Birth Story - It's long!
Layla Marie Chitty
21.11pm, Feb 14th 2007 (I got my Valentine's baby!)
8lb 1/2oz
51cms.
For some reason the night before Layla was born, I just knew I'd be in labour the following day - I could 'feel' it, and told Johno and Mum to be prepared. It wasn't only the 'nice' idea of having a Valentine's baby, but there was some sort of indescribable calm that came over me the evening before, and I knew my baby would be with me soon.
Contractions woke me up on 14th Feb at 4.30am. As posted in the Feb. Community, I was having them about every three minutes, and they were lasting 30seconds! Quite odd to begin that way, or so I was told.
I woke Mum up at about 5.30, rang the hospital and they said to come down as the contractions were that close together. At this point they were nothing more than a bad period-like feeling, so I was a little doubtful, but figured that once we were at hospital, I'd be able to walk and get things going even more. It was probably the safe place to be!
My first midwife did an internal, but I was only one centimetre dilated. She suggested Mum and I go walking - perhaps not going home as things might progress faster than we could get back (I'm about 15mins drive from the hospital on a good no-traffic day) - so we figured we would go shopping! Lol. Well, window-shopping at least ;) After walking about the shopping centre for perhaps an hour or so (they'd released me from the hospital at 9.30am), the contractions were a little bit stronger, but not really that much.
We decided I would be OK to go home for a bit - I felt more comfortable there, so Mum drove us back home. I began walking, (and wow! there's only so many times you can pace the house around and around before you get so totally bored you end up just sitting instead!), and the contractions then seemed to only be about 5 minutes apart, so they'd slowed down a bit. But, because they were strong, Mum and I thought we should check whether I'd dilated any further. I thought I might be better off at the hospital walking, rather than in a shopping centre, or at home where I was tempted to relax a little more ;)
I was measured at almost 3cms dilated when we got back...and that's when I realised the midwives at my hospital prefer not to practice what they preach :(
I understand the concept of getting rest, I really do...it makes for an easier time when it comes time to push, as all your energy is conserved, BUT - by the same token, I know my body! The midwives told me to lie down. I was no way near exhausted (it was about…1pm by this time, and yeah, maybe under normal circumstances, I could have done with some rest…but I just knew I didn’t need it at that point in time!)
They gave me panadol [which I’m guessing is the equivalent of Tylenol? (Lol…like that would do anything anyway :P)], and a sleeping pill, and told me to rest for a while. Mum went home. I got highly annoyed - they simply wouldn't let me walk around, and this is when I knew things would begin to slow. I'm a firm believer in being vertical so gravity gets a chance to do its wonders - and they made me lay down. I was so sad! Looking back now I should have really argued with them more, but as seems to be the norm for a lot of us women who go into labour - I got rather complacent and ended up doing what they said instead of what I wanted. The sleeping pill did nothing. I lay there all annoyed at the World, while contractions died down in length and strength. After about two hours of this, I rang Mum and told her to come back. I wanted her to tell the midwives I would be walking around - which she did!
By this stage they had changed shifts, and I was assigned a different midwife, ‘Hely’ - whom Mum had a lot of correspondence with rather than me, but more on her later! She truly was one-of-a-kind. She did put in my cannula that I needed for the antibiotics, (I had GBS) - after saying she was going to SEND ME HOME, then apologising once she checked with her boss, who informed her how overdue I was and that I would be delivering this baby that day! - but that was about all the help she was prepared to offer to begin with.
Karen, a friend of Mum’s, had offered to come and walk around the hospital with us, so at about 4.30 I was able to finally get my way, and went walking around the hospital with Mum and Karen. It’s quite weird, but the midwives/nurses/doctors etc, kept giving us looks as we went walking around - almost as if to say we weren’t supposed to be doing this, but who cares! I got to walk for a bit, so I was going to make the most of the time I had!
After around an hour and forty minutes, the pain was getting to the point where it was becoming rather unbearable. I made my way back to the birth suite room, and got under the shower. Sometime between all this, I had rung Johno and told him he might be best coming up to the delivery room (I’d made him stay at home as long as possible, especially when they’d told me to lay down…as I wanted him to be rested enough to withstand the delivery…he’s got a rather weak stomach ;)), so he came into the shower with me and helped put the water over my back.
The pain relief was amazing! I dilated from 2cm to 7cm in the time it took me to go for an hour & a half walk with Mum and Karen, and jump into the shower for a good 1/2hour. It was almost as though I couldn’t feel a thing…it felt as though the contractions had completely stopped! I thought this was a good thing, so I got ready to get out of the shower again and do some more walking, but as soon as I turned the water off, they hit me in a big wave again. I was starting to cry with the pain, despite trying not to, and thinking positive as much as I possibly could. Needless to say the shower became my comfort zone for quite some time.
Until I saw fluid leaking.
And it wasn’t clear - it was like a deep green/yellow, tinged with brown. I didn’t so much panic, but I definitely became worried for my baby. Johno had brought two friends with him when he came up to the birth suite (both drunk) - informing me that they were going to wait for the baby to be born. I wasn’t angry with him, (his friends are OK and wouldn’t have been in the room or anything like that), but I was quite upset he’d done that without first consulting me, so I sent him to take them home when I noticed the fluid. I called Mum in, but of course, she was no midwife. She told me just to get out of the shower and come with her to tell Hely.
