#23: Becca’s redeeming, chatty and calm assisted birth story …
Trigger warnings: please note that this birth story discusses mental health, episiotomy and assisted delivery.
Before we get to birth, let’s start at the beginning. How was your pregnancy?
Pregnancy was hard. I struggled a lot with energy, with anxiety (I had a chemical pregnancy two months before, and it had taken a long time to conceive), and a lot of sickness.
I remember constantly looking for reassurance that the symptoms I was getting were normal, that everything was progressing as it should, and it was only really the third trimester onwards that I started to get excited. Feeling my baby move was the most exciting thing, especially when at times I could almost see her little foot tap dancing away against the side of my bump.
And, before the event, how did you feel about giving birth?
I knew from the start I didn’t want a water birth, and a home birth was out of the question because of my anxious nature. I had hoped to go to the birth centre but otherwise I didn’t really think much about it and went down the ‘what will be will be’ route. I think part of me didn’t want to get too attached to a particular vision of how I wanted birth to go, just in case things had to change.
It wasn’t until right up to 8 months pregnant that I actually properly started to think about things.
Going to the Prep for Positive Birth workshop helped re-frame some of my thinking, and in the end we went into labour armed with mental lists of ‘definitely would like to aim for this’, ‘am open to this if needed’, ‘and definitely want to avoid this unless there’s no other option for a safe delivery’ .
Doing it that way made it feel like I had enough of a plan that my husband and the midwives could support me to have a positive birth, but also not too much of a plan that I would feel overwhelmed and upset if things had to change.
Then the big day arrives. How did it feel when you realised your baby was on their way earthside?
For ages I thought ‘nope, they’re going to send me home, it’s not go time yet’, and my mother-in-law seemed to be thinking the same. When we reached Treliske however, it was like a switch was turned on just by walking into triage and suddenly it was a wave of ‘oh my god it’s actually today, there’s no turning back’.
It was excitement and adrenaline and nerves all at once, plus the odd sense that I’d forgotten something.
(Spoiler - I had. My maternity notes were still on the sofa!).
So, how was your birth experience?
I was due on Christmas Day, and spent all day with my legs crossed desperately hoping she would wait just a little bit longer before coming out. We joked I manifested any other day for a birthday a bit too hard however, and by the 28th I was cursing being pregnant and adamant she was never coming.
My in-laws decided to distract me for a few hours with lunch and a very long very rural drive around Cornwall. Looking back now, I think being away from everyone asking if baby had made an appearance, and being calm for the first time in a few weeks made a huge difference.
I woke up at 2:30 thinking ‘today would be a great day for a birthday’, and then woke up again at 3:30 needing the toilet. As I sat on the toilet, my waters broke. I remember thinking I had wet myself (even though it was very clearly a gush), and then spent about ten minutes googling instead of walking my husband or calling triage. It all felt a bit surreal.
It took a hot second for my husband to wake up properly, and he was quite confused why I was asking him to call his mum at 3:30 in the morning, but once he realised what had happened his adrenaline was infectious. My in-laws soon arrived to take us in to Treliske, with a semi reassuring ‘don’t worry, if anything happens I’ve delivered sheep and calves before’ message from my ex-farmer father in law. Thankfully, didn’t give birth on the side of the A30.
We were taken into triage, and checked over. Unfortunately because I had previously had instances of reduced movements, and having been asleep I couldn’t say for sure she had been moving before my waters broke, it meant I had to be on the monitor in triage for a while.
This was the part I struggled quite a lot with. All the pain had very suddenly arrived in my hips, and I couldn’t use my tens machine because of the CTG*, and I was working myself up into a bit of a panic. Thankfully triage was empty and time seemed to fly, and we were soon sent upstairs. Part of me was disappointed not to be going to the birth centre (I needed to stay on monitoring), but in the end delivery suite was the right place for me to be.
This next bit was the hardest part for me. I could finally use my TENS machine for pain relief, and had access to gas and air too, which was great. Having had gas and air for an injury before I knew it would be helpful, but I didn’t realise it would be a mask and not a tube (having had the tube before from paramedics). I struggled a lot with feeling claustrophobic with the mask, and panicking, pulling it off my face, and then feeling sick from pain because I wasn’t getting the full benefit of the gas and air. I have a strong pain threshold, but it was just feeling so incredibly intense in my hips that I was really struggling to cope.
It was at that point I asked for an epidural, and if I couldn’t have an epidural then they needed to take me for a c-section because there’s no way I was going to manage any more of these contractions. Thankfully, within about an hour I was all dosed up and felt I could actually relax for the first time since my waters broke. Leading up to this point my husband had been helpful and supportive (I couldn’t tell you what he was doing but it worked!), and I think for him seeing me finally able to rest a bit helped him breathe as well.
Then came a lot of waiting.
I couldn’t feel a thing, but also I did not feel ‘normal’.
