Back to the first birth - Part 2: Baby #1

So there we were at 7am.  Tired, sleepy and wondering exactly how long it would be before we would meet our baby.  I had the gel inserted, was told to go home and rest for as long as possible and come back before lunch time.

The contractions started within half an hour of the gel, and continued all morning becoming increasingly more uncomfortable.  Around 11:00am I said I wanted to go back, but first we had to take our dog around to the in-laws place so she could be looked after.  That meant an extra 30 minutes for the most painful, annoying car ride I have ever been on!

I had contractions that I was literally jumping out of my seat for, and then, as we were waiting at the lights, stuck in road works of all things (!!!) I had a massive contraction and my waters broke all over the front (suede!!) seat.

When we got the to the birth center, they said that they had to put a canular in, so we waited for that and once it was in I jumped in the bath before anyone could say not to!   An hour later they wanted to check me, and when they found out that I wasn't dilating, they said I had to go up to L&D for augmentation - ie, Syntocinon.

I didn't want to have the drip, but they said that once the induction was started, I couldn't do anything else.  The next however many hours where one long painful blur.  I quickly found out that Syntocinon contractions are far worse than natural contractions, and the midwife kept on turning the dosage up.

By the time 8:00pm rolled around I was exhausted.  I hadn't eaten much, and the little I had, I promptly threw back up.   I hadn't drunk much water either ~ and I couldn't get in the bath.  Each contraction felt like someone was stabbing a rusty, blunt saw into my pelvis and crunching it backwards and forwards.  Between all of that, and possibly being dehydrated, I knew I couldn't go on.

I broke down sobbing because I knew I had to take one more step I didn't want too...  An epidural.  After agonising over the decision with my husband for half an hour (or more!  I really don't remember) we decided to do it.

The anaesthetist came pretty quickly, but once he was there he wouldn't really answer my questions.  I wanted to know how the epidural drug would affect my baby, and he basically said in so many words 'not to worry my pretty little head about it'.   He didn't want to take the time to reassure my fears, and I felt extremely patronised.   I had the epidural anyway, because again, I didn't really think I had a choice.

 I think that went in around 9:00pm.   I rested, and they did an internal at 10pm, only to find that I'd only dilated 1cm by then.  It wasn't good news.  I tried to get some sleep and did actually get some good sleep, but woke up at 12:00pm.   It was shortly after then - I can't remember exactly when, but I thought something felt wrong.

I looked at the CTG machine (because of course I'd been hooked up right after the epi) and I couldn't see my baby's heart beat.  I thought maybe something had slipped, but I called for the midwife right away.  She came in and couldn't find it again, and went out of the room.

Everything slipped into chaos.  The lights where thrown on, so many people sudden where bustling around me.  A doctor said it was time to meet my baby as he did an internal.  I was confused - surely I wasn't ready to push?  I woke my husband - "It's time to meet our baby!"

Then "We have to go to surgery right now."  They were wheeling me out, practically running me down to theater.  I couldn't see my husband and I started to feel really sick.   I said so to my midwife and she said it was because my baby wasn't doing well.   I was so scared I couldn't even feel it.

I was in theater, they put me on the table and spread out my arms.  Lines, canulars and people were tangled around me.  I couldn't see my husband - I was begging them to get him for me; he was my rock, my lifeline - didn't they know that I couldn't do this without him?  That I needed him more than anything?

They were doing things to me, I could feel it - but not, and finally they let my husband in.  He held my hand so tightly.  And I stared up at the blinding white lights.  I felt them rumaging inside me.  Pulling at my insides.  It felt so wrong, so invasive.  I felt like a piece of meat on a butcher's slab.  The baby was out.

But I couldn't hear him make a sound.  I strained my ears, listening for his cry.  All I hear was "Code Blue" and I knew that it was all very, very, wrong.  I cried and cried.  I asked is my baby ok?  Is my baby ok?

