As expected 37 weeks was to be my last bump update, baby arrived by emergency cesarean section at 22:14 on the 9th of April 2015. Not at all what I had planned but I have to admit that I really haven’t found the recovery too bad. So what happened?
I was scheduled to be induced the following day after visiting hospital for my itching issues. They did a growth scan and found her to be measuring big also I had a lot of extra fluid so they really couldn’t leave me to go naturally any longer, baby was ready to come out.
At the time I was pleased, I knew that at least one way or the other I would be meeting her soon. I was due to go in on the 8th for my induction at 9am, we had everything packed and ready and headed to the hospital prepared for what could be a few days of waiting. Inductions can take a while, there is the task of readying the cervix, breaking the waters and then seeing whether you go naturally into labour or potentially a drip to induce contractions.
I didn’t make it quite that far, after what was a slow start due to no doctor being around until 5pm to prescribe the gel they needed to start the process we were both pretty annoyed having waited all day. Then the six hour wait to see if the gel worked or whether more was needed followed by another six hour wait. During this time I was still getting my usual contractions which I had been getting for weeks. They were much more uncomfortable after the gel had been administered, later it would dawn on me that it was so uncomfortable due to the vast amount of fluid I had.
Sometime the next day my waters broke, the amount of water that made its great escape surprised everyone in the room. It just kept coming! By the time it had settled down my bump was a lot smaller than before and the contractions I was having were barely noticeable to me. Yet the intensity had not changed on the monitor.
At this point I was feeling much better, progress I thought. My hind waters had broken and finally I was going to be moving to the labour section of the ward to get this train moving. Or so I thought, something like eight hours passed while we waiting for a bed to become available.
We had one but then an emergency took it just before we were about to move. Honestly you cannot appreciate how frustrating waiting in a hospital is, so many inefficient processes that have to be kept to. By this point I was pretty annoyed to be jumping through hoops, we had been doing it for weeks now back and forth to the hospital.
As it’s completely out of your control and communication really is not forth coming there isn’t much to be done. Myself and my husband settled down to our second night in the induction room while we waiting for the next step.
Sometime later my husband noticed the CTG monitor that was monitoring babies heartbeat kept slowing down. He looked and found that indeed with each contraction her heartbeat was dipping, so we called for the midwife and from there everything went pretty quickly.
I was wheeled down still in my bed to the labour ward, a team of people arrived and explained that there were two options. They could try and put a monitor on the babies head or if they couldn’t do that then we would be looking at a section.
They broke the last of the waters but I wasn’t dilated enough to get the trace on. So off we went to theatre, I was strangely calm. I think most people that know me well know how oddly calm I can be in times when others might panic. The way I saw it was that nothing I do will change anything and I was in the best care at the time.
I had my epidural popped in which didn’t hurt at all. I was expecting it to as I had heard it does, maybe I just had a lucky escape there. Once that was in then off the team went, before long out she came.
It takes a lot longer to do the after work, but during that time you have your new baby next to you so you don’t really notice. My husband was able to stay next to me the whole time so it wasn’t too bad at all.
The worst part had to be that because she was born so late my husband had to go not long after she was born. Soon as I was out of recovery and heading to the postnatal ward that was it. We wanted a amenity room which would have meant he could stay but they were fully booked. I knew this was a possibility when giving birth at the hospital but I hadn’t thought about it when being wheeled away to theatre. Not that I would have had any other options at the time, but there is something really wrong about parting so soon after birth.
In my ideal world I would have given birth at the birth centre and not had to deal with all the crying babies after birth, you really can’t sleep on those wards. I like my own en suite, my own babies cries and ideally a helping hand particularly after going through surgery. I suppose the point is, you don’t get to decide that’s the fun part of pregnancy; you don’t decide what hurdles happen to pop up in the way nor do you get to decide what kind of birth you end up having. I think everyone knows that, but if I were to go back I might have at least done the hospital tour.
But I was quickly out of there, soon as my catheter was out I was up and walking. I expected it to be really painful, but I knew the only way I could go home was if I started moving around. It was quite annoying not being able to pick her up out of her cot because of the surgery, you are encouraged to call the midwives for such tasks. Luckily we were able to go home the next day and I honestly feel pretty normal now, I was told that I took to the recovery abnormally well. Granted I have a scar which will be there forever but she’s here safe and sound, which is all that matters.
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