The Labour Story… at long last 1, July 2008

I’m going to tell you the story of my labour… it might not be a good idea in some ways but in others, it gets it out of my head. It’s pretty ordinary, nothing major happened, it just seems a good idea to write an account. I wrote the first bit on my first night in hospital… the rest is written now.

The day comes… We ring at 6.30 as asked. “Oh yes!” They say. “We’re not that busy. Can you be here by 8?”

Ooo… So much for going in at about 2.00pm.

“No.” I say. “Not in rush hour – and I haven’t had a shower yet – but we’ll be as quick as we can.”

“No problem, we’ll be waiting. Come as close to 8 as you can.” They tell me.

In the car I broach the tricky subject; that a baby might change our relationship, that initially Mr BC might feel marginalised by my constant attention to Mini BC. That we might feel estranged from one another as we adjust to life with the baby.

“But that’s other people. We’ll cope. We always do.” He says and I love him more at that moment than perhaps I ever have.

We make it to hospital by 8.15. Not bad. On arrival we are shown to our room and we meet our midwife. She amuses me by telling me she only works nights usually because there are less interfering doctors. I am relaxed at once, I know she will protect me.

She does an internal examination, which is grim, before putting some telemetry equipment on me – they call it a trace but it’s all datalogging. It monitors the baby’s heart beat and movements. He’s a busy little blighter this morning so I feed him a granola bar in case he is hungry. My cervix is lower than they expect and a scan reveals he is finally engaged, hoorah! No C section!

I meet the Registrar, another very sympathetic person who is very laid back and friendly. I take to her at once – if anything does go wrong I feel safe in her care, too. Oh good. She clearly trusts my midwife, who is called Anita, to do her job and leaves her to it.

I am given a hormone pessary to soften and open my cervix. In six hour’s time, we’ll find out if it’s worked. If not, we’ll try again. After that we’ll have to wait 24 hours before we put any more pessaries in so they’ll probably break my waters.

It’s 10am. It’s hot in the room and so, since it’s a lovely day, we go for a wander. We sit on a seat in the grounds where I play patience on my iPaq and he gets his lap top out and does a little work. We talk about nothing much, enjoying our friendship and the pleasure of each other’s company. Simple, unassuming time spent together. The best.

Finally we return to my room for a spot of lunch. Here are some sandwiches he made earlier. We giggle at my name tag which notes my patient number, name, date of birth, NHS number and hugely amusingly (to us) gender. Just in case there’s any confusion, me being here to give birth and all. Well… I suppose a bloke who bumped into me at a car boot the other day did say “sorry sonny”. I think he was a little shocked when I turned round… I mean it’s not just the trucker paunch is it, there are boobs.

We applaud the wisdom of our decision to return when the midwife nips in – she’s clearly been keeping an eye out for our return. A brief check and off we go to the garden again. We walk down the cycle path to the railway line and back. Yes, I am feeling it now. Not contractions exactly – still pathetic period pains – but stronger.

Back at 3.30 for another internal. She offers me gas and air. I refuse and regret it. It’s far grimmer than a contraction because you can’t manage it in the same way, even though it’s less painful. My cervix is further forward now, softening, dilating and she can put one finger through and feel the baby’s head. Another pessary and we will have to wait until 11pm to find out more. Good. With any luck they will leave me to it at that time of night and let me sleep so the two of us are fighting fit in the morning.

We ascertain that I will be fed and Mr BC prepares to go home.

He writes a list of the things I’ve forgotten or he thinks I may need. Then he finds out if I can use my phone. I can but not the ward. I kiss him goodbye and tell him to drive carefully.

“Of course! Push hard!” He says. Idiot! I kiss him and he is gone.

He’s coming back after supper but the hormone pessaries are clearly working as a little piece of me seems to go with him. I almost weep. I watch the road outside to see his car drive past. When it finally does I wonder if he can see me up here in the window or if he has worked out which room is mine. I can’t see his face but he slows down for a speed bump so I have time to rush out of bed put my face to the glass and blow a kiss at the receding form of the car as it disappears round the corner.

I look at my watch. Half past five. He’ll never make it home and back by half past seven. I lie back and realise I know bugger all about the process of having an induction – I seem to have read up extensively on caesarian section and not much else. Plank. Never mind, luckily my NCT booklet has a birth story from someone whose had one. I make a mental note to show it to Mr BC when he comes back. At 10pm he goes home to bed. I’m beginning to have contractions so to distract myself from his absence, I time them.

****

Over night I have strong regular contractions. The midwife tells me to lie on my side as this will encourage the baby to move down and keep the contractions coming. Then before she goes off duty she introduces me to her replacement, he is as camp as a row of pink tents with an outrageous accent. Spanish? Portuguese? Possibly Romanian. I’m not sure. He’s a lovely chap and again, I feel safe in his care.

