Alice’s Birth Story by Jess

 

I was sure you were going to arrive the day before you were born. You weren’t due for another 12 days, but I just had this feeling you would come before then. I went to the hospital for a 38-week check up and discovered that you hadn’t grown for the past two weeks. I wasn’t very concerned as I had been sick for the past two weeks. However, when I got home and found a message from the hospital saying they wanted me back to do an ultra sound and ECG, I got very scared. It turned out that everything was fine but I had to comeback every few days to re do the test. But you had other plans and I think you knew it was time to get out and see the world.

 

I woke the next morning around 5.30 with pains in my pelvis, lying in bed with Mylo I noticed that the pains were starting to come and go and that they were in fact mild contractions. So I told your Dad and I called Anna. Becky called around 8.30am (as she does) and came around with the kids. They all watched Brum and played, which was great. Becky was one of the most perfect of people to have around and to spend the day with, she helped me stay relaxed and focused. Beck and I just kept in tune with you and my body. We sat inside and talked and went outside at times for a different view. Becky did heaps of breathing with me and we discussed all sorts of things, like what you would look like and names we liked. I loved sharing that time with Becky, she really kept me focused and calm and I will never forget it, it was beautiful and perfect. Around 2 pm, Dad came home and Becky took Mylo for his first night away from me. I felt so sad seeing his crying face in the back of her car, he looked at me with such sadness. Becky later said he had stopped crying by the time they left the street, so he got over it and I have to say was glad to have the space were I could just focus on the task ahead and get the sitting room back. I was feeling relaxed, calm and lethargic and very ready to meet you.

 

I had a bath in the late afternoon and found myself drifting off to sleep in between each contraction. I was feeling euphoric, almost like I had taken an E (not that mummy knows what that feels like and something you should never do!). I felt in control the whole time and focused on the moment, what I was feeling and felt ready to do this.

 

I had spent the best part of the last 22 months dealing with Mylo’s birth, which had been very traumatic, difficult, and I was so scared the entire time. I had no control and no idea on what to expect, I was so fearful of the pain and the birth. I am still convinced a result of intervention from the hospital, my fear and not knowing what to expect that it resulted with an emergency caesarean. I felt so hurt and it took until I went through all this with my second pregnancy to start to heal. I am just so thankful that those emotions didn’t impact on my relationship with Mylo and being a Mum. However I knew with you that I was going to have a VBAC, esp. as I had seen in my file that The Woman’s recommended a VBAC my next birth. I had done so much preparation for a VBAC, but I was still worried that I wouldn’t be able to do it. I look back now and relaised that I had only really allowed myself one option and I just couldn’t fail or let either of us down. Maybe a part of me didn’t want to disappoint Anna or Dad either.  However saying that, if anything were wrong with you, I would have been the first to go to theatre and have a caesarean, as I would never ever risk you.

 

I had met Anna when I was a few months pregnant and asked her to be our doula. In Anna I found strength and trusted in her. She showed both Daddy and me a new way of looking at and understanding what birth was about. She taught me that I had to embrace the pain and not be fearful of it. She helped me understand what I had to do to have you naturally and without any intervention. Through Anna I started to find my inner strength, self-belief and my trust to do this. In Anna I found someone who totally heard and understood what I felt about my first birth and how this had affected me. Together we planned the details of how I wanted your birth, I researched as much as I could and I challenged the hospital and some staff on what I prepared to do and not do. I think now that was one of the hardest parts of this process, fighting a system that wanted to do it their way for their benefit, not ours.

 

Around 5.45 pm Anna arrived and you started to really make yourself known as my contractions started to get more regular and intense. I had several baths and lay on the mattress in the sitting room with Daddy and Anna. We had candles when it got dark and Daddy looked up names on the Internet, as we didn’t have any names for you yet, only a middle name. (Well he didn’t, I had a few but daddy didn’t like them very much!) Anna created a safe and cozy environment for me, she fed me bananas and mango Weiss bars. Not long after my last bath, I think it was about 10.30 pm the contractions started to get more intense and I started to push. I desperately wanted to be told it was time to go to the hospital, but I just didn’t want to get into the car. Daddy didn’t want to say we should go, as he later told me he was concerned with interfering with my birth plan. At this stage I was pretty keen to be teleported to the hospital, as I so didn’t want to move. I was a bit worried that my membrane hadn’t broken yet either. Anna called a midwife friend, who told her to take me to the hospital, as that was my birth plan. She came back and to my relief and I think Daddy’s too. Daddy got me clothes and I remember Anna trying to dress me in my pants and having just enough energy to say I couldn’t wear them as they were to tight. He then got me an old Indian skirt I had brought in India 12 years before and I think I wore it when I took Mylo home from hospital too. Poor skirt died after that trip. I remember being really focused on getting them to remember my glasses, wallet, towels and to get them to blow out the candles. However I only managed to get them to get my wallet, glasses and the candles, the towels were forgotten.

