Chelsea’s Birth
What kind of birth did you plan or hope for?
As a midwife, I found this so difficult. On the one hand I just hoped for the obvious “healthy mum, healthy baby”. But on the other I had this voice telling me I couldn’t possibly be a midwife without having a homebirth. Not because anyone ever had said this to me, of course! But I still felt the silent pressure of needing to believe in my body and my baby whole heartedly and to avoid any intervention. The problem with this, is I am a hospital midwife. My bread and butter was inductions, epidurals, postpartum hemorrhages and all the interventions and emergencies (in a very high acuity hospital!). I had seen too much and it had made me question my body’s ability. I had caught the fear!
We lived in a tiny little apartment at the time that couldn’t fit a pool and would have made for a very ridiculous emergency transfer to hospital during labour so I decided a homebirth was out of the question for me anyway. I instead planned to birth at one of the many primary birthing units in Auckland (Auckland has a number of primary units so they are spoilt for choice unlike a lot of New Zealand). The special thing about this primary unit was that I had worked there for a number of years and trusted the staff immensely. I knew I’d be looked after well and it felt comfortable and familiar. The only problem was it was a 30-minute drive from my little apartment with no traffic.
I did a lot of mental preparation with my midwife around my fear of labour and birth. I cried about my worries and anxieties, tried to make a plan of how to alleviate each one. I gave myself the permission to accept interventions if they were needed or if I wanted pain relief. But the most important thing was I kept telling myself that I could do it. Women did it all the time! I’d seen so many amazing births and I tried to keep them at the forefront of my mind.
How did the birth unfold?
My show had started to go with the days leading up to going into labour and I had felt tired and a bit weird. In hindsight it was pretty obvious that things were starting to happen but at the time I just carried on with life as normal and didn’t think too much about it. My first contraction hit me at 3am. It woke me up and felt like a really strong period-like pain. I tried to go back to sleep but then another hit a few minutes later. They were coming every few minutes so I gave up on sleep and got up for a shower. My partner was asleep and I knew if this was labour, I was still early so no need to wake him just yet. I set myself up on the yoga ball in-front of the telly watching friends and started to time my contractions which were coming every 3 minutes and lasting a minute long. I was definitely needing to breathe through them. I started thinking “wow if this is early labour, I am NOT looking forward to the real thing.”
At 5.30am I couldn’t last any longer and woke my partner up to be with me. I told him that I was pretty sure I was in labour but probably just early as I hadn’t even been contracting for 2 hours yet. We decided I’d give my midwife a heads up around 7am – no need to wake her too early. By 6am I got the TENS machine out of the box. Not a good idea to be working out how to use these before labour – I kept turning it on between contractions and turning it off during – useless! By 6.15am I gave in and called my midwife. We agreed that she would come and meet me at my apartment in an hour to assess me and make a plan from there. Five minutes later I called her to tell her I would meet her at the birthing unit.
The drive to the unit was hell. Luckily it was early on a Saturday morning so there was no traffic but my partner was still racing – running all the red lights. I was having intense, strong contractions every 2-3 minutes and I was struggling to stay still in the car. I was having immense pressure until I felt my waters go all over the seat.
When we arrived at the unit I could barely walk. I was struggling to focus on anything but what was happening in my body. A quick internal examination confirmed I was 8-9cm. I was in transition. I asked for an epidural (knowing very well that this would require driving from the birthing unit to the hospital). My midwife agreed and said she would get onto calling an ambulance for me. The thought of getting back into a vehicle made me feel sick, I knew this baby was coming. I told her not to forget about that idea.
I jumped in the pool and immediately felt relief. I was where I needed to be. I could move freely without effort in the pool. I knew I was nearing the end of the labour and it had barely started. I was feeling more myself between contractions, able to talk and make a joke. Have some water and hold my partner’s hand. I finally felt present again in my body.
I started to feel pressure and an overwhelming urge to push. I went with the feeling and pushed with each contraction. From then on, I performed my own internal examinations in the water. It helped me feel in control. I could feel my baby’s head – how far away it was and how much progress I was making with each push. After the head was born there was quite a long pause where my baby’s head was under the water and I was waiting for the next contraction to birth the shoulders and body. This felt like an eternity. The contraction finally came and out she came. I scooped her up out of the water and held her to me. It was done!
I got out of the pool pretty quickly after that. I knew I didn’t want to birth the placenta in the water. And I had chosen to have an actively managed 3rd stage (meaning the midwife would deliver the placenta for me). This was all relatively straight forward, luckily.
When I was all sutured and baby had had lots of skin2skin I was offered a shower. I couldn’t even imagine standing up let alone walking around. I couldn’t believe I’d seen so many mum’s leap out of bed after giving birth. I needed some more time.
How did you feel when you finally met your baby?
I honestly can’t remember. When I think about it now it feels like a different baby. Not the little sassy girl I have now. I think it took me a few days (maybe even weeks) to feel like I really knew her. The bond wasn’t what I expected. I found feeding and sleeping difficult in those early weeks and although I loved her so much, I still felt like she was a bit of a stranger.
Looking back now, how do you feel about your birth?
Amazing and incredibly lucky. I feel so lucky that my birth was so straight forward. And although it was extremely intense, I also feel lucky it didn’t go on for days and days. Although there are things you can do to prepare yourself for labour and birth, there are so many variables that are out of your control that can determine how things can go and I feel very grateful that things went the way they did. And I am VERY grateful for the pool!
One thing I have learnt now a few years down the line is that although the birth feels like this enormous hurdle you have to overcome when you’re pregnant, it’s actually such a small part of the journey to then becoming parents. There’s so much pressure to have a certain type of birth but a lot of the time it’s out of our control anyway. It’s so important to block out the noise and pressure surrounding birth and if your birth hasn’t gone exactly how you’d planned, not to let it define who you are as a parent.
Written by Chelsea
