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Day 4 of Podling's life! They're on me in a baby sling, which has allowed me to make tea and do the washing up (look ma, two hands!), but this model is honestly a little unsupportive of their head in the upright squat, tummy-to-me position they prefer. So now I'm sitting still and using my hands to type instead, rather than risking their neck by moving around too much.
Here's the next instalment of my birth story - part 1 is here.
Content note: childbirth, long labour, pain, emotional distress, ambulance, medical
Where had we got to? Okay: I'm 3cm dilated, the midwife is here, and I'm in the pool at home. The contractions started to get more intense, and I was getting tired. I needed to pull out all the stops with my pain relief: pelvis massage from Leo and Shiri, hypnosis with Leo, straw breathing (which I was taught in pregnancy yoga, and which did in fact help for a bit), squeezing stress balls. It still hurt a lot - more than I could easily handle. Leo and Shiri were coaching me to keep my breathing steady and my vocalisations low in my belly, but it was getting harder. I was hungry, but it wasn't easy to eat between contractions. I sucked on isotonic energy gels instead.
At 9pm there was a midwife shift change. We decided to invite Danielle, our friend who had offered to photograph the birth for us, to come at the same time, to reduce the total number of interruptions. I was no longer in any doubt that I was in labour - my only concern was how long I would be in labour for!
When Danielle and the new midwives arrived - Amy from the home birth team, plus another midwife from the labour ward whom I never really got to meet - the contractions slowed down again. This time I actually welcomed the respite rather than lamenting the fact it was slowing my progress, and used the short gaps to have some tea and a square of flapjack. It got dark and we dimmed the lights.
At 10pm, I asked for another vaginal exam, and Amy obliged. "There is progress," she said, "You're at 4cm." More disappointment. 1cm every 4 hours was not a rate of progress I could sustain. I was exhausted: I couldn't do this indefinitely.
Back in the pool, the next four hours were a slog. The contractions got quicker, longer, and more intense. I was reaching the limit of what I could manage with breathing and the other natural pain relief methods I was using. Leo did some more hypnosis with me, but the contractions crashed through the haze and I wasn't sure it was really helping. They stayed in the pool with me, cuddling close, looking into my eyes, giving me a hand to support.
I realised I no longer had the desire to intensify the contractions by squatting, and mostly stayed lying on my side or leaning forward on my knees. I was so tired. I tried to sleep for the minute or two between contractions, finding myself getting very irritated when I could hear people moving around the room. I snapped at people and asked for quiet. I was also convinced I could smell pee (no-one else could smell it) and that was annoying too.
I felt frustrated. When Leo and Shiri coached me to manage my breathing, I snapped at them. I was working as hard as I could; trying harder wasn't an option. I wanted to make progress, but I was so damned tired! How was I expected to cope when I'd barely got any sleep the night before?
[Coming back to this post several hours later - Leo is at the shops, and Podling sleeping on my tummy again while I sit on the sofa and type]
When I had a lull long enough to allow me to speak, I asked Amy about pain relief. She said there was the option of pethidine, an opiate which she could administer at home. It might make me sleepy enough that I could have a few hours sleep. That sounded amazing, but it would also make the baby sleepy, so it depended on how far along I was. If I could make do without opioids, that was my preference. We decided to wait until the next exam (which would be at 2am - they did them every 4 hours) and then decide. Meanwhile, Amy got out the gas and air. That helped. The first dose made me feel really swoony and yummy, but the next contraction sobered me up again.
Around midnight Leo went to have a lie down. They suspected we might be going for a while, and they wanted to make sure that they had the energy to support me when things got even harder towards the end. I laboured in the pool with Shiri, getting increasingly agitated at my inability to manage the pain. Amy came to my side. "Use the gas," she urged. She'd initially coached me to take three breaths - "That should see you through a contraction" - and when that proved to not be enough to help me manage the pain, I stopped bothering with it, and started freaking out instead. Amy got me using it again, breathing through the hose as many times in a row as I needed to. The contractions were getting longer. The gas did make me feel spaced out and I was worried I'd start feeling sick, though, so I didn't want to use it continually - but after a while, the pain wasn't giving me much choice.
At 1.30am Leo woke up from their nap, and rejoined me in the pool. I clung to them. Shiri went for a half hour lie down.
