiting for, time as a family of 3.
I loved my birth because it gave us our daughter and I feel more empowered than ever.
All birthing women should feel incredibly proud of themselves and their bodies for getting their babies here, no matter how that was achieved.
I am beyond grateful for my midwife and all of the staff who were there to help us welcome Peggy Rose into the world.
What do you wish you knew before birth?
I wish I’d known about what to expect if your baby needs and medical support after birth as this was pretty scary for a first time mum.
If you could, would you do anything differently?
I would get someone to film my birth so I can watch it back!
What did your partner do that really helped during labour/birth?
My partner physically supported me in every way possible, basically gave him no choice, but he showed up he didn’t think twice about doing anything that I needed. Emotionally he kept things really simple, he just used a few phrases ‘remember your breathing’ ‘you can do this’ ‘you’ve got this’. Keeping it simple was important for me because there was so much happening I could really only focus on a few things.
What advice/honest truth would give a mama-to-be about birth?
I would encourage soon to be mamas to educate yourselves as much as possible on what birth FEELS like, get in tune with your body and get empowered because birth is a beautiful thing. Don’t be scared your body was made for this.