Ruan's graphic birth story

[imported from livejournal and backdated]

[sans photos as I can't find the edited versions I was using and cbf making more]

Been an interesting last couple of weeks. And I've been frequently interrupted trying to write this post coz there are two kids to tend to, plus my mum to socialise with when she got back from Christmas shopping ^_^ So don't trust the time stamp :P I've also left out a lot of small details coz figure this thing's going to be long enough as is and probably not that interesting reading in the grand scheme of things :P Also I've decided to break up the entry and only write the birth story for now coz it's still turning out bloody long, will write up the first couple of weeks later :P

Day 1 of Labour - 30th October

The contractions got regular on the night of the 29th. Made me briefly wonder if Smidge would rock up on the 30th, seeing as I'd predicted she would be born between the 30th and the 1st. They were regular but they weren't very strong and didn't seem to be doing anything so we decided it was safe to go to bed.

Spent most of the 30th ignoring or trying to ignore contractions. Had a couple of pretty decent ones which had Josh asking if he should call Corrie (our midwife), I said no, they weren't doing anything.

Day 2 of Labour - 31st October

Woke up at the buttcrack of dawn, fed Tao, got pretty solid contractions during breastfeeding and a bit after. Wondered if they would develop into anything, they didn't. Spent the day in more pain than the day before, so both Josh and I figured that we couldn't be too far off. Josh got the codemonkeys around with the idea that if I went into labour proper we would kick them out and do all the other stuff we needed to do. As the night wore on I retreated into the room coz the guys were stressing me out, not deliberately or anything, they were stressing about what they needed to do and what they had to do by when, and it was stressing me out to the point where labour stalled completely. Least I got a bit of a reprieve from the aches and pains and discomforts.

Day 3 of Labour: 1st November

Towards the afternoon, the aches and pains got pretty bad. As in I was stopping what I was doing and thinking about it bad. Josh asked if he should call Corrie, I didn't say no so he did. kowren came round. Corrie came round and had a look, and said it was likely that things would happen sometime today, and to give her a call when things hotted up. She left, terrycat came round.

Josh filled up the pool for me and I dropped in. Everything was immediately better. Tao joined me for a little while.

kowren decided to start timing contractions. She'd brought around Rogan Josh for dinner and we dug in around dinner time. I had dinner in the pool coz I didn't want to get out. We then hoed through a box of Ferrero Rochers. I had to keep hydrated as I was spending a lot of time in the nice hot water, so I put my baby gut to some good use.

koren timed contractions at under 5 minutes for a while so we called Corrie back in, she brought the mobile hospital with her and the most hospitallish looking piece of equipment (a couple of tanks with a face mask) was hidden behind the partial wall. Good thing we weren't anticipating needing to leave out the front door in a hurry, that pasageway isn't that big :) Tao got into investigating all the medical equipment, I was feeling pretty good. The pain was manageable though very uncomfortable out of the water, and I had to get out a couple of times as I could feel things slowing down every so often and getting out and walking around for a bit helped.

The contractions were busy getting nastier and while I was still easily holding conversations with everyone, I couldn't talk through them anymore. Josh came by for many many cuddles and it was good. Him and terrycat spent most of the night playing cards.

Late at night things stalled majorly. terrycat went home. A second internal showed I hadn't dilated much (the first one done much earlier in the night said I was 3 going to 4cm and the mucous plug came out and looked gross), was only 4 going to 5cm and the waters hadn't broken, which we thought it had earlier due to the mass of cloudy stuff floating around in the water, and the baby was also facing the wrong way, she had her back against my back and we needed her back against my front. Attempts to spin her around failed, Corrie suggested trying to get some sleep. kowren headed home at about 2am and Corrie crashed out in the spare room for a little while.

Ruan's Birthday - 2nd November

I got exactly no sleep coz it hurt too much. Corrie came out to see how I was doing after a while, and was tossing up whether to go home and try to catch some Zs herself and come back later, or whether to call Marilyn (the backup midwife) to come and take over while she went home and got some decent sleep, or whether she should stay. I said yeh her going home and getting some decent rest would be a good idea. Then jumped back in the pool coz the pain was getting worse. Corrie put in more hot water seeing as me yelling for Josh to come do it did nothing as Josh wasn't interested in waking up. Corrie decided to do another internal just to see how things were going. Waters broke and the pool turned really cloudy.

Things hotted up seriously then. I blame the fact that the water was comfortably warm and not nicely hot for the amount of pain I was in and ended up in. The noise I was making woke up Josh and Tao. Tao wanted boob but he was aware from watching that he wasn't going to get any. I apologised to him, and Josh ran distraction by starting to make pancakes for everyone, seeing as it was obvious now that it was happening and going to finally end soon.

The contractions got serious, Corrie observed I was bearing down a little. I could handle it, it was good. It was doing something and I knew what to do with the contractions.

Then suddenly they changed. I looked at Corrie and said "I don't know what to do with these ones."

She said something about breathing through them. Breathing didn't cut it so I "roared" through them instead (that is to say, started screeching very loudly, but I was still pushing through them as well).