I remember kneeling in the pool at one point thinking, this is torture. It was the worst pain I'd ever experienced, and it felt neverending. I couldn't manage my breathing any more, couldn't keep from yelling in pain. It was barbaric that I had to do this. Why did people behave as if this was normal? It was intolerable.
At 2am I had my next vaginal exam. I'd been working hard for four hours and was desperate to find out how much closer I was to giving birth. Amy had a feel, and told me the news: I was still at 4cm. I hadn't dilated any further since 10pm. I still hadn't had a show, and my waters still hadn't broken.
I know that I had been "making progress" - my uterus had been contracting, I'd been in labour, my body had been preparing to give birth. But the baby couldn't start to descend until my cervix was dilated to 10cm, and it was happening agonisingly slowly. I'd been in labour for 24 hours now. I'd had 3 hours sleep and it was the middle of the following night. I was so tired. How much longer was it going to take?
"I want the pethidine," I decided. If I could just grab a couple of hours sleep, that would help a lot. I might be in labour for another 24 hours at this rate. I didn't want to end up so exhausted that I needed a c-section.
After a phonecall with her duty manager, Amy explained that given my dilation hadn't changed since the last check, and since I hadn't had a show or any waters, at this point she wouldn't be able to give me pethidine at home, only if I transferred to the birth centre so they could keep an eye on things. I could stay at home if I wanted and rely on the Entonox, see how things went on their own, or I could transfer and have the pethidine. It was an easy decision: I could see things going badly if I tried to stick it out at home. I decided to transfer.
Amy called an ambulance. Rather than getting back into the pool, I hung out with my pile of cushions on the sofa while Leo started getting things ready for the journey. I had a hospital bag packed, but it was an "emergency transfer to the labour ward" bag, not a "transfer to the birth centre to continue labouring" bag; it had stuff for after the birth, but not for an unknown number of hours still in labour. So there was food, drinks, toiletries, speakers, phone chargers and so on to assemble. Since I was hoping to sleep after the pethidine, we decided there wasn't any point Danielle coming along, so she offered to stay behind, feed the cat and tidy up.
With everyone else busily bustling around sorting things out, Shiri stayed with me. She massaged my lower back, held my hands when she could, and tried to get me to use the gas and air. But I was in my own world of pain by that point. The contractions were coming back to back now. It felt relentless; I barely got a few seconds of rest between each one. The pain tore my whole body apart. It was unbearably intense.
I felt my fear rising. How much longer would I have to do this for? 12 hours? Days? I couldn't handle another minute. I was crying in agony, struggling to breathe, struggling to get the mouthpiece for the gas into my mouth.
I felt weak, like a failure. The books, the yoga classes, all said that if you did it right, labour could be pain free. I couldn't do it. When Leo returned from doing the packing I wept on them: "I'm sorry I'm not stronger." They tried to soothe me: "You are strong." I didn't feel it.
It took over two hours for the ambulance to arrive, and I suffered for every second of that time. The wait was agonising. I'd made a decision: I wanted pain relief, I wanted sleep. Now things were out of my hands. I got my hopes up when the paramedic arrived in his car, but he went through to the kitchen to do paperwork and we still had to wait for a van. It wasn't an emergency, so it involved waiting for one to come across London. Those hours were two of the hardest of the whole labour.
At some point during the wait, Amy looked at a wet patch on the sofa (we'd put down soft, waterproof blankets) and said that I'd had a show. "Hopefully that will move things along," she said encouragingly. "It's kind of like glue holding the cervix together." We might see more dilation now. I hoped she was right.
When the ambulance finally arrived, it gave me a boost. I wrapped myself in my dressing gown, Leo put my socks and shoes on for me, and I got into the back. Leo and Amy sat with me in the back, and Shiri rode in the cab. I refused to lie down on the trolley, kneeling on all fours instead. The ambulance had its own gas and air, and I was feeling awake enough to take it properly. When the contractions struck I sucked on the mouthpiece greedily. It helped. In fact I started to feel positively giddy. "No tea no shade," I said to Amy, "but the paramedics' entonox is better than yours." She laughed.
Shiri took an amazing photo of me kneeling up during the journey, grabbing the rails above my head, purple dressing gown hanging off me, looking Leo fiercely in the eyes. There's something about it that's very rock'n'roll.
The ambulance ride was surreal and bumpy. I rode it out contraction to contraction, sucking on the gas. When we arrived at the birth center (which was attached to the hospital, but in its own building) they asked if I was OK to walk or wanted to be taken in on the trolley. "I'll walk," I said. Then a contraction hit, and I realised how incapable I was. I changed my mind. They wheeled me in on the trolley.
