From Belinda:
OK, here is just a bit more of an explanation of Darcy’s birth and why we end up having a C-section. Read on if you’re interested…
Basically came in at 3 on Thursday afternoon, got admitted. They did a cervix check and it was still fully closed as it had been previously, so then they put a syringe-ful of gel on my cervix. They said I could go into labor on my own if that’s all I needed, or otherwise if nothing happened before morning, I would then have a drip to cause contractions, my water would be broken and it would go quickly from there.
Anyway, so about an hr after the gel was applied, I started to feel pain. They said that the gel itself can cause pains sometimes, but it usually doesn’t. Anyway, we started timing the pains and they were getting sorer and were also pretty regular! So we buzzed the nurse and she came and hooked me up to a fetal monitor. It showed the heartrate of the baby as well as 1 thing was hooked up to me to show intensity of contractions if there were any. Turns out I was having a type of contraction, but it was caused by the gel and it wasn’t progressing me at all, just giving me pain really! I had a few hot showers, but the pain was still regular. The nurse hooked me up to the monitor AGAIN (and this was NOT fun since I was in pretty strong pain), and she said at 11:30 the next shift midwife would check me (the pains were happening around 5pm!!!). So she came in, nope, no progress, just gel pain. She gave me Panadol and some sleeping tablets and said to try and get some sleep. By this stage we were frustrate d and I was sore and teary from pain, but we figured since it was nothing Steven should go home and rest since we knew the next day would be a big day.
Well, my pain continued and did NOT improve, in fact it got worse! I was thinking no amazing gel could cause this much pain for so long! So I buzzed the night-time midwife and said that I had not been able to sleep a wink (this was around 3:30am!!!) and that the pain was worse and if nothing else, could I get some more Panadol as it hd been 4 hrs. But she said she’d examine me to see if there had been progress of it was just more gel pain.
Sure enough, I was 2-3cm dilate and things had started happening! I knew it! LOL!
So what happened then, was I was taken from that room and never went back there – I went down to the delivery suite from that point onwards & she ran me a spa to deal with the pain for a while, since I was now in active labour. Once I got in, I soaked in there for quite a while. She phoned Steven and he got back to me at around 430 I think, then I got out of the spa and we lie/sat around for a while. Contrax were manageable but the plan was always to get an epidural as soon as I was able to. It was in my notes and I reminded them so they were aware to have someone on call ready for when I needed it which was GREAT (I’ve heard too many stories o someone wanting one, only for them to not be able to find someone to do it!).
I just breathed thru the contrax ( they offered me gas but I found it quite useless really) and once I got to 4-5cm they called the guy to do the epi. The last 10 mins I felt like I was starting to lose my tolerance for the pain (with the gel etc it tends to make you contract hard and more rapidly etc). I was so scared to be getting anaesthetic injected into my spine!! But I knew it was going to be worth it.
Honestly, there is no WAY I’d ever go drug-free birth after seeing the great affects that the epidural offered. Within about 10 mins or so, I went from the last few bad contrax being really bad even down my legs, to being not even being able to tell if I was having a contrax, if not for the monitors telling me so! I could feel some pressure but no pain whatsoever!! So so worth it!!! We were just sitting around laughing, watching TV, as if nothing was even happening!
Anyway, it got to the point where I was like 6cm the last time the Obst checked me after the epi went in, and all seemed fine. My dilating had slowed a little and a few times Darcy’s heartrate had dipped, so they were watching it but not majorly alarmed. I was flipped to lie on my side to see if that helped. They watched it for a while and his heartrate DID pick up, but the midwife said “It’s not BAD, but I’m not overly happy with that last trace, so I will go and show it to Dr Coleman and see what he thinks”. We said OK, and we just expected things would keep going as they had been.
Within a few mins, the midwife came back and basically said that he wasn’t happy and while it’s not an emergency, they thought it would be best to do a Csection to ensure that baby would be fine. She didn’t give us the option , she just said that she hoped we were ok and that was best and we said ‘ look, we had discussed this before, we just want him out safely and well and we are not disappointed or anything else if he has to come out that way’. She was quite surprised by that! Then Dr C strolls in and says that “Were doing a Cesar, let’s go!”. This was around 9:25am or so. Then all these nurses and theatre staff came running from nowhere, I was thrown onto another bed, we signed papers, I had my epiduarl dosage quickly tripled (sooo lucky I had it! Later Dr C told me I would have been totally knocked out otherwise as they would not have wanted to have waited for an epi to kick in! Eek!), then I was wheeled down there, and Steven came in just as they were ready to start, all gowned up and seated next to me. It all happened so fast, it was surreal really! Steven was REALLY scared and I think I was just going on adrenalin and a ‘ do whatever u have to do’ attitude, so I was pretty calm surprisingly!
So then by 9:40 he was born! Very fast!!!
At the time they didn’t know why he was distressed. They had a few theories. One being that the cord may have been short and not being allowing him to descend properly, another one was that his head was at a funny angle and he couldn’t go fully into my pelvis due to that. We think it was the latter, but basically what that meant was the contrax were strong, he wasn’t moving lower and he was as distressed at 6cm or more than he should have been at 10 so the Dr did not want to take chances.
It was all a bit scary I suppose, but I was just relievd to know he was totally FINE & I had total faith in my Ob to do what he thought best.
So that’s the story! LOL!
Today I got my drip and catheter removed, the bandages of my incision and was able to get dressed, have a shower and start to move around a bit. I’ve been sitting up and walking and have been able to do most of the baby duties, whereas yest I was confined to bed so I couldn’t.
I’m walking slowly and sorely but feeling a lot better. They are really big on managing pain at regular times thru the day with tablets so that you are not at all even in bad pain. So taking it easy, but getting there! It will be a while before I feel normal again, but already it’s a lot better than yesterday, so I’m confident things will keep going that way.
