hello! what a crazy crazy week and half I’ve had!

I’ll give you a synopsis of Micah’s arrival to our world, but boy was it a long, drawn out experience!

I first started having contractions Wednesday evening a week and 1/2 ago. It was just early labour but without knowing what to expect I stayed up most of the night waiting for it intensify and wondering when to ring the hospital. Silly me! Nothing much eventuated and by Thursday day nothing was happening. The same thing happened Thursday night, but I was a bit better prepared and tried to sleep as much as I could, though it was quite difficult.

Friday we spent trying to relax and rest as much as possible, then by 11pm Friday things really got going. Contractions were coming every 3-4 minutes and I could not sleep at all through them. We went into the Birth centre at 3am and I was 4 cm dilated. Knowing I had already had a few sleepless nights, the midwife gave me some sleeping tablets to help get some rest through the next few hours. By 10am that morning I was 5cm, but the contractions has stopped AGAIN!! (well, coming every 20mins or so and not very strong) ok, so now this was really frustrating. Rohan and I tried everything we could to get things going – walking, eating, drinking, etc to no avail.

At 4pm on Sat, they broke my waters to get it all going for sure and it was full of meconium indicating Micah may have been in distress. Because of this he needed constant monitoring so I needed to be transferred out of the a la natural birth centre to the normal birth suites.

So at 5pm I find myself hooked up to 3 different machines – one IV drip with a hormone to get the contractions going, a monitor for contractions strapped to my belly and a fetal heart monitor to keep track of Micah. So much for my active, natural, intervention free labour! i couldn’t even take myself to the toilet!

Despite this, I was quite relaxed – at least this baby was going to be born finally – and by 6pm we were in a steady rhythm. Things were going well from my perspective, I hadn’t had any need for pain relief by using relaxation exercises and visualisation. (thanks for the tip Carolyn!)

However at 10.30pm just when things were getting really intense and I was getting ridiculously strong, expulsive contractions, 2 doctors walked in and informed me “they’d been monitoring my situation all day” and were concerned that with the long labour and slow progress, the meconium in the waters and they suspected Micah was posterior (face up, instead of face down) that I should have an emergency caesar. So in 30 mins of craziness (they had to get my consent on numerous things and make sure I understood all the risks involved – tell me a woman in the final stages of labour is able to make any informed decisions about anything!) I was on the trolley heading into theatre. That was the worst moment of it all, because my body was desperate to push but I was being told to hold back. It was the first time during the whole labour I had to resist what my body wanted to do and it was aweful!

After a very stressful and prolonged attempt to do a spinal block I finally was able to relax as my entire body became numb from chest down. Just before they were to start the operation they did one final exam. And lo and behold, they discovered I was actually fully dilated, he was actually anterior (the better way for pushing), and descended into the birth canal. The head consultant then said, “well, she can deliver this baby naturally!”. So I was wheeled into recovery having had no surgery, which really was quite funny. I had to wait 45 min to wait for the spinal to drop down a certain level so it didn’t affect my breathing and then finally back into the delivery suite to push. (except now of course I couldn’ t feel anything! do you know hard it is to “push into your bottom” when you have no idea where your bottom is?!)

So an hour later, Micah was finally born at 1.36am on Sunday morning! Phew!

As a result of his size (he was HUGE!) I did end up with quite a tear but I didn’t really mind – it is certainly easier to recover from than a Caesar would be.

Rohan and I came home on Wednesday and have been adjusting to life with newborn. The fact it’s taken me 4 days to write this email demonstrates a little of how difficult it is to do any more than just feed, eat, sleep, shower etc! Hopefully things will get easier as we all adjust to this new lifestyle.

We managed to do a car trip yesterday to visit a friend – small victory!