No one told me.  No one knew the answer.  I cried.  My husband cried.  We cried together, waiting....

Then someone told me he was ok.  But I wasn't.

I couldn't breathe.  I felt like I was slipping away into this soft, deep void.  I sent up a wordless plea "Dear God, please look after my baby!  Please look after my husband!"  I knew I was going.  But then, He answered - He sent me back because it was not yet my time.

I was still crying, unable to breathe.

Then they called my husband over to hold our son.  We had a little boy.  I turned my head and saw the pure, utter joy on my husband's face as he held our little boy.  He brought him to me, as I was being taken to recovery.

I reached out and touch his little face, so crumpled and red.  Everything else was a blur.  We decided to call him Theodore - "Gift from God".  They wheeled me away and took my baby to the neo-natal intensive care unit.

I went to recovery.   I was numb.   I was taken to the Postnatal Ward.  I wanted my baby.

He had been born at 1:30am that Friday, and all morning I asked "Can I see my baby?  I want to see my baby!"   The midwives said that they would do what they could, but they needed a wardsman to take me in my bed and everyone was too busy.

It wasn't until that afternoon that they finally took me up.  I was wheeled next to his crib.  I said hello to my little sleeping darling, my little trooper.  He was all strapped up - he had a canular in his hand.  I ached to hold him, but I couldn't.

I touched his little face and spoke to him, and just like that, in his sleep, he smiled at me.  And I knew that he recognised my voice.

Then my body took over and though I fought it with all my strength, I could not stay awake.  I fell asleep before my time with my baby was even up.  I woke up again in the ward.

And I still didn't have my baby.  That night I fed him for the first time at 10pm.  Then I was taken back and I slept.  The next morning I woke up, and it was dreadful.  I needed my baby, my husband - I was not ok.

When I finally saw my boy again it was around lunch time that day.   Then, at four o'clock on Saturday, they finally released him out of NICU and he was with me for the rest of our hospital stay.

We stayed until the following Monday, and then finally, we got to go home.  Our new little family of three.

xxx,

b.

We made it.... Baby #2

As I type, my little girl is sleeping.

Yes!  She finally arrived!

40 weeks +6 days over due ~ she was born the day before our Caesarian was scheduled.  I am currently working on adjust to having two little people to look after, but I will be back to write up the rest of Little T's birth story and give you the happy details of Little B's birth.

xxx,
b.

Updates - Baby #2

Here we are.  40 weeks +2 days....   I have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday and I won't lie - I am not looking forwards to it in the slightest.

Being a hopeful VBAC I know that the pressure is going to start as soon as I see him.  The talk of uterine ruptures as the baby just grows bigger and bigger, the pressure for monitoring, and yes, the dreaded repeat Caesarian section...  

Ugh.

Perhaps I am anticipating the worst?  I don't know.  I guess we'll see how we go.  I do know that the hospital I am booked in with will be happy to 'let' me carry the baby to 42 weeks, but I can't see my doctor being comfortable with that at all.  Which really isn't helpful at this point!

Extra stress - I do not need.

I'm keeping my chin up however.  My body is ready, this I know.  Every baby, every pregnancy is different.  That's what I'm sticking too!

xxx,

b.

Back to the first birth - Part 1: Baby #1

When I wrote Little T's birth story down in my journal, it was cold.  Clinical.  Straight to the point.  I wanted to remember, but in some ways I wanted to forget.

The fear.  The helplessness.  The crying.  The feeling of being so out of control that the only way to cope is shut down completely.  Which is what I did.  I shut down.  And only now: 1 year, two months, and two weeks later, can I say - "Well, no wonder I didn't have my baby naturally!"

It all started months before Little T's EDD.   I'd had some contraction-type scares before 26 wks; ones that seriously had us thinking that we were loosing our baby.  The only thing that kept me hopeful was that fact that no matter what was going on with my body, there was no bleeding, and whenever they checked me it seemed that my cervix was well and truly clamped shut!