Good.

I turn the light out and despite toying with the idea of applying the tens machine decide not to. The pain is fairly major, like it was when I had my miscarriage but blessing the toughening up caused by a history of unspeakable periods I still manage to sleep.

In the morning I wake at 5 am and go to the loo. The contractions have stopped.

Arse.

I don’t want the hormone drip, it’ll make me all weepy and lu-lu… and like as not it will also make me hurl.

Pink Tents has been called away to Theatre so another midwife comes in to see me, Villa (I’m ashamed to say I’ve no idea how to spell her name but it is pronounced like that) puts a Valflow or is it a Canula in my hand, it’s a bit big and a double decker as it has to accommodate the hormone drip and the antibiotics – I have group B strep so need to have antibiotics administered every four hours throughout labour. She explains that they are going to break my waters at six am.

“Six am! Goddammit! Can’t it wait until my husband gets here?”

She tells me she recommends not calling my husband and since I can’t while I’m hooked up to the telemetry machine because mobiles aren’t allowed on the ward, I have no choice anyway. She gives me another sodding internal which is just as agonising as the others.

“Nope. I’m not even going to attempt that.” She says and hurries off to get the surgeon on duty. He is called Tom and I explain that internals fucking smart and that I want my husband with me before he does anything. He says that isn’t possible but offers me gas and air. I am diverted by the fact it makes the same noise as Darth Vader when I breathe. Yes it takes the edge off but it’s still excruchiating. For all that, he is very quick and clearly trying to make the process as pain free as possible.

I never find out why they have to break my waters at 6 am and why I am not allowed to call my husband when the decision is made to do so. He would have arrived by the time they did it anyway. A few minutes after they’ve finished he does. I lie in a huge pool of red gloop. My waters are the right colour but this is pink actually, not the clear I’ve been led to believe.

Villa comes and says goodbye, she is going off duty and her replacement – a lovely woman whose name has completely slipped my mind I’m ashamed to say – comes and introduces herself just as Mr BC arrives. She tells me she thinks they were mean not to let me call Mr BC in early and even meaner to break my waters before he arrives. Never mind, I forget it all when I discover he has brought coffee, knowing as he does that the coffee in hospitals is often indistinguishable from the tea and that both tend to suck royally. God I love this man! I want to have his children… ah yes, it seems I am.

We are told we are free to go for a walk but must be back by 10am to start the syntonoxin (is it) hormone, anyway, drip. I don’t want to start the hormone drip. It makes most people hurl and as somebody who tends to hurl more than most people, the outcome is inevitable – not to mention reports of hormonal weepiness.

I explain this to my new midwife and she tells us that obviously, if we aren’t back, she won’t be able to start the drip. We do come back though and sure enough she plugs me in. I get my first shot of antibiotics, too. Shortly after that I start to experience contractions.

I’m hooked up to the telemetry machine and I sit on a birthing ball, wearing my tens machine. Tens is great, that tingling is very relaxing, I should imagine it’s even relaxing when you’re not in pain. I’m glad I bought rather than hired it as I can see myself using it later. The consultant pops in with the nice registrar I met yesterday. They have come to regard me as the woman with a sense of humour so he gently ribs me and tells me he hopes I won’t be bothering him by causing him any work to do later.

“Not if I can bloody well help it!” I tell him. They laugh about my birth plan – which was written with an eye on amusing them. Let’s face it, the general public can be complete cunts but when they are frightened and concerned they must be totally grim, ergo, I feel I should do my best to amuse and give them a break from the usual. They like the line about my “husband-shaped birth partner” but also something about plopping the baby on me before they clean him because I’ll be covered in gunk anyway and a bit more is hardly going to make a difference.

It’s now about half ten and the midwife tells us the hormones may make me sick, as if I didn’t know, she recommends I eat as much as I can now as I will have to go the rest of my labour with just water. I serial – or should that be cereal – trough muselie bars and drink a couple of pints of water. After 40 minutes they promise me they will remove the telemetry stuff and I’ll be able to walk about.

Good.

The telemetry is problematic, though. We seem unable to get 40 minutes of full on trace, it keeps picking up my heart beat instead of the baby’s. It’s a pain because until we do I will be stuck on this machine. After two hours the midwife begins to wonder if the trace is correct and the baby’s heart rate is dropping. This would be the case if the cord is trapped somewhere. We will wait a little and see if it frees itself, as it often does, if not she will get the consultant.

