Owen's birth story
Owen’s Arrival
Despite my best efforts to convince my body that the time for real labour had come, with walks and spicy food and pineapple and the whole shebang, and despite the week of false labour I’d been having… nothing.
Thursday we were put on the list for an induction spot, but didn’t get a call. Around 9 p.m. we were called into the IWK to Early Labour Assessment. Baby was happy enough, but no contractions to speak of were there. Interestingly, we ran into my doctor who was there for another delivery. There were still no rooms on the birth unit at the time, and they asked if we were willing and available to come in on short notice. The doctor recommended we take any slot they offered as refusing one in the middle of the night could mean another didn’t come up for days and then we’d be in a state of real worry about the baby’s chances of infection.
So we came home and put the hospital bag ready to go, and tried to get some rest, expecting a call at any time. Needless to say, it was a bit of a sleepless night, with anxiety about when they’d call and some mourning for the labour I’d been planning for. It was difficult to let go of the plan to spend the early stages comfortable at home and to know that I’d need to spend the whole thing in the hospital.
Got up fairly early in the morning, still waiting for our call. A pacing, nervous morning culminated in a good cry and a bit of a nap. Shortly after I woke up, around 11, they called us in to the hospital. My mum delivered us there and we checked right in to the birth unit. Luckily my doctor was once more around in the hospital, and willing to consider my request to have my water completely broken in one more attempt to cause natural labour. She gave us an hour of walking around to get things underway.
With a poke and a gush, we undertook our attempt, walking up and down and up and down the not-very-long corridor of the birth unit. Before long I was having some good strong contractions every five, and then every four minutes. Once my hour was up, they did a check, and I’d not really made much progress, so despite the contractions, I was hooked up to the pitocin drip.
The contractions picked up from there, and our doula arrived at the hospital. This is where things get a little fuzzy, if I’m honest, but we moved back and forth between the shower and the bed and the bathtub and the TENS machine and the pushing on the back.
The shower was probably the most effective pain relief technique I found, but the hot water kept running out - a problem when I was in the tub, too.
It seemed like almost immediately my contractions were coming every two minutes, and were very intense. I wasn’t really experiencing any relief between them - there was no softening of my belly at all, and it felt like a serious contraction came on every time I changed positions. And they kept turning up the pit. And I was really, really freaking tired, and nothing was helping the pain any more, so I asked for the Nitronox (gas and air), which the nurse took forever to bring.
After several hours of this labour - neither of us is very clear on the timeline here - they checked me again, and I was six centimetres dilated. That meant I potentially had another four hours to go before I got to the pushing stage and I knew I didn’t have it in me.
Despite my insistence that an epidural was 100% out of the question, I think it was absolutely the best decision I made. It took a while for them to bring both the gas and the anesthetist, but the epidural gave me a chance to lie down and take some more deep breaths and recharge a little.
Some time in there my mother arrived, so I sent John out to get something to eat, I guess around 7 p.m. Neither of us had had much to eat, so I’m sure he was feeling pretty worn out too. While he was out I felt pretty intensely that I needed to go to the bathroom and got up to do so, making an unholy mess of wires and monitors and the like in the process. They plugged me back in, but didn’t check me at that point.
John came back after about 30 minutes, our doula went to take her own dinner break. While she was gone, I started having more trouble with the contractions and wanted to go to the bathroom again - with every one I felt like I was going to mess the bed. Basically in about 45 minutes I went from 6 cm to complete, so I think, in my exhaustion, I was fighting the relentlessness of the pitocin contractions and all it took was the rest to get to push.
I was pushing for about another 45 minutes, mostly on my back, as they were losing the baby’s heart rate when I was using the squat bar and wanted me to get back up on the bed between contractions instead of dangling there, which was more comfortable. Crowning was … sort of excruciating, and his heart rate was dropping a lot with every push, so ended up with another never-ever, a 1 cm episiotomy. No tearing though, and the baby’s head came out on the very next push. The doctor freed one arm and then got me to bring my hands down and I pulled the rest of him out myself. It was sort of amazing!
Despite the crazy amounts of fluid I’d already lost with having my water broken, there was a huge gush behind him. They took him to check him over right away because of all the decelerations, but he was crying lustily so I didn’t even worry about it, just felt so happy and proud and delivered the placenta almost as an afterthought.
Then I had him on my chest and they were doing the stitches and he was so beautiful and perfect and amazing.
As he comes up to his 5-day birthday hour, he’s sleeping in my lap after nursing like a champ, and is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But now it’s time for me to sleep before the nighttime nursing marathons begin.