That was scary, and it was nerve-racking.  But then we hit 26 weeks, and things really went crazy.  At first I would have an "episode" of contractions only once or twice a week, and I would just ride them out until they stopped.  But then the episodes started happening more often, they would last longer, and they got a lot more intense and difficult to deal with.  This cycle of stop-start just kept going until the episodes were happening every second night for more than four hours.  We reached the 41 week +5 mark riding in on these episodes, when everyone had been sure that I wouldn't even reach my due date!

I was exhausted. My husband was exhausted, and we had no idea what was going on, except that I had an "Irritable Uterus", which meant that no one else had a clue what was going on either!  

Looking back now, I can see the signs of prodromal labor -

• Real contractions - ones that didn't go away, would get stronger, would time anywhere between 30 seconds and a minute long, and definitely didn't fit the Braxton Hicks standards
• 'Episodes' of contractions that would last any where over 1 1/2 to 3 hours long
• The contraction episodes pretty much always happened at night - either just as I was trying to sleep, or would wake me up in the wee hours of the morning
• I'd fool myself, my husband, and even my midwife!  It was only the internal exams that 'proved' nothing was 'happening'  

However, I knew nothing about prodromal labor back then.  All I knew was that I was so incredibly tired, that my confidence in my body's ability to give birth was just about shot, and that I had started to shut down because I just couldn't cope any more. 

And then my lovely midwife laid it on the line - the hospital attached to the birth centre I was with was starting to think about induction, and I had two options - to be induced or to come in every day (with an 30 minute drive each way, not to mention parking problems due to major renovations!) for monitoring.   

I felt helpless.  Induction was the very thing I hadn't wanted.  I had done the research - I knew that inductions can cause problems, and at the very least, usually end up with some level of further intervention.  It was a slippery slope I had determined I wasn't going to go down right from the very beginning.  

Now it was staring me in the face....  

I was 3 days away from hitting the 42 week mark, (EDD was that Saturday) and my midwife was going away on holidays that weekend.  I couldn't believe that this baby was ever going to come, and my rock, my darling husband, wasn't there with me to help me face this (in my mind) devastating news.  

I burst into tears walking to the car, and called my Mum.  She was lovely, but she didn't really get it.  She said that she knew it wasn't what I wanted, but if they had to do an induction, then there wasn't really any choice. 

That was the last straw that broke the horse's back.  I think that's when I was defeated.

I dried my tears and drove home.  My husband and I tossed the issue back and forth, but I guess in my heart I'd already given up.  I just couldn't trust my body, I couldn't trust my judgement, and all I wanted was for my baby to be safe.   We scheduled the induction for Thursday morning, 7am.

.....     .....     .....

Mistake #1:  Lack of communication

        My husband didn't really know how very upset and scared I was over the whole induction process.  I felt like there was pressure from the hospital, from my midwife who was going away, and inadvertently pressure from him as he utterly exhausted by this stage and I didn't want to put him through any more stress.  Because I'd started to shut down, I couldn't express all this to him - in fact, I didn't even recognise any of this myself.

But because of that, we ended up making a choice that we'd both regret.

Mistake #2:  The fear and the worry

        I didn't work through any of these emotions.  Like I said, I shut down.  I just stopped functioning on a emotional level, and somewhat on the mental level.  These emotions and thoughts would then continue to haunt me well after Little T was born, and I haven't even yet fully worked through them all.

.....     .....     .....

xxx,

b.

What's happening - 1 Week of my PL with Baby #2

My prodromal labor started two Sundays ago, the day after I had gone to the osteopath.  I was 37 weeks along, and had a lot of lower back pain.  I knew that a lot of women often go into labor after visiting the osteopath, but I didn't worry about that because I knew that if my baby wasn't ready, it wouldn't happen.  (And so far it hasn't anyway!)

