Birth Story - Jack, 2011

I'm putting these up here for posterity's sake, rather than to horrify you all while you're eating your lunch, so please skip unless you love gory, onomatopoeic descriptions of birth. 

IN BRIEF:
Gestation: 42w
Site: Home
First Stage: 90 minutes active labour
Transition: About two minutes
Second Stage: 20 minutes
Third Stage: Ages and horrific
Tearing: Deep, extensive, borderline 3rd degree
Weight: 7lb 12oz

Details:
The day before he was born was Easter Sunday. I felt odd all day. I had a few really vicious cervical pains, but nothing major or long. My sisters all came round so we danced. Really danced. I was buggered up afterwards, but evidently it worked. I kept feeling like my waters were going to break, but kept telling myself it was wishful thinking because I was getting closer to bedtime and my admission was looming. Everyone went home after dinner and I got Jimmy to bed, then went down to watch TV with Mum. This was around 9pm. I didn't feel right. I wasn't in pain, just felt restless and inverted. I had some ice cream and then felt like I was weeing. I said to Mum "Either my water just broke or I'm incontinent". I asked her to come to the loo with me to check and when I got to the bottom of the stairs, it just POURED out. I went to the loo and it was clear with some blood in, but definitely water rather than wee. A load more came out on the loo. Mum went a bit hysterical - I think coz she was pleased it was finally happening rather than panicked - and got a shower curtain on the sofa in case I kept leaking. I called the midwife and she phoned back a few minutes later, saying she'd pop out around half 11 (my waters broke approx 9:30) and I phoned the ILs to come and get Jimmy. The midwife phoned again while the in laws were round to say she was gonna come over sooner rather than later. Then I kissed my Jim goodbye and sat in curious limbo waiting for the midwife. I text his dad and told him my waters had gone and got back "OK. Good luck". lol.

The midwife (Suzy) turned up at half 10 and checked me over. My fundal height was 33cm by then - 9 weeks behind! She didn't want to do a VE until I was in labour coz of infection risk, so I took a low vag swab and she checked my wee and obs. Then we sort of sat around chatting. I'd had one, painless contraction before she arrived so she waited for me to have another. I told her when I had one, and the pain was in my kidneys. The pain went off long before the contraction did, coz she kept hold of me the whole time. She made me run up and down stairs a couple of times to try and get me going. I'd told her how Jim's labour had started almost identically, so she said she'd hang around rather than get home and have to come straight back out. I had my first "Oh shit, this is it" contraction around 11:30 and they started coming every 4 minutes after that. I didn't keep track at all, but Suzy did. My best friend Carly arrived around midnight - I told her she didn't have to come considering the hour, but I'm bloody glad she did after everything else that happened. By the time Carly got there, I was contracting regularly but not that painfully. I could still talk except at the very peak. Suzy did a VE around 12:15 and I was 2-3cm, not fully effaced, but very 'stretchy'. I felt a touch dishearted then, but then the contractions ramped up, probably from all the swishing of cervix. My labour 'start' time was 12:30am.