The birth center room was palatial, like a large hotel room. It had a double bed, a sofa, birth balls, a birthing chair, tables and chairs, and a birth pool. It was around 5am when we arrived.
I can't quite remember the sequence of events, but since I was due another vaginal exam at 6am, and I'd had my show and been having back to back contractions, I think we decided to wait until then before trying the pethidine. Shiri and Leo filled the birth pool and put out LED candles, I had my blood pressure, temperature and fetal heartbeat checked by Eze, the next midwife, and once the pool was filled I got into it with Leo for half an hour. It was a bit disappointing going back to midwife entonox after the ambulance stuff. (The mix is the same - 50/50 - so I don't know what the difference is. Leo reckons something to do with the regulators, with the ones in the ambulance allowing you to get a bigger dose with each breath.)
At 6am I was 5cm dilated. So I was making progress, but still slowly. "I can feel your membranes bulging," Eze said, but they still hadn't broken.
I was eager for the pethidine. I couldn't wait to get some sleep! Eze suggested that along with giving me the shot, she also break my waters for me, as that was likely to help move things along.
This was an intervention that I'd said in my birth plan I didn't want - but that was in the context of breaking the waters (ARM, artificial rupture of the membranes) as an induction. Breaking the waters before contractions had started carried the risk of infection, and might have meant I'd ended up on syntocin to trigger contractions, which I definitely hadn't wanted. But I'd been in established labour for hours now; it wasn't going to stop at this point, it was just a question of how long it took. Speeding things along sounded good to me. I agreed, and used the gas and air while Eze broke my membranes. I thought she'd done it with a finger, but apparently she used a metal hook. Podling still has a tiny scab on the top of their head, and I can only assume that they were scratched slightly in the process. Poor baba! But their heartbeat was still calm and strong.
"Happy baby," the midwives kept saying to me after doing the check. I was afraid of how long this was taking, but my baby trusted me to birth them.
Rupturing the membranes was surprisingly painful - I guess I'd thought of the amniotic sac as a bag inside me, disconnected from my body, but I felt the puncture and I felt the wound. But when I felt the warm water gushing out of me I gasped. "Oh, that's such a relief!" I hadn't realised how much pressure I'd been feeling until it was released.
The pethidine made me feel swimmy and floaty, but I only got to enjoy it for a few minutes before contractions started racking my body, more intense than ever. Labouring on all fours on the bed, I kept on waiting for the pain to recede, but it didn't. This was the worst pain yet, and it was unrelenting. I wasn't going to be able to sleep. I wasn't allowed back in the pool again either - not for two hours, because the sleepiness brought on by the pethidine made it a safety risk. What sleepiness?! I was kneeling up on the bed leaning on the wall, slamming the palms of my hands against it, screaming in agony. I remember screaming No, no, no and I can't. I couldn't take more of this! I just wanted to sleep!
So for two hours, we hung in there. Leo and Shiri were constantly urging me to use the gas, but I was convulsing in pain and could barely get it into my mouth. When I got it in my mouth, I was too busy helplessly shrieking in pain to breathe it properly. I thrashed about and screamed the house down. I was past the point of caring who heard, what anyone thought. I was past the point of self-control. It was just pain, pain, pain, tearing my exhausted body apart.
I don't remember much about these hours: this story is pieced together from what Leo and Shiri told me later.
The midwife shift changed again and two new midwives came in, Henny and Kesiah, a third year student. I didn't notice them arrive, and I wasn't able to be introduced to them. I was in too much of a state to notice anything.
At one point, having exhausted every position offered by the bed, in desperation I got up and started roaming around the room, trying standing up, leaning on the wall, anything else available to see if it helped. Nothing did. Leo glanced at the clock and saw that it was 7.30am, 90 minutes after taking the pethidine. Since I was very clearly not sleepy, they decided to consult the midwives and ask if they'd be willing to relax the two hour rule and let me get into the birth pool a little early. They were. So the pool was filled, and I got back in. I guess it helped, but I don't remember.
I laboured in the pool for the next two hours. I barely remember this period of time. I remember losing my grip completely, screaming until I was hoarse. I remember thinking I would do anything, anything to end the pain for a moment, and begging for an epidural.
