Birth Plan 2: Delusional

The second time around, my pregnancy itself followed a deceptively similar path to the first. There were still no apps telling me what day my daughter had eyebrows or whatever, I was still fairly small (for a pregnant lady) and I still went to spin at least three times a week. The only real difference was, when it came to writing my birth plan, this time I actually had one. And it was rather well developed…

I was going to stay home until I needed my morphine, which would be at least around 7/8cm dilated as it'd been 6cm with Abe and these days my bits were more ‘elasticy’. I would then pop up to the hospital to deliver my daughter. Something which I’d calculated should be around 8 hours from the start of my contractions - as second children usually took about half as long to arrive as the first. This would only mean a few hours in the birth suite and then I'd come home shortly after. Where I’d gotten these ideas about the integrity of my vagina, or how many hours compared to the first birth the second takes, I don’t know, but it all seemed to make perfect sense and it is of course, a rather appealing concept that the second time will be both easier and quicker. Especially to someone facing childbirth again.

One of the things I’d found toughest with Abe’s delivery, was not knowing how much worse the pain would get. I'd kept telling the midwives that while I was fine at that moment (obviously this is a relative term, I was being torn open from the inside by a human, so fine isn’t exactly accurate, but you know what I mean) I was worried I wouldn’t be able to cope as things progressed. Given this, it was handy then, to not only know exactly how painful childbirth would be, having done it, but that it would be of a much shorter duration this time around.

Unfortunately for me and my rather detailed birth plan, Bette was determined to prove she’d do things her way from the get go and paid about as much attention to it as Abe had to Tizzy Hall’s ‘Save Our Sleep’ which I’d read him cover to cover several times in the first few months of his life during all the night wakings.

Let me backtrack here. Sean was working in Western Australia in a town a three hour drive from Perth called Jurien Bay having made the calculated decision that at 35 weeks, I was unlikely to go into labour. Apparently, only 5% of births happen prior to 37 weeks, so he was scheduled to be away for a fortnight, arriving back as I was turning 37 weeks and things got more risky for him to be a five hour flight and a three hour drive away. Apparently, Betts didn’t get this memo and decided at 36 weeks and three days to begin to bust her way out.

While the first week Sean was away I’d been miffed at having to do all the heavy lifting involved in toddler wrangling alone whilst up the duff, by the start of the second week, I was feeling ‘wrong’ about it. I couldn’t put my finger on what or why, but I didn’t like that he was away in a different way and I felt really unhappy about it all weekend. I finally called him on the Monday night to say so. Then, I went out to dinner at a friend’s house and Abe and I had a lovely night and I forgot all about the weird feeling of being unsettled that had been bothering me. Until I got up about 4am to pee and I was too late that is.

I’d never wet myself, not even through either of the pregnancies, so I was surprised. But not unduly so. I was after all a pregnant lady – I reckoned it was just par for the course. The I wet myself again. And again. And again. And then, I wondered if maybe, just maybe, this might be me going the ‘I’ve got indigestion’ route again and being in denial about it being something more. Like, say, my waters breaking.

Naturally, I did what everyone in my situation would do. I messaged the friend on the Gold Coast I was supposed to be dropping a porta cot off to and asked if she’d come up to me as I might be going into labour soon and didn’t think the two hour round trip was the best idea. Then I messaged Sean (who luckily was in Perth to pick up some supplies) and told him not to drive back up to Jurien Bay as my waters might have broken.

Despite it being 2am there, Sean had had a dream about his phone ringing (it hadn’t been) and was actually awake holding his phone when my text came through, so called me straight back. We discussed what had happened a bit, before concluding that we had feck all clue whether my waters had broken (waaay less than with Abe, different colour, so, who knew?) or my bladder had finally given up on me. It was time to ring birth suite – who also were unable to ascertain via phone call which of the two possibilities I was dealing with.

“The thing is…” I told the midwife, “I can’t really come in for you to check because I’ve got a two your old with me and no one else to look after him just now. And I’ve got a swimming lesson for him I’ve paid for, and a friend coming from the Gold Coast to collect a porta cot and my husband is in WA."

“Rightttttt.” She said. Then, “Well. Bring your son along with you. We’re good with kids.”

Before Abe woke, I packed a few bits for us, and his swimming gear, because my plan was to pop in, get an answer and then… take Abe swimming and what not, because Bette wasn’t due for weeeeks and I had things on. And Sean was in WA.

I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to ‘pop’ into hospital for anything? But, as you might suspect, you actually can’t. If you’re uninjured enough to be casually 'popping in', you’re uninjured enough to be waiting behind all the people who are less fortunate than your good self. And so, while I arrived at birth suite at about 6am, I’d still not seen the doctor by 10am. The entire time of which, I’d been hooked up to a foetal monitor and stuck on a bed while my two year old was free to poke, prod, press, open, close and forage around the room. It took about an hour before I got Peppa Pig on my phone which was useful in keeping him from using the nurses supplies as building blocks for a castle, but did mean it was tricky to keep Sean abreast of things at my end. Seriously, have you ever asked for a phone back from a two year old watching Peppa Pig who knows you can’t actually get up?

Thankfully, my friend arrived from the Gold Coast at about that point and the lure of going back to the poking, prodding, pressing, opening, closing and foraging with a buddy to share the discoveries with won out over more of that bloody pig, so I got to call Sean and let him know that, yes, my waters had broken, only moments after I found out for sure myself. Naturally, by that point, he’d missed the morning flight back.

Back at home, I spent most of the day sitting still to make sure that Bette didn’t just fall out and texting the husband about where the hell he was: various places, all of which boiled down to NOT BRISBANE where I was going to birth our child, imminently.

