My birth story

I grew up attending baby showers and hearing birth stories which almost turned into a competition of whose experience was worse. The idea of birth scared me—you’re already going into the unknown, and hearing the worst experiences didn’t alleviate any of the uncertainty. I was advised by a friend several years ago that watching One Born Every Minute would probably do me good because it shows normal births. I tuned into the next episode which was probably one of the worst episodes I could have watched.

I’m an avid reader, so I always expected myself to be someone who researched and read a lot while pregnant. I don’t know if the hyperemesis influenced this but I had no desire to read or research anything. Thankfully, my birth story was a positive and straightforward experience. It unexpectedly began very suddenly and passed quickly. Hopefully, by sharing my story people like me who have only heard the negative will realise that things can be good, even if it doesn’t go to plan.

“We need to book you in for an induction.”

These were not the words I wanted to hear. I knew inductions could make everything more intense and often led to more intervention in the form of an epidural and then an emergency caesarean. However, I had gone past the due date the doctors had so medically an induction was recommended. If I ignored medical advice and held off having an induction, I automatically moved from the midwife-led pathway to the consultant-led pathway. In doing so, I would not get the birth I wanted because there are no birth pools in the consultant-led department.

After a lot of discussion with Dane and also with my parents, we made a decision and I attended the hospital at 9 p.m. on Sunday 18th August for an outpatient induction.

I returned home and there were no signs of labour - my sweeps had been unsuccessful because my body was just not ready to give birth yet. I found I was getting shooting pains in my tummy and legs but nothing that felt like they could be contractions.

I went to bed with the plan to attend my 9 a.m. review appointment and discuss with a doctor the pros and cons of an elective caesarean with my medical history. I figured if there was potential for it to lead to an emergency caesarean then an elective one might be safer.

Dane woke the next morning and made eggs on toast which I vomited back up before even finishing the plate. It felt like the beginning of my pregnancy with hyperemesis all over again—I wasn’t able to keep anything down, and my body seemed to be vacating everything I had eaten previously.

They did the preliminary checks at my 9 a.m. appointment and then hooked me up to be monitored. There were some blips in the reading and they sought second and third opinions from senior midwives and doctors. But they were otherwise happy with Baby and were close to sending us home to continue our outpatient induction.

Then the pain started for real.

At about 11 a.m., things intensified and became more of what I expected contractions to feel like. The midwives had been unable to get a clean, continuous read of the baby. Whenever I got pain I was standing up and they felt this was causing the issue with the monitor. They asked me to stay seated which intensified the pain.

I had also become ketonic.

I hadn’t been able to keep any food or drink down and I was having diarrhoea. As lunchtime drew closer the midwives wanted me to eat and drink something. They brought in pain meds and I instantly vomited those up. They decided to fit me with a cannula so they could give me fluids and pain relief intravenously.

My waters broke at noon.

The contractions were still interfering with monitoring Baby’s heart rate. I took a quick break to nip to the bathroom, I returned to the room and said “I feel like I’m pushing the head.”

One of the midwives got serious with me and said I was tensing too much, panicking, and this wasn’t going to be doing Baby any good.

At 2 p.m. they told us they just wanted 20 minutes of clean, continuous Baby heart rate monitoring. Dane helped me stay upright during contractions but he could see on the monitor that it just wasn’t helping. I was in pain and standing up alleviated some of this pain, having to stay sat on the bed felt completely unnatural and I started saying, "I can’t do this.” Dane calmly held me still and said, “You already are doing this.” After 35 minutes of trying—and failing—to get the right result, the midwives returned to the room and said, “Let’s break for an hour and let’s examine you.”

That’s when things kicked into overdrive.

The midwife realised just how far along I was; the head was right there. I had been guzzling the Entonox and nothing was registering for me. There was a moment of confusion and uncertainty. One moment I was going to be transferred to delivery, then I was going to have the baby in the room I was in because they weren’t sure there was time to move me. Then someone popped in and said a delivery suite was prepped and ready for me. It was like a scene from a movie—doors swinging open as I was wheeled on the bed through the hospital to labour and delivery. Between contractions, I moved to a different bed and was told, “Just breathe the gas and air.” The room started to go fuzzy and the midwives went out of focus. They corrected themselves and I was told only to breathe it when I had a contraction.

At this point, I felt a bit out of it, and it still hadn’t registered that I was in labour. I was being told to push and it was only when the midwife asked me to lean forward and feel the baby’s head that I realised the baby was on its way. Five pushes later and about 20 minutes after transferring rooms, our baby was here.

A baby girl, born at 3:39 p.m. weighing 8lbs 2oz.

And she’s changed our world forever.