When chloe met harper
CW: This story involves a traumatic birth.
I had Harper at 18, I was absolutely terrified of labour and birth.
I was induced on the 26th of August because I had reduced fetal movements they had popped in a ballon to help me dilate and it was extremely uncomfortable to try and sleep with it in.
At 7am the next day they had broken my waters which was the weirdest feeling I’ve ever experienced. I had 3 midwife’s in the room at that point. I wanted to labour on my own so I asked to hold off on the drip to help contractions come on, but by 12pm there was nothing so they started contractions.
I had my beautiful cousin and my daughters dad with me, nothing was helping with pain I tried to hold off on the medication/drugs but after 4 hours of straight exhaustion and contractions I asked for the epidural.
That’s when things started going down hill, the doctor couldn’t get it in my back properly, I was vomiting and had fevers throughout that whole process.
It hit 12:30am the next day and I was finally fully dilated and began pushing. I pushed for over an hour, all of a sudden I was blacking out. The midwife hit the emergency button and there was 10 doctors, midwife’s and nurses in my hospital room.
My daughters heart rate was dangerously low, she was twisted and going into my ribcage. I was rushed into the theatre for an emergency c section to get Harper out ASAP.
By 2:25am my daughter was here, the feeling of her being pulled out is a feeling I will never forget. I am so blessed for the medical staff.
What do you wish you knew before birth?
I wish I knew that there was so many different types of ways to help the labour progress, because it came as a shock.
If you could, would you do anything differently?
I would definitely try a lot harder to trust the process of my body’s natural way to labour my daughter out of me. Instead of jumping straight to an epidural.
What did your partner do that really helped during labour/birth?
My daughters dad was extremely helpful and listened to everything I said I wanted, he advocated for me when I couldn’t.
What advice/honest truth would give a mama-to-be about birth?
Labour hurts, birth hurts. But you don’t remember the pain when your baby is in your arms. I would do it 1000x over and over again