She goes to lunch and Anita comes back. Now I feel safe because I know she’ll protect me. She looks at the trace and me and says she thinks it’s definitely the baby’s heart beat which is dropping. Soon my allotted midwife comes back. They discuss it. Anita is clearly very knowledgeable – I noticed even the Registrar deferred to her the previous day – and my midwife seeks her advice. Is it the baby or a dodgy trace only, she reckons it might be the baby? Anita is pretty sure it’s the baby. Ok, do we think it will rectify itself. Hmm… not sure. They change my position, I must lie on the bed. I am not pleased, I may have a couple of day’s labour ahead of me without food and gravity is no longer my friend.

They leave me alone for a minute or two, the heart beat speeds up, drops and then stops for two or three long, heart stopping seconds. I know, now, this is not my heart. It’s his.

Shit.

Mr BC and I exchange glances. He smiles to reassure me. Nothing is said but his eyes tell me he is as worried as I am.

Suddenly it starts again at about 200bpm as the pain of the contraction recedes. It drops back to 134, which is where it’s been between contractions all along. Time to see how I’m doing. Right now the baby is fine, the rest of the trace if excellent but they need to gauge how long the labour is going to be.

Another internal. I’m about 3 cm dilated and Anita can feel the baby’s head but nothing else. Not a prolapsed cord then. Time to get the surgeon on duty. Also time for Anita to leave, the midwife’s lunch is over, not that she took much of it, bless her, so Anita wishes me luck and goes.

The surgeon called and the midwife comes back and explains that there is a chance I will end up having a caesarian. I’m not surprised and Mr BC and I agree we’d rather now than after 30 hours of labour.

The surgeon is the Registrar, the woman from yesterday. Result.

To belt and brace she suggests we put a sensor on the baby’s head and we turn down the hormone levels.

Marvellous. Less hormones, good but yet another fucking internal. Very bad. Mr BC holds my hand.

They do the internal and stick the probe on Muffin’s head. I can feel it moving as his head moves and am not remotely surprised when it falls off immediately. Luckily they’re still delving about inside me. They put it on a second time and it falls off again almost at once but not until they’ve removed their hands and got the rubber gloves off.

Wank! They’re going to put on another one. More internal delvings. Never mind, my dignity is long gone and has left no forwarding address. Even so, I lose my rag and start to cry. I don’t want another internal and I tell them. It hurts and it’s not manageable like the contractions. They give me more gas and air. It takes me a while to work out what the matter is and at this stage I have no idea why I’m crying.

The probe stays on for 20 minutes and then falls off again. However, we now have enough trace to know that it’s Muffin’s heart that’s fluctuating. The cord is definitely trapped somewhere but he’s doing fine right now. Ok for a short labour but not for a long one. Finally I understand why I cried and am able to explain. I am thinking about the one I lost, the little girl and I don’t think I can bear to lose one at this stage. I tell them it’s the syntonoxin messing with my ass and not to worry. The Registrar leaves to get the consultant.

While they are gone the Midwife cues us up for the next stage – they’ll try to do a gas test, that is, take blood from the baby’s head to check the levels of oxygen. If they’re ok, we’ll carry on with labour, if they’re not, it’s a c for me. She is not sure but suspects I am not dilated enough to be able to do the gas test.

The Registrar comes back with the jolly Scottish Consultant who is wearing slightly stained greens.

“I thought I told you not to pester me today.” He says cheerfully.

“Ah yes, but I’ve never been one to do as I’m told.” I tell him. I have regained my sense of humour by this time, mainly because I’m pretty sure I will not be having a c which means I will not be having another internal. We all laugh and then he tells me he is going to leave me in the capable hands of the Registrar. She goes out with him and once again the midwife cues up our expectations. She tells us she reckons a c is definitely on the cards. Sure enough a few moments later the Registrar returns.

She explains that Muffin’s levels are those of a baby coping admirably but that it’s likely to be a long labour and she doesn’t have the option of doing a gas test. That being the case although there is nothing to suggest there is a long term serious problem if this is the “nought point nought nought 1 percent where something is wrong” we need to rescue the little chap. That means a c of which she has done about 400 so not to worry. What do I think?

I think fine. She clearly has a hunch that something is wrong, despite the lack of medical evidence to back it up and since I do too, I’m ok with that. Mr BC exchange glances and he nods, yep he’s thinking the same.

Good.

We sign the consent form and suddenly everything gets very fast and very urgent. They rush me, yes they are walking VERY briskly – almost running – to theatre and I suddenly realise this isn’t going to be like one of my knee ops where the process of getting you to theatre is quite measured and takes an hour or so. they wheel me straight into the operating theatre. There is music playing, female lead ballads from Andrew Lloyd Webber. I sit on the edge of the bed and am given a spinal, in about three minutes I am on the… um what do you call that? Slab? Yes, slab. The bloody syntonoxin kicks in and I start to cry, not sobs and my mind is perfectly clear. I’m just kind of… leaking. I am also shaking uncontrollably.

Shock I guess.

The anaesthitist sprays me with cold water, can I feel the coldness? No just the water.

