Labour of love

NS April 20th, 2006


So I had my daughter on April 2nd at 6.31am after 11 hours of labour. Not too shabby for a first-timer like me! Once things started they moved very quickly so there was none of this ‘spend the first six hours at home, taking baths and sipping tea, having your husband time the mild contractions.’ Nope, none of that for me. It was “Ooh, that was a contraction. Ooh, that was another one. Holy shit, there it is again! My god, get the stopwatch, they’re only 3 minutes apart!” No time to eat or sip tea. Damn!

We were at the hospital and I was 3cm dilated within a couple hours of it starting. The midwife who was there at the desk to meet us actually laughed at me when I stopped in the hallway to have a strong contraction, like she thought I was being over dramatic. I thought I was imagining it at the time since I was irritable and in pain, but Paul, my husband, later told me that she was a right old cow who practically rolled her eyes at me. Good thing I was too out of it to realize this or there would’ve been hell to pay. I hate it when medical staff think they know what you’re going through better than you do. *grumble grumble*

Long and gory story (somewhat) short, things didn’t go exactly as planned. The contractions were about 100 times worse than anything I had imagined and literally took my breath away. My water broke soon after we arrived and when it broke, it BROKE. Water everywhere. The room was soon like New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I tried walking, sitting, laying down, and clawing the windowsill but nothing seemed to give much relief. I tried that gas & air thing (50% oxygen, 50% nitrous) but it didn’t do much for the pain. It did make me focus on my breathing and gave me something to bite on though, so it was mildly helpful. I had planned on being in the birthing pool for the rest of the labour but I only stayed in for about an hour. Turns out the baby had turned her back to my back, making the contractions about 1 zillion times worse than they normally are when they’re facing your stomach. Dagnabbit! I couldn’t stand it anymore and needed something for the pain so I got out of the pool to have an injection of pethadine, a milder form of morphine. It dulled the pain a little and let me relax between contractions but it was still no picnic.

After an hour of pushing not much was happening so a doctor had to come in to assess me. They let me push for another hour (I use the term ‘let’ loosely here) before deciding that intervention was needed. They used a ventouse, which is basically a suction cup attached to a vacuum, to put on the top of the baby’s head. The doc looked up at me and said “Okay. You push and we’ll pull.” Not really the nicest thing in the world to hear when trying to eject a human from your body but I so wanted it to all be over that I didn’t care HOW they got her out or how bloody or painful it was. At this point I looked over at Paul (I had kind of forgotten he existed for the past couple hours) who was kneeling by my side, holding my hand. He had his head in his arms and was looking the other way, trying not to faint. Poor thing gets queasy around blood and there was quite a bit of it flying around. Not to mention the 5 people all up in my business who were doing a tug of war with our ginormous baby. She just didn’t want to come out, stubborn girl!

Finally, our little girl, Amelia, was born and I felt a huge wave of relief. They whisked her off to clean her up and assess her and I heard her hearty cries almost straight away. I was so relieved that it was all over and that she was okay. I laid there in stunned silence, reeling from the experience. Paul was taken into the other room where they had her and came back a few minutes later holding her in a blanket and telling me that she weighed 9 lbs. No surprise there, I knew she would be a big’un. He laid her on my chest and I had my first good look at her. Love at first sight does exist.

Now she’s nearly 3 weeks old and we’re starting to figure each other out. I know which cry means “Feed me now you heathens, you’re starving me!” and which ones mean “Please get me out of this wet and/or smelly contraption around my bottom.” She sleeps for a good 5-7 hours at night, once you get her to sleep, so she can do no wrong in my book. Sleep, angel baby, sleep.

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