The Longest, Most Amazing Day of My Life Part 1

I wrote Punky's birth story about 2 weeks after she was born. It was the first real chance I'd had to sit in front of the computer and I just banged it out as quick as possible. I thought I would re-visit that post and add in things that I've since remembered about her birth (in bold red font), or that I've been told by Dave or my Mum, who were both there for it. The original was pretty long so I am going to split it in to two. Stay tuned for Part Two later in the week...


On Monday 21st November I had my final OB appointment before my due date (23.11.11) at 10am. I was 39 weeks 5 days pregnant. He examined me and said I was about 2cms dilated already. I was pretty happy about that, needless to say. As I said to Dave, I was 20% of the way to fully dilated! He wanted to book me in for an induction at 7am on my due date, Wednesday as he was worried about the size of bubs because of my gestational diabetes. However he was pretty confident that I would go in to labour before needing the induction, but he booked it anyway, just in case.

I was pretty keen to avoid an induction at all costs! I had heard plenty of horror stories from people that had been induced, about how horrible and intense it was, so I was doing everything to move the baby along, walking, nipple stimulation, bouncing on the fit ball, regular acupuncture.

Even in-utero she had chubby cheeks!

So I woke up on Tuesday morning the 22nd November around 7am with contractions that weren't too intense and around 10 minutes apart. I actually had an acupuncture appointment booked for that morning but decided not to bother going as I was pretty sure this was the real deal and wouldn't need it. I Spent the rest of the day sitting (bouncing!) on the fit ball and wandering around the shops with Dave, trying to help move things along as the contractions seemed to just come and go throughout the day, without much rhyme or reason to them, some worse than others, but mostly bearable.

We spent most of the evening sitting at the dining room table doing word puzzles and sudoku, after having Maccas for dinner. Little did I know that that Maccas would be my last meal before going to hospital, and that Maccas would then be my first meal upon leaving the hospital as well! In fact I also had a chocolate sundae from Maccas which Kelly HTandT kindly bought me the day after Punky was born, knowing how much I had missed them while pregnant and especially at the end when I couldn't eat any sweets with the GD! That's what friends are for right there people!

By 10pm that night they contractions had really started to pick up in intensity and frequency, varying between 5-8 minutes apart. I moved to the glider in the loungeroom at this stage so that I could concentrate a bit more and that is where I stayed, breathing, rocking and counting through each contraction, until we eventually left for the hospital. Dave mostly did Sudoku puzzles (I knew he'd become addicted once I taught him how to do them!) and tidied up around the house.

I remember at one point starting to get really annoyed at Dave and the noise he was making packing the dishwasher, I was trying my best to count and visualise and all I could hear was him clinking glasses and dishes. I ended up telling him to knock it off and just leave it coz it was so distracting. In fact he started to eat a muesli bar and walked in the loungeroom while he was chewing. Dave still laughs when he tells me that I just stared daggers at him and said through gritted teeth "Stop Chewing!". He tells me that was the moment when he knew things were about to get interesting!

I asked him to come in and please count through the contractions for me coz I was getting to the point where I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. During the contraction I would jiggle my feet on the ground and do small rocks on the glider, thinking to myself "moving down" and imagining the baby's head putting pressure on my cervix and helping it to open.

I read a book called Birth Skills by Juju Sundin which is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it to anyone that is pregnant and planning a vaginal birth. In the book Juju teaches 5 key skills that you can use to help manage pain in labour, movement, breathing and vocalisation, visualisation, stress balls, and keywords.

To be honest, I was pretty sure that movement and vocalising would be the skills I used but in the end it was the visualisation and key words that got me through. I am so glad that I read that book though, as I am pretty sure without it I would have had a major freak-out at some stage. The book is very repetetive, which is on purpose, and Juju encourages you to read the book multiple times so that some of the key skills and ideas that she conveys become things that you don't have to conciously think about and for me, it really did work. (I am not paid to endorse this book at all, it just helped me so much that I like to tell everyone about it!).