I stayed on my hands and knees in the pool for the most part, sometimes rearing up, sometimes stretching out and bracing my feet against the far end of the pool. Leo stayed in the water with me, Shiri close by, and between them they worked continually to coach me to use the gas. If they could get me to start using the gas before the contraction hit, I could sometimes keep breathing it through the wave and ride it out, but if I started using it too late, I was too busy screaming and thrashing around to get any of it into me.
Wave after wave of agony crashed over me. I was tossed to the bottom of the ocean, tumbled along the sea bed. I was lost. At one point I sobbed to Leo, "This baby is stuck, I'm just hurting myself for nothing." I wanted an epidural, I wanted a c-section, I wanted to die. Anything that would end it. Leo and Shiri and the midwives judiciously elected to pretend they hadn't heard.
Thankfully, those two hours are now something of a haze. I was either in intense pain, or heavily using the entonox, or grabbing 10 or 20 seconds of microsleep between the contractions. Apparently Leo didn't even realise I was sleeping for a while, and kept on urging me to take the gas, but Shiri knew what was happening. I was so exhausted that even in the intense pain I was in, my body was able to give me a few brief moments of sleep. Between the microsleeps, the pain and the gas, I was barely conscious. There was no thinking in that space of time, no narrative self. I was just a creature of being; just a body.
I don't remember the vaginal exam at 10am, when Henny triumphantly told me I was 9cm dilated. I was approaching transition. Shiri looked at me, eyes shining: "You're ready to have this baby." I must have been conscious enough to take in the news, though, because after that things got... better. Not easier, but I was more present, more engaged.
Henny, knowing how things were going, had quietly gone around and clicked on all the LED tealights, moving them around the pool. We'd turned them off when we thought I was going to sleep, but she could tell I was nearing the end.
Some people describe a "rest phase" after transition - the point where the cervix is fully dilated to 10cm, before the baby's head starts to descend through it. Transition is meant to be the worst part of labour, where a lot of people get angry, or say they want to die. (Ha.) Sometimes the "rest and be thankful" phase lasts long enough for people to grab a few hours of sleep. I didn't have anything of the kind. The contractions ploughed right on through.
The hardest part, for me, was pre-transition - those hours of agony, not knowing if I was making any progress, or how much longer it would be. Transition itself came and went without fanfare. All I knew was that I was gradually returning to my body, becoming more aware. By the time I gave birth, I was fully present.
Part 3 - Childbirth »
Here's the next instalment of my birth story - part 1 is here.
Content note: childbirth, long labour, pain, emotional distress, ambulance, medical
Where had we got to? Okay: I'm 3cm dilated, the midwife is here, and I'm in the pool at home. The contractions started to get more intense, and I was getting tired. I needed to pull out all the stops with my pain relief: pelvis massage from Leo and Shiri, hypnosis with Leo, straw breathing (which I was taught in pregnancy yoga, and which did in fact help for a bit), squeezing stress balls. It still hurt a lot - more than I could easily handle. Leo and Shiri were coaching me to keep my breathing steady and my vocalisations low in my belly, but it was getting harder. I was hungry, but it wasn't easy to eat between contractions. I sucked on isotonic energy gels instead.
At 9pm there was a midwife shift change. We decided to invite Danielle, our friend who had offered to photograph the birth for us, to come at the same time, to reduce the total number of interruptions. I was no longer in any doubt that I was in labour - my only concern was how long I would be in labour for!
When Danielle and the new midwives arrived - Amy from the home birth team, plus another midwife from the labour ward whom I never really got to meet - the contractions slowed down again. This time I actually welcomed the respite rather than lamenting the fact it was slowing my progress, and used the short gaps to have some tea and a square of flapjack. It got dark and we dimmed the lights.
At 10pm, I asked for another vaginal exam, and Amy obliged. "There is progress," she said, "You're at 4cm." More disappointment. 1cm every 4 hours was not a rate of progress I could sustain. I was exhausted: I couldn't do this indefinitely.
Back in the pool, the next four hours were a slog. The contractions got quicker, longer, and more intense. I was reaching the limit of what I could manage with breathing and the other natural pain relief methods I was using. Leo did some more hypnosis with me, but the contractions crashed through the haze and I wasn't sure it was really helping. They stayed in the pool with me, cuddling close, looking into my eyes, giving me a hand to support.
