Cbrmamas

View Original

When lily met mckenna

Lily tells her birth story in her own words…

I ended up being 13 days overdue with Mckenna, at the time we had no idea if she was a boy or girl, so it was a beautiful surprise. 

I went to my 40 week midwife appointment and there they booked me in for an induction. Unfortunately the booking was never made with the hospital and I never got a call. At 41+4 I called the hospital and they had to do some digging to find out what happened, they called me back and said to come in the next day to be induced at 10am.

I was super nervous and I really didn't want to be induced, I really wanted to feel my body go into labour naturally. 

We arrive at Canberra Hospital the next day (Thursday) and we are taken back into an intake area with curtains and many other people around. I thought it was just like a waiting area before the induction, I was very wrong!

After tests and monitoring I was finally being induced with the balloon catheter at 2:30pm in this area, I really didn't think it was very private when people all around could hear what was going on. It wasn't painful at all, maybe uncomfortable but it worked well!

An hour later I started getting light contractions every 5ish minutes lasting 30-40 seconds but they were bearable.

8pm rolled around and a nurse comes in and said we should pack up our things because we are being moved to a room, I was so excited!

Another hour passes and a nurse comes and gets us, as we are walking to the room she said they just got 4 calls in about people in labour and I have to go to a shared room!

This was heartbreaking, Brandon had to go home and this made my contractions stop for 1.5 hours. 

From about 12am-6am I am having really strong irregular contractions. At 6:15am, I get a really strong contraction, I then feel a pop and my water breaks! I swear if I was standing up, it would have been like on the movies! Haha.

I rang Brandon to come back, and then called the nurse and get put into our own room finally! I get straight in the shower and my contractions have gone insane! 

It was about 2.5 hours of back to back contractions before I got the epidural and they also checked me and I was 4cm. I feel like I should have been more with the amount of pain I felt!

My midwife and student midwife really made this experience amazing, I loved every bit of it.... when I was numb! Haha

At 3pm I was checked and I was fully dilated and they said to wait an hour for her to naturally move down and we can start pushing!

I started pushing at about 4:40pm and they could see her straight away!

Her heart beat then dropped and a team of doctors were called in for extra help, which I wasn't scared, I knew they would get her out safely! My contractions did stop for about 10 minutes so I must have been a bit concerned but I was staying positive. 

The doctor had to put a suction cap on her head and give me an episiotomy, and one push her head was out and her body followed at 5:03pm.

It was so surreal having her put on my chest, they check what gender she was but all I could see was her cord! 

Because she came out so fast, she had gunk in her lungs and they took her off me after about 2-4 minutes to suck it all out. She was pretty gray but pinked up pretty fast after they helped her. 

It took about 5 minutes for my placenta to come out, and then the doctor stitched me up!

After all had calmed down, we tried sleeping that night but little miss Mckenna did not want to be put down of course haha. The next day I had to get an iron infusion which made me feel so much better, I just thought I was exhausted from giving birth but it was because my hemoglobin levels were extremely low! 

Overall amazing experience and I can't wait to do it again. 


What do you wish you knew before birth?

I can’t think of anything.

If you could, would you do anything differently?


Nothing regarding the birth 

Make sure we get all the right number of people to contact after we leave the hospital. We tried ringing up when she got jaundice and no one could help us at that stage. 

What did your partner do that really helped during labour/birth?

Just be an all round amazing person. He was so encouraging and nurturing and so supportive. He was there every moment for me, made sure they were getting the epidural haha. He tired so hard to help in a lot of ways when he couldn't help the pain. I couldn't of done it without him. 

What advice/honest truth would give a mama-to-be about birth?

It's amazing, I will always encourage pain relief because without it I think I would have been stressed out. But I obviously do not handle pain well.

I think just be prepared for anything and everything. The midwife's always said don't talk to people about their births because they will freak you out. This is true, but myself personally wanted to know thing that's can go wrong and how to deal with it or be prepared to advocate for myself. 

You won't experience anything like it, it was empowering.