Anyway, I woke up feeling extremely crampy Sunday morning - I couldn't sit still in church, but had to keep swaying in my seat!  Even standing around afterwards I was constantly moving.  I had a nap in the afternoon, which actually turned out to be a bad thing, because combined with the going out in the morning, the long sleep in the afternoon, and the usually hot day, I got really dehydrated and collapsed on the floor Sunday evening.

I didn't faint thankfully, but we still had to go to hospital, so that was trip number #2.  (Number one had happened some weeks ago with a 'labor' alarm that fizzled out.)   They kept me in overnight for observation, and I was sent home the next morning, on the Monday.   Tuesday I rested, feeling extremely tired from poor sleep the night before, but then in the afternoon the tightenings that I had been feeling since Sunday morning started turning into contractions.

Tuesday evening my body went into 'labor'.   I had contractions regularly, 1 minute long and 1 1/2 minutes apart.  I was going pretty well and coping ok, just ready to see what would happen.   Then something kinda popped during a contraction and we had a gush of fluid - my doula and I thought it was my waters, because immediately after that, the contractions ramped up and I supposedly(?? Still unsure if I did or didn't - still don't know if I might have had the baby if left alone!) went in transition.

I was shaking, vomiting, and all of that - then the involuntary pushing started.  I couldn't have stopped it if I tried.  My doula asked if I could get in the car and go to hospital, but I just couldn't even wrap my head around that.  So my husband called the ambulance.  When the paramedics rocked up, everything went wonky.

The lights were on, they were asking me all these questions and I just wanted them to leave me alone!  However, they were insisting that they transfer me to the hospital, and I knew I couldn't just get on with it and let my body do what it wanted to with them around, so I reluctantly agree to go.

Once in hospital (imminent birth coming through!!) I can't remember quite what happened, but I ended up in the bath and I was told that my baby wasn't coming tonight.  *sigh*

I was given sleeping tablets, and managed to get some rest, but woke up at 5am only to have my body go into 'labor' again, with the vomiting and heavy contractions again.  After monitoring, a canular, and extremely painful internal examination, they determined my baby was not yet coming and I needed to 'relax' and let my body either dilate or stop the show.

Well, it didn't stop completely, but it did calm down.  I was still crampy, still tightening, and so on and so forth, and absolutely dead tired by this stage.  I got sent home, which I was actually happy about.

I then proceeded to spend Thursday, Friday, and Saturday alternating between extremely nauseous, vomiting, and being able to eat a decent meal.  Go figure!  I am sure it's not a tummy bug, 'coz Little T and Hubby were(and are) just fine, while I continue to feel quite sick off and on.

A few more sessions of contractions, but I ignored them and managed to get them to tone down again, until Sunday afternoon when they ramped up and I started to feel sick - but in an off kind of way.  That scared me a bit, because I haven't really had that with contractions before, so yup, off to the hospital again!  (The midwife thought I might have felt sick because of the heat/steam of the shower, which I was in.  So I'll know that for next time.)

Everything was okay with the baby, and with me thankfully, so we were sent home again after an hour or two.  And here we are.  This week the cramps, random contraction sessions and nausea are still going strong.  I'm pretty much useless these days - I'm trying to conserve all my energy for the end of this prodromal labor.

It will happen, but whether it's not for another week - or even 2 or 3 I don't know.  I feel like my body is ready, but the baby isn't in a good position.  She keeps swinging from a right-side position, with her back to my right side, to posterior (not good!!) and back again....  I feel that if she would just "lock and load" we'd be good to go.

I'm still waiting for that to happen.   Waaaaiiiitttiiinggggg.......  And now we are 38 +4 days pregnant.

xxx,

b.

Frog Blog and a Prodromal Birth Story

Love this prodromal birth story ~ it makes me feel sooo much better to know I'm not alone!  Frog Blog is also a great tool for mamas wondering about prodromal birth, so please check it out.  :)

Finally! Claire's Pre-Birth Story (otherwise known as My Braxton Hicks School of Relaxation!)

xxx,

b.