I realised I no longer had the desire to intensify the contractions by squatting, and mostly stayed lying on my side or leaning forward on my knees. I was so tired. I tried to sleep for the minute or two between contractions, finding myself getting very irritated when I could hear people moving around the room. I snapped at people and asked for quiet. I was also convinced I could smell pee (no-one else could smell it) and that was annoying too.
I felt frustrated. When Leo and Shiri coached me to manage my breathing, I snapped at them. I was working as hard as I could; trying harder wasn't an option. I wanted to make progress, but I was so damned tired! How was I expected to cope when I'd barely got any sleep the night before?
[Coming back to this post several hours later - Leo is at the shops, and Podling sleeping on my tummy again while I sit on the sofa and type]
When I had a lull long enough to allow me to speak, I asked Amy about pain relief. She said there was the option of pethidine, an opiate which she could administer at home. It might make me sleepy enough that I could have a few hours sleep. That sounded amazing, but it would also make the baby sleepy, so it depended on how far along I was. If I could make do without opioids, that was my preference. We decided to wait until the next exam (which would be at 2am - they did them every 4 hours) and then decide. Meanwhile, Amy got out the gas and air. That helped. The first dose made me feel really swoony and yummy, but the next contraction sobered me up again.
Around midnight Leo went to have a lie down. They suspected we might be going for a while, and they wanted to make sure that they had the energy to support me when things got even harder towards the end. I laboured in the pool with Shiri, getting increasingly agitated at my inability to manage the pain. Amy came to my side. "Use the gas," she urged. She'd initially coached me to take three breaths - "That should see you through a contraction" - and when that proved to not be enough to help me manage the pain, I stopped bothering with it, and started freaking out instead. Amy got me using it again, breathing through the hose as many times in a row as I needed to. The contractions were getting longer. The gas did make me feel spaced out and I was worried I'd start feeling sick, though, so I didn't want to use it continually - but after a while, the pain wasn't giving me much choice.
At 1.30am Leo woke up from their nap, and rejoined me in the pool. I clung to them. Shiri went for a half hour lie down.
I remember kneeling in the pool at one point thinking, this is torture. It was the worst pain I'd ever experienced, and it felt neverending. I couldn't manage my breathing any more, couldn't keep from yelling in pain. It was barbaric that I had to do this. Why did people behave as if this was normal? It was intolerable.
At 2am I had my next vaginal exam. I'd been working hard for four hours and was desperate to find out how much closer I was to giving birth. Amy had a feel, and told me the news: I was still at 4cm. I hadn't dilated any further since 10pm. I still hadn't had a show, and my waters still hadn't broken.
I know that I had been "making progress" - my uterus had been contracting, I'd been in labour, my body had been preparing to give birth. But the baby couldn't start to descend until my cervix was dilated to 10cm, and it was happening agonisingly slowly. I'd been in labour for 24 hours now. I'd had 3 hours sleep and it was the middle of the following night. I was so tired. How much longer was it going to take?
"I want the pethidine," I decided. If I could just grab a couple of hours sleep, that would help a lot. I might be in labour for another 24 hours at this rate. I didn't want to end up so exhausted that I needed a c-section.
After a phonecall with her duty manager, Amy explained that given my dilation hadn't changed since the last check, and since I hadn't had a show or any waters, at this point she wouldn't be able to give me pethidine at home, only if I transferred to the birth centre so they could keep an eye on things. I could stay at home if I wanted and rely on the Entonox, see how things went on their own, or I could transfer and have the pethidine. It was an easy decision: I could see things going badly if I tried to stick it out at home. I decided to transfer.
Amy called an ambulance. Rather than getting back into the pool, I hung out with my pile of cushions on the sofa while Leo started getting things ready for the journey. I had a hospital bag packed, but it was an "emergency transfer to the labour ward" bag, not a "transfer to the birth centre to continue labouring" bag; it had stuff for after the birth, but not for an unknown number of hours still in labour. So there was food, drinks, toiletries, speakers, phone chargers and so on to assemble. Since I was hoping to sleep after the pethidine, we decided there wasn't any point Danielle coming along, so she offered to stay behind, feed the cat and tidy up.
With everyone else busily bustling around sorting things out, Shiri stayed with me. She massaged my lower back, held my hands when she could, and tried to get me to use the gas and air. But I was in my own world of pain by that point. The contractions were coming back to back now. It felt relentless; I barely got a few seconds of rest between each one. The pain tore my whole body apart. It was unbearably intense.
