Emily’s Birth Story

The background to Emily’s birth story is the story of my first daughter, Elena’s, birth.

Elena was born on 18th May 2000. She was a very much wanted and long awaited baby. We had been planning and trying for a long time and eventually got pregnant. It was an easy pregnancy and I was booked for a Domino birth with the option of staying at home with a very pro-homebirth team of midwives. “You’re booked for Domino but you’ll probably end up staying at home. Nearly all the Dominos do.” We went to NCT classes and read all the books. We knew exactly what we were doing.

Or so we thought…..

I went into labour while I was still at work – a week before my due date. I had the idea that if I focussed on a particular date then the baby would cooperate and come out on that day. I was wrong both times!

On my way out of school I went to the toilet and there was a little gush of blood. I decided to ignore it and just go home and think about it there. As I was washing my hands I felt another gush and thought I should get some advice. When I rang the midwife she said I should get an ambulance and get to the nearest hospital. I immediately regretted telling anyone anything but as half the staff were listening and the ambulance was already on its way, I felt I had to go along with things.

In the ambulance the paramedic was cheerful and telling me that I’d be told to go home and have bed-rest for a few days. I made a mental note to ignore that and go back to school. I had to get my class through their Japanese GCSE and the next few days would be crucial. There was no suggestion that I might have a baby in the next few hours.

At the hospital, the staff were unpleasant and wanted to intervene straightaway. Apparently I was in established labour (3cm dilated) and having contractions according to the monitor but I couldn’t feel anything. They wanted to break my waters and put me on a drip to speed things up. I asked if there was another option and the doctor replied that we could wait and see if the bleeding got worse or not. It had slowed to the odd drip and I didn’t feel in any danger of haemorrhaging so I went for the wait and see option. Apart from not wanting the intervention, I was still getting used to the idea that my baby was going to be born that night. Thinking back now, it was probably a version of a “show” but no one seemed to consider this then.

I had rung my husband, Motoi, from school and told him to get a taxi to the hospital (we live on the opposite side of Manchester). He had had to borrow some money from a neighbour as he didn’t have enough cash! He arrived at the hospital and agreed with my decision to wait and see.

We could see the motorway from the hospital window and we agreed that when the traffic had died down we would go and get the car (another teacher had driven it home to his house nearby as the school car park would be locked) and we would transfer to the original hospital we had booked into and where we had an outside chance of finding a midwife who we knew.

I signed a piece of paper promising I wouldn’t sue them and that it was entirely my own responsibility if I haemorrhaged and died on the motorway. I felt pretty confident and off we went.

On the way I started to feel mild period-type pains and started to believe that it was all really happening.

We arrived at Wythenshawe and were greeted by one of the nice midwives on our team. She hugged me and it felt really nice after the impersonal conveyor belt atmosphere of Hope Hospital.

We went into a little room to be examined and I was still 3cm (it had been about 4 hours since the last examination). Shows that mind can work over matter at least some of the time – I had clamped my cervix shut as I was NOT going to give with in Hope Hospital! At that point my waters broke and there was fresh meconium in it. All the staff started to whisper and I just picked up the word caesarean. The midwife explained to me that there was a high chance of a caesarean because of the blood and the meconium which meant that the baby was in danger. I said I would rather avoid it. They went away and whispered again and came back with the verdict that they would get the doctor who was pro-vaginal birth and this might help me avoid it.

Along the corridor into a delivery room and the pro-vaginal birth doctor, Dr Daewoo (not sure of spelling but pronounced like that brand of cars) , came in. By now the contractions were starting to hurt and although they had made me go on a monitor, there was a bit of flexibility and I could lean into a chair which helped a bit. Sadly, after a couple of contractions the monitor declared that the baby didn’t like that position so I had to lie flat on the bed – best for baby, apparently. The contractions hurt me in this position and I was moaning a bit. They took another look at the readout from the monitor and this time told me that my contractions weren’t effective ones and that I wasn’t progressing at all. And at the same time I was “obviously” not coping with the pain very well and should really have some pain relief as it would be at least another 12 hours. And epidural seemed the most sensible option as it would save valuable seconds if and when I had to go for my emergency caesarean. I asked if it they would check my cervix just in case before they put it in but the midwife (one I didn’t know now as the first one had finished her shift) said that they only examine four-hourly and I wouldn’t be any further dilated and it would just be disappointing for me – like the whole experience so far hadn’t been disappointing for me!

Motoi had gone home to collect some bits and pieces and by the time he came back I was all wired up the drips and machines and could no longer feel my legs. Dr Daewoo had said we could hold off with the caesarean if they put a foetal scalp monitor on the baby. They did and the heartbeat hardly wavered the whole time. It was consistently 140-144bpm. Distress? I don’t think so. I had some chemical being dripped into me to speed up the labour and counteract the effects of the epidural slowing it down.

A few minutes after the epidural went in, a doctor came and examined my cervix. “Oh!” she said, “You’re fully dilated”. So those contractions were effective after all. Shame it was only me who believed it and that I gave the power of decision making to all the monitor watchers.
It was suggested that we give the baby a little while to come down by itself before I start pushing and they set an arbitrary time for the action to commence.

The time came. I pushed into where I thought my vagina was. No gravity. No sensation to guide me. The clock ticked by and my allotted hour for pushing was up. A swift episiotomy and a tug with the forceps later and Elena was born. There were perhaps 10 people in the room waiting to resuscitate her but there was no need. She cried immediately and was fine.

We had a difficult first few months with trying to get breastfeeding established. Elena was so drugged up that she just slept all the time and it was impossible to get her onto my breast. A few days into it she decided that she was hungry but seemed to have forgotten all her instinctive sucking skills. Many hours spend with wonderful breastfeeding counsellors, numerous bouts of mastitis, two breast abscesses and some minor surgery on my right breast later breastfeeding (out of just the one breast) became wonderful and we continued until Elena gave up early in my next pregnancy.

I had originally only meant to give passing reference to Elena’s birth but I cannot seem to describe it briefly. Once I start, it all comes flowing out.

Birth weight were: Elena 7lbs 14oz/3.5kg

So, Emily’s birth….

Again, she was a very planned and wanted baby. This time we conceived on our first try and the pregnancy progressed without incident. In contrast to last time when I put myself in the hands of the hospital and fell for every trick in the book, I wanted to give birth to my next baby in a monitor and epidural-free zone. Home was the only option. I had to fight to be “allowed” a home birth. My GP said that as I “needed” forceps last time then I would probably need them again. The midwife was not supportive initially but later when she saw that I was not giving up, she arranged for me to see a consultant at the hospital quite early (about 12 weeks I think) and luckily she saw no problem with homebirth so I had to fight no more. I now know that I could have gone about it via a different route without involving the likes of GPs and asking for permission to have a homebirth. Next time…..

Throughout the pregnancy I read as much as I could and kept hearing and reading about this “overwhelming urge to push” and the body knowing what it was doing. As I had felt nothing during Elena’s birth, I worried that maybe I wouldn’t get this urge or instinctively know when to push. But the fear of going into hospital was much stronger so I just had to believe in my body and go for it.

The birth went something like this......

Felt the odd twinge (even twinge seems like too strong a word for it but I don't know a better one – it felt as if my cervix was just telling me exactly where it was) when I woke up and it seemed like things were loosening up around my cervix. Having breakfast at 7:30 I kept an eye on the clock and they were coming every 5 minutes - dead regular.

Still couldn't be sure if this was "it" especially as we were still 12 days off the due date. Again, I had a date in mind and was focussed on getting to the 1st of September. Again, the baby had other ideas!

Motoi went out to get enough food to do us for a few days and Elena and I started tidying up the back bedroom where it was all to happen just in case.

As the morning went on I became more sure that it was really happening. By about mid-day I was having to stop what I was doing and bounce on my birthing ball when the contractions came (these are great and should be given to all pregnant women - it was easily the best £9.99 I ever spent). I phoned my friend Viv (who had agreed to be an extra adult available for Elena) to check she was free and she said she was and as luck would have it her partner’s father was with her that day so she would be able to leave her own daughter with him - less pressure on the bathroom from newly toilet trained toddlers, etc!

At 12:30 I called the midwife as I decided there was no going back. To my disappointment it was the unpleasant one who had really talked down to me the last time I saw her. Due to holidays and staff shortages she was the only one available.

She came and examined me (the worst part of the whole process) and pronounced me 3-4 cm dilated and said she would stay with me. Aaaaaaaaaagh! No thank you! I said I was fine and that she should go off and do a clinic or something. She agreed to this and left me with her mobile phone number.

By 1:30 things were really hotting up and I rang Viv again and asked her to come over. It was getting to be too much having Elena cling to me and saying "Oooh, Mammy having 'traction, bounce, bounce, bounce!" each time. I needed to concentrate.

She arrived about 2 just as Elena had a bit of a sleep and it was nice to chat to her, bouncing away and tuning in and out of the conversation as I was! I also had my TENS machine on, though not sure it was in the right place as it wasn't a special birth one and had no instructions for where to put it during labour.

Another midwife came in the interim period and delivered some entonox. I tried a bit through one contraction but it didn't seem to change the feeling of the contraction and just made me feel as if I was going to fall off my birthing ball so I told her I would save it for later.

The original midwife came back at about 2:30 and by this point I was just about on the top setting of the tens machine and the contractions were coming every two minutes and lasting about 90 seconds. But still not really painful as such. Just something to concentrate on. All that bouncing was doing the trick.

Viv took Elena out for a walk at about 2:45 and I went up to have a bath. Motoi sat with me and we chatted about stuff – especially about how much nicer it was to be at home than in a hospital. It was really nice. The contractions felt much shorter in the bath.

About 3:10 I suddenly got the world's strongest contraction which was reallllllly painful and I could do nothing to ease it. It lasted until 3:20 and I writhed around in the bath trying all kinds of positions and nothing was helping. I was saying things like “If only I knew how long this was going to go on, I would be able to cope”. So sad that I can only recognise transition with hindsight! Then my waters popped. Suddenly felt really down and that I couldn't do it. Last time I didn't start to feel it until after my waters went. Panicked that this was all just for starters and it was really going to start to hurt from now on. Also knew the midwife would make me get out of the bath to avoid infection so there were no other pain relief options available to me.

Motoi went down to get the midwife, who had settled herself in for the duration on the settee. "It'll be born before midnight" she had said about a half an hour earlier.

At that point I felt the head move right down and it was there on my perineum waiting to pop out. Textbook grapefruit in the rectum sensation.

Midwife came upstairs and said unhelpful things like "Can you get out of the bath?" and "Do you want any gas and air?" (which was still downstairs in the living room) I was unable to answer as the baby was coming right then. We started letting the water out as it wasn’t deep enough to actually give birth in the water anyway.

Midwife decided to believe me and sent Motoi downstairs for her mobile phone to call the second midwife. By the time he got back the head was out. So sad that he missed this. The contractions were totally different and unlike last time when I was pushing away from my head into a sensationless vagina, this time my head wasn't in it at all. It was all coming entirely involuntarily from my womb (or somewhere!). I just felt tremendous pressure and knew that something was going to come out of somewhere but I couldn’t be sure if it was to be wee, poo or baby! The contractions were spaced out and there seemed like ages to rest between them. The next one brought the body out. And there was Emily placed on the floor of the bath between my legs (I had been kneeling with my hands resting on either side of the bath). It was 3:35pm.

After that came the stressful part. I had requested a physiological 3rd stage and the placenta just didn't want to come. They gave me a time limit of 1 hour before the syntocinon injection or transfer to hospital, but in reality they kept hassling me from about the 20 minutes stage. (The second midwife had arrived by this point)

When the hour was up I remembered that I had the homeopathic birth kit. I hadn't used anything up to then as it had all been so straightforward and easy. I looked up "retained placenta" and popped a couple of the likely ones into my mouth. It shot out immediately. What a relief! I don't think the midwives had seen a physiological 3rd stage before as they kept going off and whispering about what to do and phoned some other midwife to ask for advice. The advice was to cough or to blow into a bottle. The advice just to sit and wait was obviously not in the textbook.

Elena had come back during the waiting for the placenta time. She came into the bathroom and asked immediately “Who's that?" I explained that it was Chibi-chan - our name for the baby in the womb (Japanese for “Titch” or similar cute word meaning small) and that seemed to be explanation enough.

The starchy unpleasant midwife went off to write up her notes (couldn't have been much to write!) after having a hot flush and muttering about it having been the shortest labour in history. Obviously 25 years of midwifery practice isn’t enough when it comes to helping midwives expect anything other than the textbook 1cm an hour labour. The other one sat with me and we attempted to get Emily on the breast. She was really nice and personal and I'm glad she was there. As it turned out, I hardly had to exchange more than a few sentences with the unpleasant midwife throughout the whole thing so all's well that ends well on that front.

Since then (we are now a 6 weeks on) Emily is a very settled and undemanding baby - sleeping for 3-5 hour periods at night (She has been paid the highest compliment known to a breastfeeding baby: "She’s as settled as a bottlefed baby"). She seems to be feeding well (although I am terrified that all the mastitis and breast abscess problems will recur again - I had a really hard time breastfeeding Elena, the first 5 months were terrible and the 14 months after that were great).

Elena has had some wobbly moments but we seem to be back on track. The hardest part for me was seeing Elena upset. My parents came to stay to help and this involved taking Elena “out of the way” while midwives and health visitors called round. It didn’t really occur to me until afterwards that she wanted to be involved and chat to the midwife rather than be taken to the park or play in the garden. Felt guilty and sad but once I realised the problem it was easily remedied.

When the Midwife signed us off and said that my tear (3cm and left unstitched at my request) was healing "amazingly well".

So that was that. Thinking about it, it was really a very similar pattern as last time and as examinations are only performed four-hourly, if I had been in hospital and asked for drugs at 3:10 I probably would have been given them as there was no way (in their eyes) that I could be anywhere near fully dilated. And then it could have been the same sorry experience as the first time.

I look at Emily in amazement and think “Wow! I got you out of my body all by myself”. So glad that I was able to listen to myself rather than the supposed “experts” and make all the right decisions. So sad that it took the less than perfect experience of Elena’s birth to get me to the point that I could do that.

Birth weight were: Emily 8lbs 5oz/3.75kg

Lewis' birth

(June 2005) Practicaly perfect home birth ...

* Gillians breastfeeding experience

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