Good, we’re ready.

Shit! Where’s Mr BC? Ah here he is, all greened up with a red hat on so nobody hands him anything.

He holds my hand but the slab is tilted away from him and I can’t see his face. I am breathing in gasps and can feel nothing from the boobs down… well I’m not too concerned about that! I’d rather not feel anything but I hate the shock and the worry they have put a screen in front of my face but I can see the lights, despite my shaking sobbing body my mind is very calm. I am looking at the lights and thinking.

“Bloody hell! Next time I’m having a fucking general!”

They make the first incision, the song playing has finished.

“Tell me on a Sunday, please…” Sings Eileen Page or somebody. I will never feel quite the same way about Andrew Lloyd Webber ever again, even if my Dad did used to teach Tim Rice.

The anesthatist realises that I can only feel my husband’s hand but can’t see him, she leans over, makes eye contact and talks to me. I want to say something funny to reassure her but my sense of humour seems to have fallen off the trolly somewhere in one of those anonymous hospital corridors on the journey down.

They are opening me up, I know they will cut the skin and then tear, I tell Mr BC not to look but it’s too late. He tells me later that he watched that and then decided to watch my face for the rest. He holds my hand and almost immediately I hear the sound of a baby cry.

I start to laugh, except with the shock and the continuing tears what comes out is great gasping sobs. I’ve had a baby and he’s not dead even thought the reason he didn’t engage until right at the end was because the cord was wrapped tightly round his neck. Hoorah! It’s 3.07pm and I reckon I probably signed the consent form about 8 minutes ago. When can I go home? I ask as they sew me up.

Not for a couple of days…

Damn.

They do the gas test immediately. Everything is fine, the oxygen levels are excellent. Thank god. There’s a bit of rummaging inside me, a bit of a farty noise while they squeeze the air out of my body cavity and sew me up. Now they’re ready to wheel me out. The whole thing, start to finish, has only taken three or four Lloyd Webber Songs. I wish they were playing 1960s RnB like the bunch who did my knee.

I think they hand him to Mr BC while I am sewn up or maybe he goes away to change. The next thing I know I’m in the recovery room. I feel like shit. Mr BC is with me, holding the baby. My sense of humour has reappeared. Good. I sleep and eventually after an attempt to breast feed which fails totally – nothing coming out – I am wheeled up to the ward and as I leave the team who cut me up are all there. I wave to the Registrar and thank her. “You made an excellent judgement call.” I also tell her. After all, it did save my son’s life. On the ward I still feel shit and try to eat, Immediately, I throw up. Oh how much better that feels.

Mr BC is still holding the baby. He is beautiful, fine blonde hair and dark blue eyes although he is sleeping, mostly. I am not allowed to lift him but it doesn’t matter it’s ok, we are parents of a healthy little boy.

The Muffin has landed.

***

It’s five days before we are allowed home, all the midwives who tended to me in the delivery ward visit me – Anita brings flowers. I am incredibly touched and grateful. Five days in hospital is always grim but these are five days which stood me in good stead.

My milk didn’t come in until the morning of the fifth day but all the time I was there they encouraged me to breast feed. It’s fucking difficult by the way. Don’t expect your little one to suckle like a pro and all to be peachy. You have to teach them. Having had to do that, I am even more impressed that the human race hasn’t died out.

I have huge tits and flat nipples and he is a tiny baby with a small mouth. It’s still not anywhere near there but we’ve nearly made it now and I’d have probably given up without the help, expertise and advice I received in those five days.

I leave you with some advice. Anyone reading this who does end up having an emergency c section, here are three things nobody tells you which I know I would have loved to have known first.

One, when they say “emergency” they mean it. That means the actual op is quite freaky – there’s no reason to be afraid but they get you down to the operating theatre quite quickly after you’ve signed the consent form and that urgency may throw you a bit – especially when they’re swabbing you down, giving you a spinal and having you on the table ready for opening in about 5 minutes flat – for me that was far more scary than the idea of what was about to happen and I think it was that sudden realisation of the urgency which put me into shock.

Two, I can’t lie to you, the first couple of days afterwards it will smart a tad – no it’ll smart like fuck but the good news is, the pain abates remarkably quickly.

Three, the thing that causes you the most pain on those first few days is not the fact you feel like you’ve been in collision with a freight train and sewn up with bailing twine – although that doesn’t help. It’s trapped wind. I kid you not. They don’t tell you this so when you get the first bout you think you’re going to die! It’s usually under your diaphragm which can cause referred pain in your right shoulder. Apparently this is standard and normal. They gave me some weird liquid which made me burp like the MGM lion and that cured the pain instantly. So um… if any of you have any doubts and think you might end up giving birth the way I did, pack your Deflatine!

Here ends the longest labour account in the world, ever!