Despite my concerns, it’s probably worth noting at this point I had had no contractions and nothing much was actually going on. In fact, it looked like I’d be fine to just wait for Sean to get back and I could get on with my birth plan, albeit a few weeks ahead of schedule and at a cost therefore of 4 child free daycare Fridays …

Nothing was going on, right up until I got a call he was in a taxi back from the airport that is. Then I began to bleed. A lot. Figuring this probably wasn’t good, I called birth suite and told them I’d be in soonish. Once my husband got home. To their credit, they remained as calm as I was and didn’t insist I went in immediately. An hour or so later I was there, the baby was checked (and happy enough) and I was allowed home to sleep unless anything else changed.

While I wasn’t too impressed that Bette was faffing about now Sean was back, I was kind of keen for a kip – having been up since the early hours. I didn’t get much of one though, because just a few hours later as I got up to pee I felt something in my trouser leg. Half expecting it to be a child – my delusions about how easy this would be knew no bounds– I turned on the light to check.

It was not my second child, but instead a mouse sized blood clot. I tried to tell Sean, since there were no contractions, we’d go to the hospital in the morning, but he wasn’t having any of it. So for the third time that day, I went back in to birth suite.

A doctor was woken and in his semi-conscious-dressing-gown-clad state declared ‘We could just crack on,’ if I wanted. Despite my concerns that induction might mean a longer labour (and my birth plan had been calculated without factoring in being induced and I wasn’t keen for things to deviate from it) I agreed.

Mistake. Big, big mistake.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but from my experience, induced labour is a bag of piss. Granted, that they couldn’t get the dosage right and I was getting smashed with continuous contractions with only seconds break in between or, nothing at all– something called hyper stimulation – didn’t help. But while I found with Abe my body just kind of ramped the pain up slowly and I remained relaxed, I couldn’t cope at all with it this time. There were no positions I could sit or stand in that helped. Gas and air was even more useless than the first time, and my morph, my beloved morph. Well, it let me down big time. Bette was enjoying the experience about as much as I was and her heart rate kept dropping dangerously low.

We soldiered on for about 8 hours with very little progress… I say 'soldiered' which makes it seem like I was much tougher and braver than I was. I was neither tough nor brave. In fact, all I really was, was annoyed. I was annoyed that my body - which having already stretched itself large enough to allow one head to exit without issue - wasn’t just doing the same again but seemed to have decided that a measly 4cm was all it was prepared to go to. I was annoyed that after all the looking forward to my morph it was shit and did nothing. I was annoyed that having set this whole ordeal in motion, Dr Plaid Dressing Gown had fecked off home while I was still stuck in birth suite with nothing doing besides a shit load of pain I couldn’t seem to manage.

Unsure of what else I could try, I asked for a C section which the midwives and the doctor were happy for. They were beginning to worry about Bette in a pretty big way by now. Luckily, before that happened there was a shift change and an old, old midwife (who I have christened the fanny godmother) stuck her head in to meet me. She took one look at me and calmly declared that before we bothered with a c section, I might want to try an epidural to relax me. While a needle in the back didn’t sound especially relaxing I’ll be honest, I was in so much pain the idea that had previously seemed more terrifying that birth itself didn’t seem so bad. And the idea of being stuck on the bed because of it which I'd also not been keen on was a moot point because I was in too much pain to move anyway. At this point, I was willing to try anything.

And my god – did the fanny godmother know her stuff. While I personally didn’t feel very ‘relaxed’ as someone I’d just met put a hole in my spine, my body was grateful. So grateful in fact that it went from 4cm to 10cm within the hour and it was time to deliver my daughter. Almost back on birth plan schedule. Almost.

Of course, not to be outdone by her brother and his dramatic entry, Bette picked ‘moving down the birth canal’ as her moment to get super distressed about the whole being born thing and a few times her heart stopped. I was briefed by the doctor that while usually she’d be happy for a delivery to take up to two hours, she was giving me twenty minutes to get her as far as I could. At which point she’d be in to use vacuum assist, or forceps, or, worst case, perform an ‘emergency c section with the baby in the birth canal’. This she informed me was ‘dangerous’ and ‘complicated’. She could go into further details if I wanted, but I did not. (As surely you wouldn't?).

And so began 20 minutes of me trying to recreate my terminator eye by pushing like crazy. My epic efforts punctuated every two minutes by the doctor nervously popping her head round the door to check the baby monitor and the much calmer midwives shooing her away.

At the 20 minute mark the midwifes let the doctor in and she proceeded to do what I always wondered why they didn’t with Abe and she braced her feet on the bed and started pulling from her end. Turns out, babies are kind of hard to pull out fast and this was not a fabulous experience for all involved! But, it happened, Bette made it with the vacuum assist and a bit of screaming (mine, not hers).

Like Abe though, there was to be no skin on skin or first feed as Betts needed to be resuscitated too. But there was a brief moment where I got to hold her first! The doctor placed her onto me as she delivered her. A precious second or two where it was just me and her in a way I never got to have with a brand new Abe. I still look back on those few seconds fondly. Even having since learnt that it wasn’t a ‘lovely thing of her to do’ but rather she had nowhere else to put my child and I 'was basically a table'. (Yes, she said that a day later when I thanked her. In those words).

Like Abe, Bette spent a couple of nights in special care on antibiotics meaning I was in hospital for three days before I got to go home. A further birth plan fail.

Unlike with Abe, I don't look back on Bette's birth with especially fond memories. It was epic and uncomfortable and at times frightening. And there was no Sunday roast.

But, it did show me that while she might need more help than he does and she might send me back to the drawing board with my ideas because she's not doing things my way, this one is certainly going to teach me a lot too. Even if sometimes they're hard lessons.

#labour #Birth #Mum #Newborn #Family