Green Giraffe Guest Post - An experience of prodromal labor

Most information about labor and delivery is based on averages, norms... MOST ladies have the following type of labor... But, having had 3 kids, and having talked with multiple other mothers, there is one thing I have learned... Not all labors follow the "norm." There are quite a few out there that are totally different. If you know nothing about labor/delivery, this can be frustrating. How do you know when to go the hospital? How do you know "This is it..."?

Many ladies have rushed off to the hospital, only to be told they are having false labor. That is the last thing you want to hear in "your condition." There is a little known type of "false labor" that all you ladies need to know about in case it ever happens to you. Here is my story, and the information that I found out afterwords that explained it all...

There is a type of labor called "Prodromal labor." Often misdiagnosed by medical professionals as "false labor," this labor is anything but false (although it is a bit deceptive... Editor: To say the least!)

1. The first sign of prodromal labor is regular contractions. These contractions may be in a "normal" pattern, or they may be somewhat random, but the contractions do not stop.

2. The second thing of note is that the contractions "feel like real labor." They do not go away, and can be just as intense as the hardest labor a woman can experience.

3. The third sign of prodromal labor is that, even though the contractions may last for several days, even a couple of weeks; there is little to no noticeable sign of progress. The doctor will "check you" and say, "not dilated" or "no effacement" or "still at 1 cm - same as last 3 weeks..."

All these characteristics mean it is quite difficult to know when the baby is really going to come. However, the last and final way to know that you had prodromal labor instead of false labor happens quite suddenly - at some point, the labor changes from being seemingly unproductive to causing extremely rapid changes in your body. Once progress starts being made, it is quite common to go from 1-2 cm dilated to delivery in only a couple of hours. Some report that they dilate from 0-10 in 45 minutes or less.

If you think you are having prodromal labor, there are some things you should do:

1. Don't worry. Worrying about it will only make it worse.

2. Have plans and back-up plans for when labor really does start - make sure you (and your partner) know what to do in the case you are not able to get to a doctor or midwife on time.

Editor:  3.  And rest, rest, rest!  Whenever you can, however you can.  You may not be able to sleep during the night, but you need to keep your energy levels up if you are in Prodromal labor so that when the time comes you will be able to cope with the final stages of your L&D. 

Thank you Green Giraffe for this awesome information!  Don't forget to visit her post for her story and experience of prodromal labor.

xxx,

b.

This is it - this is the end - Baby #2

Hi.

I'm me.  I'm 38 weeks +3, pregnant with a little girl due on the 29th of March, 2013.  And I'm very quickly losing the little that is left of my mind.

To clarify ~ it's not the dirty house, which, I will be honest, does bother me a lot.  I'm a slightly obsessive neat-nick.  Ya know the kind, a place for everything, and everything in it's place?

It's not the melted, non-existent-in-any-form-but-the-neatly-drawn-up-chart-on-my-kitchen-chalkboard-lack-of-schedule....  Yeah, I'm one of THOSE mamas.

Or even the transformation of my gorgeous smily 22 month year old, Little T., into a whining, needs-Mama-to-go-everyWHERE-with-him, bump bashing, body crashing, crazy munchkin.  

It's not even the fact that my best friend's wedding is the day after my due date, or the fact that the aforementioned Little T was delivered by emergency Caesarian section, which makes this baby a hopeful VBAC that is soon-to-be on the clock...

No, it's none of those things.  It's a little thing called Prodromal Labor.  Which I am experiencing right now.

Ugh.   This sucks.

And that, dear friends, is the reason I am starting this blog.  For all the other Mamas out there that think they are alone.  That think they are going cray-cray.   You're not alone, you're not cray-cray; prodromal labor is real and it is a real pain in the A$$.

So join me on the journey; let's suffer through this together!  Yay!

xxx,
b.