a birth story - part fourteen


In my birth story so far;

I've some how endured 31 hours
from when my waters broke and contractions started.
It all fell apart at the birthing unit
so I've been transferred to the big maternity unit at the main hospital.
After an epidural
things seemed to be looking up,
but there were suddenly lots of worried looking midwives and doctors
and my baby was in distress.



I nodded along bravely but I wasn't really taking it in.
The room suddenly became a hive of activity.
Another doctor arrived and suggested that another internal exam be done,
even though the 4 hours wasn't quite up yet.
The doctor that performed it looked at me
and with a deadpan face told me I was 7cm,
before laughing and saying that actually I was 10
and that she hoped I was ready to push.

In my tired and emotional state,
I found all this a bit confusing
and my midwife had to explain it to me again.
She said that she would be telling me when to push
because I couldn't feel the contractions
and that I needed to push for a count of 10 as hard as I could.

While she was talking to me, the others were talking together,
and when the doctors left to 'get ready'
the senior midwife said that they needed to get the baby out as quickly as possible
so they would be attempting an assisted delivery with ventouse.
She explained that they would try it three times
but if it didn't work
that they would then be looking at transferring me to the operating room
for a forceps delivery or an emergency c-section.

It was all said in such a matter of fact way,
that I nodded along in complete agreement.
They were all so confident and professional
that I didn't bat an eyelid at the mention of potential emergency surgery.
With all this going on,
I still felt safe.
I still felt calm.
I knew that it was under control.

I wish I could say the same for my hubby,
but it was around this time that he started to look like a little boy lost.
More professionals poured into the room and he felt more and more helpless.
At the end, there were two doctors, two midwives and two paediatricians,
I was relying on Emma to tell me when to push,
relying on the two doctors doing the delivery to tell me if I was pushing hard enough.
He felt like a spare part,
a helpless spare part that was worried about getting in the way.

The ventouse resembled a plunger attached to a hoover,
and in effect that's what it was.
The plunger part was suctioned onto Dollop's head
and with a combination of suction from the machine,
the pulling of the doctor
and my pushing;
our little man was born at 1.52pm.


You can read the next, and final, part here.

6 comments

  1. Awww yay he has been born- I have been waiting for that moment since I started reading this series of posts! I can't wait to read the next one!

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  2. HURRAY he is here, after nail bitingly reading 14 posts! Congratulations baby you did it Congratulations Mommy you did it. Together what a great team!!!!

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  3. Well done you! Great pushing mummy, unfortunately my story didn't stop there I ended up on theatre, but down to some excellent work by you Mama he is born, yay!!!!

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  4. What a brilliant series of your honest and raw birth story, xx

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