She phoned the second midwife out then. I was alright between contractions, but couldn't work out where I wanted to be when I was having them. I tried the toilet, which was OK. I tried crouching right down into my knees, which was really good for a while. Sue, the 2nd midwife, came out at about 1-ish. She came out in a rush because I was getting a bit pushy. They got nicely set up for the birth and then I tried kneeling on the sofa for the contractions, which was AMAZING. I recommend it. I knelt up the back and leaned on the back with a big sheet folded up under my face to whimper into. I have no idea what time anything much happened after I got on the sofa, mainly coz I had my back to the clock and everyone in the room. I kept trying to join in the conversation between contractions, but I was too buggered to turn round. I remember the midwives telling me I needed to take my trousers off and I thought "Not yet...not yet..." but then I started wanting to push at the top of the contraction, so they took my trousers off for me. It was very undignified for poor Suzy who was crouched between my legs ready to catch.
I had a couple of mega-contractions, and told Suzy I was definitely wanting to push. Then I had transition. I felt sick, but I wasn't sick, and started crying really quietly that I wanted to go to bed and I wanted my mum and suddenly thought "Bugger me, transition already". I don't think anyone heard me, I was mewing like a kitten with the pain, rather than howling. Then everything went really quiet and my next contraction had three pushes at the end of it. Mum and Carly thought I was lying when I said I wanted to push until I started bearing down.
I started pushing around 2:10am. I couldn't coordinate it very well to start with, Mum told me to pull my chin in and focus DOWN so I tried doing that instead and that worked far better. Once his head was up to my cervix, I started getting really emotional and crying that I couldn't do it and I wanted to go to bed and I didn't want to. I remember crying "I can't, I can't, I can't" and everyone else saying "YOU CAN". Then his head crowned and I managed to breathe his head through rather than just push him straight out. I was absolutely SCREAMING by that point. I didn't mean to, I couldn't seem to help it. Then he was out, all flobbetyschlobbety. It was about 2:24am.

I was still facing away from everyone and it took a few seconds to pass him up through my legs. I kept crying that I wanted my baby. He didn't cry immediately, and it seemed an age before he did. He pinked up so fast once I had him and I rolled onto my back so I could feed him. Then I fed him and cuddled him and was a bit WOW.

In the mean time, carnage was happening. He had two true knots in his cord, which I didn't really think about right then, but his cord was thick and jelly-like at the umbilicus from where it was all pushed up. He's been double clamped. I planned to have a physiological third stage, but once the baby was born my womb didn't want to push anymore. Then I started to haemorrhage, so they gave me syntocin quickly and started tugging me about. I just wanted them to piss off and leave me alone, I felt horribly ill from the haemorrhage (my official blood loss was 650ml, so over 3 times the amount I lost with Jim, and it was probably a lot more of that because it went under the shower curtain) and I wanted to faint even though I was sitting down. I managed to push the placenta out myself, then they started fiddling about to see to what extent I'd torn. The light isn't great in my house, but they deduced that I had torn all the way through and would probably need stitching in theatre. By then, I just wanted everyone to FUCK OFF and leave me alone. They called me an ambulance and helped me get dressed and get Jack dressed. My mum washed all the blood off me - I looked like I'd been in a horrible accident, lol.
He was wide awake and staring at me and I had my hand under his bum and he felt like he did in the womb, coz I was so thin I could feel his bum really well within.

A first responder turned up first, to 'stop the clock' as they call it, at which the midwives were most scathing. The full crew showed up not long afterwards. They got me in the ambulance and I sat on a stretcher holding Jack for his first car ride! Mum and Carly followed. All the neighbours must've thought something awful had happened coz I had two ambulances out. I got pulled through A+E on the stretcher and all the beaten up drunks had a look at Jack and said congratulations. I was bunged into CDS and transferred onto a bed.

A consultant came to poke me about some more. He said I'd torn all the way through, but not actually damaged anything in my arse, so I could be stitched as a second degree by a midwife. Neither Suzy nor Sue wanted to stitch me coz my sphincter was visible and they didn't want to fuck me up, so Stevie came to do it. She's the midwife who delivered Jimmy and did an excellent job of stitching that tear. While I was stitched up, they did Jack's weight and measurements.

I was stitched, then had a diclofenac suppository, then started wishing everyone would DIE and leave me alone, because there's only so much vag pulling about I can stand and the doctor was ROUGH. Suzy and Sue went home to sleep - poor Sue had a clinic yesterday and we had a cup of tea and some biscuits. Then Carly took Mum home. It was gone 6am by the time everyone went.
Jack settled nicely and I had a doze for a bit. His dad rang me, having been informed of his son's birth by a barrage of texts and voicemails *eyeroll*. A woman came and did his hearing test, then a midwife came and did his paediatric check. Then I was discharged.