 

I lay in the back with my head on Anna’s knee while Daddy drove us. After pushing a few times my water’s broke all over the back seat. I remember saying to Daddy that I was “sorry” and he just said it was fine and that is why he took the work car and not our car. (Very typical of your Dad, always thinking ahead). The only way I could get through the car trip was to watch the trees out the window to work out where we were. Once we got to the hospital Daddy tried to go into emergency through the exit. Where I lay I could see the no entry sign and had to tell him that he had to go in the next gate. I remember being irritated that he didn’t know where to go, but he didn’t go to the hospital as much as I did and I think I was also annoyed as it was wasting time, poor Daddy, he was tired and a bit frightened too. As I got out of the car and walked in to the emergency, I had another big contraction and water went splashing on the floor as nurse grabbed me and dragged me into a cubical to examine me. She was saying “you have to come with me now”, but I couldn’t move. There was a sense of panic in there and I was determined not to allow it to get into me. They checked me, discovered “I had a bit further to go” and started to move me upstairs with the world’s worst trolley driver, who rammed me into every wall on the way to the birthing suit. Once there things calmed down, but I remember people yelling things to me like I was deaf. Anna turned the lights down and I concentrated on focusing myself again after the rude interruption of leaving my safe haven of home and getting to the hospital.

 

A doctor came in and I remember her yelling at me that I had to listen to her and to let her know when my contraction was over. I thought you are a bloody Doctor, don’t you know these contractions never stop! She started to inform me of my risks were and that I had 30% more chance of rupturing. It really pissed me off and I think Anna told her to go and read my birth plan and file and leave me alone. I think if I had it in me I would have told her to fuck off! I felt like she was treating me like a fool and was looking for an excuse to take me into the theatre and to control our birth. When she left I had to refocus again and go back into myself, so that I could continue. By then I was 8 cm dilated and the midwife, Shuman kept telling me to stop pushing or I would hurt my cervix, but I couldn’t and I remember thinking it didn’t matter if I did, as I wasn’t going to need it ever again. Shuman checked me and said my cervix lip was getting stuck on your head, so she pulled it off, but it slipped over again. She asked me to have a drip so she could increase my fluids, which I agreed to do. She also offered me gas but I looked at Anna who refused it for me. To be deadly honest I didn’t even think about pain killers through out the whole day and by this stage, I was so far away from that need that I couldn’t have thought of anything worse, even though I was screaming blue murder and asking for it all to stop. I clearly remember calling out “baby, baby, baby” to you, trying to get you to come faster and I think I was yelling “fuck” and hearing another nurse say something like that is the word for it or something like that. Shuman then said that you were posterior and I remember saying “not again”, as this was one of my greatest fears and the reasons I tried to stay on my side all day and not to sit back at all. However with the next contraction you turned and headed out into this world.

 

Shuman tried a second time to move the lip and succeeded this time. You started to crown. Anna and Shuman told me not to push until they told me to, as your head was coming and they didn’t want me to tear. I focused with everything that I had left and held back the need to push as best as I could, and it worked, no stitches only a tiny tear. They then told me to start pushing. This was so difficult and I was so tired by this stage. I was having trouble knowing when I was having a contraction, but looking back now, I knew. Your head was out and Shuman said she could see your black hair, which I remember thinking it must be blood, as the last thing I thought you would have was black or dark hair. Shuman said the cord was around your neck and then said it wasn’t, but then I remember hearing them saying it was around twice, which confused me a bit, as it turned out it was around your neck twice. This was one thing that I seemed to know, as from about 5 months into my pregnancy I kept saying that I thought the cord was around your little neck. You moved so much inside me. I then decided that I was going to finish this and that I would get you out in three pushes. I did it.

 

You were placed on my tummy and I was so over whelmed by you, your skin and what we had just done, all of us. You didn’t scream, you made gurgling sounds and as you had tied a knot in your cord the midwives were concerned that you were so quite. Anna said to me to talk to you and I said, “I am so glad you are here”, with that you screamed your little head off.  I checked that you were a girl and as I didn’t have my glasses on I asked if I was right, but I had known all along that you were going to be my baby girl. I now have one of each, a beautiful boy and a beautiful girl and one of each birth.  We kept your cord attached for several hours and just before Daddy and Anna went home, I cut it for you.

 

I am so glad I fought to have you naturally and in doing so I learnt so much about my strength, my determination and myself. I let go of all the anger and hurt that I had over Mylo’s birth and felt free and so proud of what I had done, with the help of Daddy and Anna of course. Welcome my baby Alice Xanthie Maude Edwards (how you got your name is another story), but this is our story, the story of your birth and it was one of the best days of my life.