I felt my fear rising. How much longer would I have to do this for? 12 hours? Days? I couldn't handle another minute. I was crying in agony, struggling to breathe, struggling to get the mouthpiece for the gas into my mouth.
I felt weak, like a failure. The books, the yoga classes, all said that if you did it right, labour could be pain free. I couldn't do it. When Leo returned from doing the packing I wept on them: "I'm sorry I'm not stronger." They tried to soothe me: "You are strong." I didn't feel it.
It took over two hours for the ambulance to arrive, and I suffered for every second of that time. The wait was agonising. I'd made a decision: I wanted pain relief, I wanted sleep. Now things were out of my hands. I got my hopes up when the paramedic arrived in his car, but he went through to the kitchen to do paperwork and we still had to wait for a van. It wasn't an emergency, so it involved waiting for one to come across London. Those hours were two of the hardest of the whole labour.
At some point during the wait, Amy looked at a wet patch on the sofa (we'd put down soft, waterproof blankets) and said that I'd had a show. "Hopefully that will move things along," she said encouragingly. "It's kind of like glue holding the cervix together." We might see more dilation now. I hoped she was right.
When the ambulance finally arrived, it gave me a boost. I wrapped myself in my dressing gown, Leo put my socks and shoes on for me, and I got into the back. Leo and Amy sat with me in the back, and Shiri rode in the cab. I refused to lie down on the trolley, kneeling on all fours instead. The ambulance had its own gas and air, and I was feeling awake enough to take it properly. When the contractions struck I sucked on the mouthpiece greedily. It helped. In fact I started to feel positively giddy. "No tea no shade," I said to Amy, "but the paramedics' entonox is better than yours." She laughed.
Shiri took an amazing photo of me kneeling up during the journey, grabbing the rails above my head, purple dressing gown hanging off me, looking Leo fiercely in the eyes. There's something about it that's very rock'n'roll.
The ambulance ride was surreal and bumpy. I rode it out contraction to contraction, sucking on the gas. When we arrived at the birth center (which was attached to the hospital, but in its own building) they asked if I was OK to walk or wanted to be taken in on the trolley. "I'll walk," I said. Then a contraction hit, and I realised how incapable I was. I changed my mind. They wheeled me in on the trolley.
The birth center room was palatial, like a large hotel room. It had a double bed, a sofa, birth balls, a birthing chair, tables and chairs, and a birth pool. It was around 5am when we arrived.
I can't quite remember the sequence of events, but since I was due another vaginal exam at 6am, and I'd had my show and been having back to back contractions, I think we decided to wait until then before trying the pethidine. Shiri and Leo filled the birth pool and put out LED candles, I had my blood pressure, temperature and fetal heartbeat checked by Eze, the next midwife, and once the pool was filled I got into it with Leo for half an hour. It was a bit disappointing going back to midwife entonox after the ambulance stuff. (The mix is the same - 50/50 - so I don't know what the difference is. Leo reckons something to do with the regulators, with the ones in the ambulance allowing you to get a bigger dose with each breath.)
At 6am I was 5cm dilated. So I was making progress, but still slowly. "I can feel your membranes bulging," Eze said, but they still hadn't broken.
I was eager for the pethidine. I couldn't wait to get some sleep! Eze suggested that along with giving me the shot, she also break my waters for me, as that was likely to help move things along.
This was an intervention that I'd said in my birth plan I didn't want - but that was in the context of breaking the waters (ARM, artificial rupture of the membranes) as an induction. Breaking the waters before contractions had started carried the risk of infection, and might have meant I'd ended up on syntocin to trigger contractions, which I definitely hadn't wanted. But I'd been in established labour for hours now; it wasn't going to stop at this point, it was just a question of how long it took. Speeding things along sounded good to me. I agreed, and used the gas and air while Eze broke my membranes. I thought she'd done it with a finger, but apparently she used a metal hook. Podling still has a tiny scab on the top of their head, and I can only assume that they were scratched slightly in the process. Poor baba! But their heartbeat was still calm and strong.
"Happy baby," the midwives kept saying to me after doing the check. I was afraid of how long this was taking, but my baby trusted me to birth them.
Rupturing the membranes was surprisingly painful - I guess I'd thought of the amniotic sac as a bag inside me, disconnected from my body, but I felt the puncture and I felt the wound. But when I felt the warm water gushing out of me I gasped. "Oh, that's such a relief!" I hadn't realised how much pressure I'd been feeling until it was released.
