Birth stories. I used to despise them…I wasn’t interested in hearing them.
I’d sit down to enjoy a few vinos with my girlfriends and then they’d start talking about their gory, bloody birth stories.
Booooooring.
Cramping here, and moaning there. Hours of agony. Days of pains. Blood. Gizzards. Forceps, Stitches. Cursing. I’d sit there gulping my wine waiting for the conversation to change.
I was not into it. I was naive.
As always, it wasn’t until I became pregnant that I started to give a damn about birth stories. It seems that when you fall pregnant every young mummy wants to share their birth story with you (hence my blog). Good ones and bad ones. And I welcomed them all.
Some of my girlfriends were the lucky ones. They just meditated those little buggers out. In and out of hospital under 6 hours. Some went into a deep trance while others ‘mooed’ like a slaughtered cow and begged for the drugs. Birth stories began to fascinate me. They are all so different. No story is the same. Birth is a unique experience. It’s not text book, that’s for sure.
And no matter how much you plan for your birth, shit can still go askew.
I had decided early on that I was going to be one of the lucky ones and had planned to cough my baby out. Infact, not only had I planned to cough and meditate mine out… it was also going to be achieved drug free in a warm bath with salt lamps dimly lighting the room…soft, tranquil music would fill my ears…and earthy aromatherapy would blanket the room as my loving husband whispered sweet nothings into my ear and stroked my head
Lach and I were prepared for it and our midwife was too. I had done all the right things. Both Lach and I completed the ‘Calm Birth’ lessons and were totally into it. (I very much recommend doing this, if only for the men so they know what to expect. I found that Lach responded well to hearing it from someone else other than his ‘nagging’ wife!). Kath from ‘Calm Birth’ had recommended that we stop listening to anyone with a negative birth story. She didn’t want us to be thinking about others’ misfortunes. She also insisted that we didn’t call them ‘contractions’ or mention the word ‘pain’. Instead, we were to call them ‘sensations’ and ‘intense sensations’. Everything had to be positive to keep us in the right state of mind for our birth.
We listened to our meditations every night before sleep and every time I was in the car I practiced my breathing techniques, like an idiot. Holding the steering wheel I would breathe in for 4 seconds, hold it and release for 5.Over and over again. Sometimes I’d get a head spin. I’d been doing my kegels every day, (they became so annoying. Squeeze, hold, release, repeat). I purchased all the essential oils that I wanted to smell during labour. Lemon, lime, orange, clary, sage and lavender. I was taking my vitamins…having regular acupuncture to nurture my womb…walking everyday…I did my perineal massage routinely (wtf?) and was drinking loads of raspberry tea and burning clary sage in the oil burner.
I was in the zone.
I waited…
39 weeks…
Nothing…
40weeks…
Nothing…
41 weeks…
Nothing…
At this stage, my midwife gave me a ‘stretch and sweep’ (Picture a vet with their hand up a heifers backside)
Still nothing.
She booked me in to be induced at 42 weeks, which landed on a Tuesday. I did not want to be induced. That was NOT part of my calm birth, hippy birth plan. So on the Monday before Tuesday’s induction, I squeezed myself into an appointment at the super busy acupuncture clinic in order to try to be induced through acupuncture. I wanted to see if I could get things moving before the hospital induced me with yukky drugs and fake hormones. Induction through acupuncture still totally fitted with my le naturel birth plan.
But my birth, like many, many others…did not go to plan.
Giving birth is a very traumatic experience, both mentally and physically. I don’t look back on the birth of Luca with a negative mindset at all. I could, but to me it was one of the best experiences of my life. Even though it went incredibly pear shaped.
It should have gone to plan (right?) but during my acupuncture treatment something went terribly wrong.
My baby had been in the perfect position for months. Head down, ready to go. My acupuncture inducing treatment involved attaching a small electric device to some of the needles which were supposed to send small electric pulses and surges up through my meridians and into my uterus in order to encourage movement down below. It wasn’t painful at all; it was a strange, tingly sensation.
Or at least it was supposed to be.
I lay there peacefully like an electric pin cushion for half an hour before the practitioner (not my usual practitioner, as i had been squeezed in for a last minute appointment ) came in to turn off the pulse machine. But instead of turning it off she turned it up FULL BORE.. My entire lower body jolted up off the bed as the machine shot a painful electric pulse through my body. I let out a scream and jumped off the bed in shock.
“Oooops, well if that doesn’t bring on your labour, nothing will!” was the practitioner’s response as she pulled out my needles. I was in shock at what had just happened and didn’t know how to respond. So I kind of just laughed it off awkwardly and began dressing myself thinking…
“I totally just got tasered”.
By the time I had paid the bill, walked to my car and put my seatbelt on, my baby had moved out of position. I felt her moving inside me and when I rubbed my hand down my left side of my belly it felt soft.
She’d moved.
My baby was now on the right hand side of my belly. She had been zapped out of position. Was my baby ok? Did she feel that? My heart sank as I knew this meant my labor would now be even longer and more intense. I had worked so hard to do everything right and this one ‘accident’ changed everything. I rang my midwife immediately who told me she would try to massage it back into position. But it didn’t work.
When I went home I tried to persuade my little electrocuted baby to move back into position by walking the infamous ‘Bluff Stairs’; I pushed and poked my tummy but baby didn’t move back. I was devastated and so angry at myself for going to that acupuncture appointment. I was angry at the practitioner. What a stupid mistake to make.
But I’m a big believer in the ‘Things Happen for a Reason’ philosophy, so I just had to believe it was meant to happen like that. That evening, lying on the couch while I was cursing Cersei as she perched her crazy arse on the throne in the final episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ I had my first ‘sensation’.
Now I can’t prove that this is why my birth didn’t go to plan (the electrocution not Cersei’s coronation) but I’m pretty bloody sure I would have had my hippy, lovey dovey, drug free water birth if that lady didn’t taser my uterus.
I almost got there. I tried my best, for 30 hours!… but in the end I had to get out of the bath and onto the table for the birth we hadn’t planned for. Beeping machines, needles, knives and cords everywhere. The beebs went faster and then the beeps went slower. A lot slower. Scary slow. But that’s another story…