By about 2am the contractions were really starting to become intense and close together and Dave was a real help, counting through each one for me. I found the counting helped to keep me focused and not panic or anything from the pain, plus it was a good indicator to me when one was about to finish so I could look forward to that.

At 3am I felt like I was ready to go to the hospital, I didn't feel out of control, but I felt like I needed to be somewhere with people who had been through this before and could tell me how everything was going. I said all along that I wanted to try and stay at home as long as possible and it's like my body kind of knew when it was time to go. Plus I wasn't really looking forward to having contractions in the car so I figured the sooner we left the better. (Looking back now it was a good thing we did go when we did).

Apparently pregnancy makes me feet bigger and height shorter!
The last photo was taken the day before Mia was born

We got to the hospital about 3:30am and I stood out the front of emergency breathing through a contraction while Dave parked the car and grabbed the bags. A security guard escorted us to the maternity ward through emergency. He asked me if I wanted to take the stairs or the lift. My answer? "You don't have to wait for stairs". So up the stairs we went and were directed straight to the delivery suite.

Kirrily was the midwife on duty (although Dave disputes that was her name, he thinks it was Karen) and she showed us to our birthing room and waited patiently for me to breath through another contraction. She then asked me if I'd prefer to stay in my clothes (I was wearing trackies and a pink top) or if I'd like a gown. I chose the gown. I knew things were gonna get messy and didn't want to have to bother washing and soaking clothes when I got home. Or worse, throw them out. I liked that top!

I climbed up on the bed so the midwife could get a monitor on my belly to see how the baby was doing and as I got up there my waters broke. Best timing ever. Dave's comment was "Thank God that didn't happen earlier, you would have ruined the glider!". I just looked at him and the midwife laughed. She got me set up on the baby heart-rate monitor and then went out to start getting paperwork ready.

The contractions were really ramping up now and I started to find it harder to deal with them being stuck on the hospital bed with the monitor strapped to me. When Kirrily came back she asked if I wanted to try the gas and air and I was like "Yes please!"

I swear, it did nothing but dry my mouth out and make me feel a bit like I was stoned or tripping out or something, the pain was still there, but at least it gave me something to bite on! Poor Dave was doing his best not to cringe with every contraction as I squeezed his hand so hard and he counted through every one for me knowing when to start when the pressure on his hand started!

In hindsight, I am going to refuse to be put on the bed to be monitored when we have our next baby. That was seriously the worst part of the whole thing and when I really started to struggle with the restriction of my my movement and not being in an upright position. If they want to monitor the baby they can do it with a hand-held doppler. Honestly, its no wonder why women's labours slow down when they get to the hospital.

Kirrily came back to do an internal examination and take off the monitor about 45 minutes after we'd arrived and I said I was hoping for a big fat 10! Unfortunately I was only 5cms dilated, but she said my cervix was nice and ripe and progressing really well. Small comfort when you suddenly think you've still got hours more of the pain to go!

It was at this stage that I started to really feel like I was losing control of the pain, I was now stuck on the bed and couldn't move, because the contractions just seemed to be getting stronger and stronger (if that was possible!) and closer and closer together. When Kirrily next came in I told her I wanted an epidural but she suggested it might be a good idea to wait a little longer as it might slow things down. She left the room and came back a few minutes later and I told her I really needed something for the pain and she asked if I would like to try some morphine. I said yes, anything, just make it hurt less!

After speaking to Dave he tells me that this was pretty much just a stalling tactic on the midwives behalf, and he doesn't think she had any intention of getting me the morphine. I gotta say I'm glad she didn't because if she had I would have been completely fucked and out of it for the actual birth.

However, before she'd even had a chance to organise any kind of pain relief I suddenly felt the most overwhelming urge to push. I said to Dave "I gotta push, I gotta push" and thankfully the midwife walked back in the room at that time and I told her the same thing. The contractions were coming one after the other and it felt as though the only thing that would help would be to push.

You can find Part 2 of the Longest, Most Amazing Day of My Life here.

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