The pethidine made me feel swimmy and floaty, but I only got to enjoy it for a few minutes before contractions started racking my body, more intense than ever. Labouring on all fours on the bed, I kept on waiting for the pain to recede, but it didn't. This was the worst pain yet, and it was unrelenting. I wasn't going to be able to sleep. I wasn't allowed back in the pool again either - not for two hours, because the sleepiness brought on by the pethidine made it a safety risk. What sleepiness?! I was kneeling up on the bed leaning on the wall, slamming the palms of my hands against it, screaming in agony. I remember screaming No, no, no and I can't. I couldn't take more of this! I just wanted to sleep!
So for two hours, we hung in there. Leo and Shiri were constantly urging me to use the gas, but I was convulsing in pain and could barely get it into my mouth. When I got it in my mouth, I was too busy helplessly shrieking in pain to breathe it properly. I thrashed about and screamed the house down. I was past the point of caring who heard, what anyone thought. I was past the point of self-control. It was just pain, pain, pain, tearing my exhausted body apart.
I don't remember much about these hours: this story is pieced together from what Leo and Shiri told me later.
The midwife shift changed again and two new midwives came in, Henny and Kesiah, a third year student. I didn't notice them arrive, and I wasn't able to be introduced to them. I was in too much of a state to notice anything.
At one point, having exhausted every position offered by the bed, in desperation I got up and started roaming around the room, trying standing up, leaning on the wall, anything else available to see if it helped. Nothing did. Leo glanced at the clock and saw that it was 7.30am, 90 minutes after taking the pethidine. Since I was very clearly not sleepy, they decided to consult the midwives and ask if they'd be willing to relax the two hour rule and let me get into the birth pool a little early. They were. So the pool was filled, and I got back in. I guess it helped, but I don't remember.
I laboured in the pool for the next two hours. I barely remember this period of time. I remember losing my grip completely, screaming until I was hoarse. I remember thinking I would do anything, anything to end the pain for a moment, and begging for an epidural.
I stayed on my hands and knees in the pool for the most part, sometimes rearing up, sometimes stretching out and bracing my feet against the far end of the pool. Leo stayed in the water with me, Shiri close by, and between them they worked continually to coach me to use the gas. If they could get me to start using the gas before the contraction hit, I could sometimes keep breathing it through the wave and ride it out, but if I started using it too late, I was too busy screaming and thrashing around to get any of it into me.
Wave after wave of agony crashed over me. I was tossed to the bottom of the ocean, tumbled along the sea bed. I was lost. At one point I sobbed to Leo, "This baby is stuck, I'm just hurting myself for nothing." I wanted an epidural, I wanted a c-section, I wanted to die. Anything that would end it. Leo and Shiri and the midwives judiciously elected to pretend they hadn't heard.
Thankfully, those two hours are now something of a haze. I was either in intense pain, or heavily using the entonox, or grabbing 10 or 20 seconds of microsleep between the contractions. Apparently Leo didn't even realise I was sleeping for a while, and kept on urging me to take the gas, but Shiri knew what was happening. I was so exhausted that even in the intense pain I was in, my body was able to give me a few brief moments of sleep. Between the microsleeps, the pain and the gas, I was barely conscious. There was no thinking in that space of time, no narrative self. I was just a creature of being; just a body.
I don't remember the vaginal exam at 10am, when Henny triumphantly told me I was 9cm dilated. I was approaching transition. Shiri looked at me, eyes shining: "You're ready to have this baby." I must have been conscious enough to take in the news, though, because after that things got... better. Not easier, but I was more present, more engaged.
Henny, knowing how things were going, had quietly gone around and clicked on all the LED tealights, moving them around the pool. We'd turned them off when we thought I was going to sleep, but she could tell I was nearing the end.
Some people describe a "rest phase" after transition - the point where the cervix is fully dilated to 10cm, before the baby's head starts to descend through it. Transition is meant to be the worst part of labour, where a lot of people get angry, or say they want to die. (Ha.) Sometimes the "rest and be thankful" phase lasts long enough for people to grab a few hours of sleep. I didn't have anything of the kind. The contractions ploughed right on through.
The hardest part, for me, was pre-transition - those hours of agony, not knowing if I was making any progress, or how much longer it would be. Transition itself came and went without fanfare. All I knew was that I was gradually returning to my body, becoming more aware. By the time I gave birth, I was fully present.
Part 3 - Childbirth »