Well! This woman just turned to me and goes: “It’s just your mucous plug”. She didn’t check the leak on the floor. She didn’t check my pad, she stood behind the desk, and told me it was that. I knew it wasn’t. It was not at all mucous-y, and I just knew she was wrong. I turned around and walked back to the room with Mum, where I told her I knew it wasn’t the plug. I explained how I’d lost (at least some of) mine the morning before, and how it looked nothing the same. Mum agreed that it was fluid of some sort, and after I’d paced the room stopping to breathe through contractions for another twenty minutes, and the midwife hadn’t come in to see how I was doing, Mum and Karen went out to see her.
Apparently, Mum argued with her for quite some time before this woman decided to come back in and check on me. She checked the pad, and lo and behold! “Oh…well…your baby is in distress. That fluid is quite brown, and it isn’t your plug. We need to get the baby delivered as soon as possible”.
I was so angry with her! I didn’t say anything, but later on after the birth I was so extremely annoyed. Looking back, I should have asked for a different midwife (they will change them if you don’t think you’re going to be able to deliver comfortably with the one you’re assigned), but it doesn’t matter now.
I had to be on the bed after that. They needed to monitor baby’s heartbeat and my contractions, so I was basically stranded. I couldn’t walk anymore. I couldn’t even get on the bed on all fours. I had to be on my back, waiting out the contractions on a silly bed! Not long after they attached the CTG monitor, Hely did another internal and found me to be a ‘generous 7cm, almost 8cm’ dilated. This baby wasn’t taking their time! It was now they decided to break my waters. Despite having fluid leaking, the membranes were still pretty much intact, and because she was distressed, they needed her out as soon as possible. Breaking my waters was hopefully going to dilate me to ten pretty quickly, so I could push and have her with me very quickly.
About ten minutes after they broke my waters, Hely asked me if I felt pressure. I said of course, there was a baby moving down the birth canal! Karen was decent enough to say “no, I know you feel pressure, but do you feel like you need to poo really badly, but someone is poking a stick up your bum so you can’t?” (lol...couldn’t explain it better myself ).
I didn’t feel that way, but the contractions were enough to make me get really upset. I called for Mum and Karen and Johno every time they came, and whimpered through them quite a bit…but in about half an hour, I felt that pressure Karen was talking about.
It was time to push. That was perhaps the hardest task I’ve ever been assigned. Pushing is definitely an art-form! I thought I was pushing enough to begin with, but the midwives told me I wasn’t. Actually, Hely said “You’re not pushing”, to which I screamed back “I AM PUSHING”, but…yeah…I see now that I wasn’t pushing in the way I was supposed to! I eventually managed to get the idea, holding my teeth and pushing as HARD as I possibly could, and within another twenty minutes, Layla’s head emerged. The poor thing had to put up with the first words she heard from her Mummy being “oh my look at your cone head”, and she got stuck after that!
Maybe she was punishing me for being so assertive (hehehe), but no matter how much I pushed after that, Layla wouldn’t come out. Being that she had poo’ed in the waters, she didn’t cry (which I was warned of beforehand, luckily, or I would have been freaking out a lot!), and they had to suction her nose/mouth/lungs whilst she was only half-way out. Hely told me to take a deep breath and push one more time - as I did so, she pulled on Layla and managed to get her out.
Johno was offered the chance to cut the cord, but the poor thing turned ashen straight away. He was behind my head for the delivery, so I couldn’t see what he had been up to, but he had encouraged me lots, wiping my face, handing me pieces of ice, talking to me when I called for him and just generally being there. I thought he was amazing, especially considering he hates needles, blood or pain of any sort. He hated seeing me in pain, and he really didn’t like seeing Layla come out! Lol. Mum tells me he faced the wall a lot, and when they offered to cut the cord he just shook his head and sat down. So Mum did instead!
Not long after this everyone went home - they don’t allow Daddy to stay the night, and visitors have to leave at 8pm (unless of course, you’re delivering at this time), so soon enough it was just me and little Layla in that birth suite. Midwife shifts had swapped again, and I got a lovely woman who came in to give Layla a bath and her Vitamin K shot. After bathing, she gave Layla to me, and I got to breastfeed. Then it was time for me to have a shower. The midwife told me not to go by myself, that she would come also - so we went into the shower and she made me sit on the toilet for a little bit before I had to get up to shower. Within seconds of sitting down, I told her I “felt a little bit faint” - and then all I remember is waking up to two midwives patting my cheeks. Poor old me had fainted on the toilet, lol. We managed to shower (well, the midwife washed me…I just sat there!), then they put me in a wheelchair and had Layla in her bassinette beside me, and we went into the maternity ward.
Two days and lots of visitors and presents later, I got to take my beautiful girl home. Daddy comes over every night because he misses us both so much (a very welcome change in him, and one I hope will continue to develop now so we can get our relationship back on track properly), and Layla feeds like a champion, despite my nipples being grazed from incorrect attachment early on in the breastfeeding process. That will go away soon enough I am sure.
I don’t know now what I would do without her. Layla is my life.