Birth of Reilly Morgan
Susan's Story.Living in the small town of Tom Price and working at the local hospital in an administrative capacity, my first pregnancy was well monitored by thoughtful midwives. I put on a lot of weight (over 20 kilos), but had blood pressure checks, urine tests and dopplers galore. I worked up to 36 weeks but was only working 3 days a week by then, slowing down gradually. The local GP had been recommending that I consider birthing in Perth (she didn't like primips to birth in town as our hospital had no facilities for emergencies) and as I'm quite short (155cm) she deduced I would probably have a small pelvis (they STILL believe that!). Anyway, the staff all supported my decision to stay, and I was looking forward to labour and birth. My husband (Todd) took leave 2 weeks either side of my due date, so when he finished working nightshift on the Sunday night, he was looking forward to 2 weeks of pottering around the house, doing some gardening and odd jobs, and getting in some golf games. On the Monday he finally met my chosen midwife, Di New, had a tour of the labour ward and we both felt well prepared and content. Wednesday morning, I woke around 9am, and could hear Todd talking on the phone in kitchen, back from an early morning golf game, and rolled over to get out of bed. I felt a warm trickle of fluid between my legs, and thought "this is it, my waters have broken", so I leapt out of bed (well, lumbered really) but as I pulled the bed covers back, I was confronted with the sight of blood - lots of it .... I ran down the hallway to the toilet, yelling at Todd to call our midwife, and as soon as I sat down on the toilet seat, and gush of blood poured into the bowl. I threw on a dress and we drove straight to the hospital. Waiting for us in A & E was Di, who took my blood pressure (way high!!!!!!), used the doppler, urine check and finally an internal (for which she apologised profusely) to check for any effacement or dilation (none). