{Birth Story} : Where I was Born Serie Project | Tania
During my pregnancy, I did a lot of work to address the fear I had of birth itself. My only knowledge of childbirth was that my mother’s birth with me was very traumatic, and everything that you see unfold in movies. I wasn’t looking forward to it.
Being an engineer, my way of addressing this was to delve incredibly deep into learning everything about what was happening to my body in pregnancy, and what it would do during birth to prepare. In doing so I discovered that I knew nothing about what pregnancy and physiological birth entailed, and when I came to understand it I genuinely deeply questioned the societal norm of rushing to the hospital and letting them take it from there. Thankfully my husband was on this learning journey with me and was completely on the same page.
Antenatal appointments at the hospital were lacklustre at best, and certainly did not fill me with the confidence I was searching for. Early in my pregnancy, a friend asked me if I’d considered a homebirth. At that point in time, I knew absolutely nothing about it, or any of the other birthplace and care options that existed. I naively listened to her speak of her own prior experience of homebirth with her second baby and plans to birth at home for her upcoming third baby. I thought, what an unbelievably strong woman!! I could never do that. How would I deal with it without pain relief? What if something went wrong? Wasn’t it just hippies that birth at home? All questions I look back on and giggle at now.
As the hospital appointments came and went, my husband and I slowly realised that homebirth was going to be our preferred route and we felt so up for it. Thankfully we found Rhiannon, with whom we just knew from the minute she set foot in our house that we were going to be in the right hands.
Fast forward to the day it all kicked off. I was 40+5 weeks and wondering when this baby was going to come out after observing my mucous plug slowly releasing in little bits for days and days prior. I remember joking that if the baby could just wait now for Friday pizza night to pass, and then kindly show some sign of arrival I would be so happy. Surely enough, I went to bed on Saturday night at around 10pm feeling what seemed like period cramps. I slept for about an hour or 2 and woke up as the cramps had seriously intensified. My husband and I started to get really excited - this must be it!!!! And I was promptly out of bed trying to move around a bit and breathe.
We called Rhi and agreed to monitor the frequency and intensity of the contractions and call her back when they were closer together. I remember feeling so incredibly excited, not at all scared or nervous. But unexpectedly quickly, the contractions were pretty close together and I was already struggling to talk through them. We rang back Rhi and she told my husband to start filling the pool and she was already on her way.
When she arrived at around 2am I was mobile but the contractions were already feeling really intense. I was a bit surprised at how strong they felt already. Wasn’t it meant to ramp up a bit more gradually than this? I didn’t consciously have these thoughts at the time though, and tried to focus on deep breathing and movement to get through them. I just kept thinking and saying to my husband maybe this means we will get to meet our baby really soon!!!
Rhi suggested I start doing horse's breath at each contraction which felt good but I was starting to already really struggle with the pain. Once I got in the pool I felt a bit better and tried doing all of the different movements and positions I had practiced during pregnancy. The warm water felt amazing. My husband and Rhi took turns holding my hands, applying cold washers to my face and neck... I will never forget how supported, loved and safe I felt in this environment and with them next to me. When our second midwife Haley arrived (who I had met before), her presence was also so calming and reassuring to me.
Hours passed. I don’t know how many hours or what time of day it was, all I remember is seeing daylight arrive and then disappear again through cracks in the dark curtains. My husband was by my side the entire time, encouraging and comforting me. I laboured in the pool. On the floor. On the bed. In the bathroom on the toilet. Nothing seemed to be helping the baby descend and the contractions were absolutely excruciating with little opportunity to rest in between. I had such intense pressure and pain in my back but I didn't feel the ‘bearing down’ sensation.
Rhi and Haley performed side lying releases on me a couple of times and I remember just absolutely bellowing from the pain. At this point the labour had really stalled and the contractions spaced out a bit. However during the last release, Haley was massaging me and my waters finally broke with an almighty pop!! I think I howled with relief and we all thought, oh my gosh, it is go time now!! I will remember that moment for the rest of my life. I hopped back into the pool and began labouring in there again with some renewed energy.
I have no idea how long I was in the pool for after my waters broke, but again the contractions were absolutely killing me. A vaginal exam at this point revealed the baby was most probably posterior and we promptly started doing the spinning babies manouevres to try and turn her. I cannot describe in words how painful this was for me. Every single move felt like I was slowly dying. I accepted sterile water injections to try and help with the back pain. I had read about them and heard that their administration was incredibly painful but they were quite an effective pain relief method. This certainly was true, although the pain of the injections themselves felt like nothing in comparison to the contraction pain.
After somehow getting through all of the spinning babies techniques, another VE revealed there was no change. Then the moment came that we were absolutely not anticipating nor prepared for. I was on the toilet starting to feel really miserable and completely exhausted. It had been about 21 hours at this point. Rhi explained that the next step would be us starting at the top and moving through the spinning babies techniques again, or consider transferring to the hospital for an epidural to help relax my body, allow me to rest a bit and attempt again after that.
I could not fathom performing the spinning babies moves again. But the absolute devastation of realising I had to now get myself to the place I feared the most was totally crushing. We didn’t even have a hospital bag packed, so strong was our belief that I would be able to birth our baby at home. I remember taking ages to make it up the stairs where my mum and sister had been patiently waiting this entire time. I cried my eyes out when I saw their faces and was tortured by the thought that instead of showing them the power of the female body to give birth, I was completely traumatising them as well as us.
As soon as we arrived at the hospital I could barely walk to the entrance. I had a moment of sheer disbelief and shame. I was the woman in all of the movies. Screaming in agony at the hospital entrance, needing help to even get to the birthing ward. Once I was put into a room, the epidural could not come soon enough. The midwife soon informed me I was only 4cm dilated, which I did not previously know. I felt like the walls of the room were closing in on me. The complete and utter disappointment that after 24 hours of labour and all of that effort, I was nowhere near birthing my baby.
I could not believe the turns of events, from anticipating a drug free birth in the pool at home to practically without hesitation accepting gas, an epidural and synthetic oxytocin. I did not want the syntocinon, but given I was only at 4cm and still trying to turn the baby, I accepted it thinking it might help move things along. After an hour or two, laying on my side with a peanut ball between my legs, finally the baby had turned anterior. I was so incredibly happy!! But this joy was soon destroyed with the information that I was still only 4cm and that the baby’s heart rate was starting to become unstable. It was clear the syntocinon had caused this and the hospital team advised me they were not comfortable to keep it on. We turned it off and I still had hope we could do this given a bit more time.
A further hour on, nothing had changed. I felt super weird during this time, knowing I was still in labour and contracting but not being able to feel anything. I started questioning what it would be like to give birth vaginally now, not being able to feel anything. How would I know when it was time to push? Would I even feel it or would the midwife have to instruct me? I started feeling really overwhelmed by the situation I was now in.
The obstetrician came back after another hour or so and things hadn’t progressed. We were then presented with the two options - wait longer (how long? No one knew) or consider a caesarean, which they of course recommended due to the baby’s heart rate fluctuations. At no point until this conversation took place did I think we would end up here. I felt like I was no longer in my own body and someone else was hearing these words. Given how exhausted I was, after some time to discuss with my husband and absolutely bawl my eyes out, we decided to go ahead with the c-section.
Our beautiful baby girl was born shortly after, and although it was the total opposite of what we had pictured, planned for and dreamed of in all the months leading up to this, we are beyond grateful that she arrived safely, that I was safe and that despite our fears of the hospital, every single person we interacted with there was kind, gracious and did not coerce or pressure us in any way. This truly felt like a blessing under the circumstances.
Since Jana’s birth I have been thinking about trauma a lot. When I was pregnant I did everything in my power to avoid the traumatic hospital experiences I had learned so much about. I decided to have a homebirth with the goal of having a positive birth experience that I could be proud of. Because I truly did, and still do, believe that women are largely capable of birthing their babies and that our bodies are made to do it. What I learned in my own birth experience though was expecting it to all go smoothly, and when it didn’t, not being prepared to change course so dramatically was incredibly traumatising.
I have a long road ahead of me to overcome this, and re-instill confidence if we decide to have another baby one day. But the overwhelmingly positive parts of our story are that throughout my pregnancy, difficult and long labour, and in the face of shock and adversity, my husband and I were an amazing team that I now feel like could conquer absolutely anything. If we choose to go down this path again, I have no doubt we will be able to handle whatever comes our way.