Looking back, I’d describe myself as high as a kite. Non stop talking- about absolute rubbish too. Ten minutes or so about all the Christmas food I was going to enjoy in January that I couldn’t have in December. It was a proper giggle, just chatting endlessly away. Then I hit 10cm (by this point it was about 4pm and the epidural had gone in at 8:30am ish, so a lot of chatter later!), and suddenly I hit a wall.
I was told we would have a rest for a bit and then I could start pushing, but suddenly it felt like all of my energy had just evaporated. The midwife and my husband were very supportive and encouraging. At one point I said I thought I was going to break his hand, it was later on he told me I had barely squeezed it having been so tired. I pushed for over two hours, but we could all tell that there was nothing left in me to give. The adrenaline of the day and the pain/chaos of that first stage had meant I hadn’t been able to rest earlier despite trying, and the lack of sleep had really caught up with me along with the sheer energy needed to have been actively pushing for so long.
My baby had also gotten stuck - both of us had run out of steam it seemed just a centimeter away from being born. I was very calmly talked through some options. Thankfully I had already met the team on call earlier in the day (thankfully not when we were having in depth conversations about the perfect roast potato!) so I knew who was about to come flooding in. My midwife very calmly explained what would happen next as we had decided forceps and episiotomy were the safest way forward, let me have a bit of time for processing it all too, and then suddenly it got very busy. Having the bustle of everyone around helped, and some of my energy came back.
The next bit was a bit of a blur to be honest. I remember feeling shaky with adrenaline, I remember some of the lights getting brighter, and I remember the weirdest feelings as they got everything prepped and in place. I think I also made a joke about it feeling the same when my mouth’s numbed at the dentist - like I said earlier, high as a kite and talking absolute nonsense.
Then suddenly my baby was here. Finally. I cried, my husband cried. Everyone swarmed round doing their jobs, some subtly disappeared when it was clear she was happy and healthy. Things were going slightly wrong in that I was bleeding more than they’d like, but they fixed that fairly swiftly.
It felt like I was in a bubble and nothing could change how utterly relieved I felt in that moment that she was finally her and safe and real.
Reality soon set in about an hour or so later. My husband got baby snuggles, I got to vomit. I got to shower before going down to the postnatal ward, but I underestimated how lightheaded and shakey I felt. I had just about managed to get myself mostly cleaned up, but ended up having to call someone in to help me back to my room as I just couldn’t seem to get my body to cooperate. I wanted to be back with my baby, my body wanted to do its best impersonation of a puddle. That was the theme for the whole night.
Finally, after a night of broken sleep, my husband somehow breaking his glasses, a poonami in the middle of the night, all of the checks, and I think the best hospital meal I’ve ever had, we finally got to go home the next afternoon. Given how anxious I had been all pregnancy, and how rocky the start of labour was with the pain, the last part felt calm and redeeming. Like all the problems I had dealt with in pregnancy were worth it because I had my baby.
A lot of people after, hearing of the forceps and episiotomy, would say to me ‘oh what a traumatic birth’. In all honesty, I did not feel traumatised, I felt incredibly positive about how my baby arrived, and I felt incredibly grateful to the team around me for supporting me in a way that made it non traumatic for me. They didn’t make me feel like I had failed because I couldn’t make it that last centimeter, or because I couldn’t cope without the epidural, they made me feel empowered to make those decisions and empowered to admit that actually I needed that help and support to make it over the last hurdle.
They met me in my sky high endless chatting place, and made me feel safe, supported and that everything would be ok.
Learning Point: while there is a myth that the electrical signals intefere with monitoring, this is not trye. You CAN use a TENS machine with CTG monitoring.
Do you remember what you said to your baby when you first met them?
I think it was ‘oh hello’ but equally it could’ve been ‘why am I crying?!’
Looking back, what was the best part of your birth experience?
That bubble feeling immediately post birth, just me, my baby and my husband, both of us staring at her.
Everyone was bustling around doing what they needed to do to stabilise me, but I barely registered what was happening because she was finally here. Just the three of us together, in that hug, having waited for this moment for what felt like oh such a long time- there was honestly no feeling like it before or since.
And on the flip side, if you could, what would you have changed about the way your baby entered the world?
I think I would try to prepare a bit earlier in my pregnancy so that the last weeks wouldn’t feel so chaotic and rushed.
I lived in camp ‘ignore it until last minute’ for far too long and I think that didn’t necessarily help me to feel as prepared as I could’ve been. I know I did that as a self preservation almost, in a ‘if I don’t have a proper plan it can’t go off plan ’ sort of way, but all it meant in the end was that I rushed weeks worth of decisions into days. I didn’t do any antenatal classes either, so definitely a few of those if I ever do this again.
If you could give parents-to-be one piece of advice about preparing for the birth of their baby, what would it be?
Have those brutally honest chats about how you’re feeling with your birth partner.
It’s much easier for them to support you if they know how you’re feeling, both with your hopes and your fears.