The ever observant boys halted their pancake making and came to watch. After yelling through a few of the nasty bitch contractions, I yelled at the top of my lungs, then looked at Tao and saw that scared look on his face, and he held up his arms to Josh who picked him up and cuddled and comforted him. I didn't yell quite as loud after that, think that was the worst one, but was still pretty loud. Still blaming the lack of really hot water. Josh came through a couple of times and held my hand as best he could seeing as he had to comfort the boy as well (which was kowren's job but obviously she wasn't there coz Smidge decided to be late :). Corrie kept quite calmly telling me to yell through the contractions.

Fenrir was quite worked up, racing around the pool trying to find what was causing me tomake that much noise, probably so he could maul it. I think Corrie was looking like the best candidate so Josh kicked the poor mutt out. The cats had made themselves scarce.

Sometime then I said "I can't do it" just the one time (I said it about five times when giving birth to Tao), and had both of them telling me that I could and I was, and remembered that I could and I was.

Corrie suggested I put my finger in and see how far away the baby was. I did so. Now imagine your middle finger is the birth canal with the top knuckle being the cervix and the tip being the opening. She was just above the second knuckle and may as well have been on the moon. Two pushes later I somehow managed to gasp "I can feel it coming" as I felt the head plunge from there to just below the second knuckle. Then Corrie was again very calmly telling me that she could see the head, and told me if I could to put my hand down and try to very slowly push the head out.

Now perceptions shift and twist. In my mind, my body went bugger slow delivery and popped the baby out onto the floor of the pool. Apparently what really happened is I did deliver the head nice and slowly. Either way I put my hand down as instructed and looked down as well (which is probably how I pulled that groin muscle, I was at a really awkward angle and under a lot of stress), I saw her head halfway out and put my hand on it, it was a slimy little dome of a head. The rest of it came out and I held this tiny little precious head in my hand. I recall repeating "I gotcha, I gotcha" before I let go while the body plopped out. It was at this point that I thought she'd fallen to the bottom of the pool but Corrie had at some point come closer and had caught her and was passing her up to me, telling me to grab the baby and lift it to the surface.

I did so, she broke the surface and immediately started yelling. I said something quite profound like "Hey Ruan". In the mad endorphin haze, I observed there was something odd about her but couldn't work out what. Corrie had already worked out what and told me she was going to get the cord out from around her neck. I then registered that Smidge had the umbilical cord wrapped tight around her neck and body, pinning her arms to her sides. Corrie tried the usual trick of sliding a couple of fingers under the cord and lifting it over the head, but there wasn't enough cord so I ended up having to turn Smidge this way and that so we could untangle her. Then I cuddled her lots, wondering how I could possibly hate her like I was worried I would. I also stuck her on the boob and she immediately started feeding. I believe I said "HAH! Success!" as my attempt at breastfeeding Tao when he was born resulted in two sucks and him passing out.

We had a good look and she looked like she'd been in the wars, her face was bruised up, she had two black eyes, one of which was just about swollen shut, and her lips were huge and swollen as well.

Corrie said that what she thinks might have happened was that Ruan was unable to turn due to being wrapped up in the cord, and not being able to turn was possibly why she couldn't keep low enough to put pressure on the cervix to get it to open which was why labour kept stalling. She also figured that the reason I was in so much pain was because my cervix had dilated the last 5cm and Ruan had turned and dropped to where she was meant to be at the same time in about half an hour. I observed her head was still spherical, and Corrie said it was because it hadn't had time to change shape with the speed of the birth. Apparently it had taken somewhere between 2-5 minutes to push her out after full dilation was achieved, pretty bloody quick hence the bruising. I figured she had been born so quickly because we had to get the cord out from around her neck so it wouldn't strangle her to death.

The stupid placenta wasn't terribly interested in dislodging and I was getting tired sitting so decided may as well hop out and if the placenta had dislodged maybe Corrie or Marilyn (who had missed the actual birth by about five minutes) could pull it out coz I was over pregnancy and birth and couldn't be bothered pushing it out myself. They helped me get out of the pool and onto the futon (which Marilyn had prepped), I got covered with a blanket and felt nice and warm. They wanted me to birth the placenta and I just wanted it out as I was sick of everything and was still getting nasty contraction pains coz the placenta needed to come out. In the end I think there was a bit of each as they tugged on the cord and I had a couple more contractions and pushed the bloody thing out. Josh came over to cut the cord. Which I think resulted in Marilyn making pancakes in the kitchen.



Ru got wrapped in a blanket and passed to me, where I gave her yet another boob. Marilyn said something along the lines of "She's feeding like a trooper!"

A bit later after things had settled down and Ruan had been weighed and measured and was back on the boob yet again (glutty thing that she is), I saw Tao standing at the cat scratching post looking quite forlorn. I told him he could come have some nah-nu as well if he wanted, and he immediately ran up and attached to my other boob.

Corrie got picked up by her husband and went home for some well deserved rest. Marilyn in the meantime hustled me into the shower and then to bed. Josh came in and fed me pancakes and honey and I passed out for quite a while after that. About time I got some decent sleep too, and it felt good ^_^

The saga continues later, I've just realised it's nearly 11pm (yeh this took me nearly a day to write, shut it ;) and we have to be up early tomorrow, Josh has his first of two exams and I'm going shopping with Mum :)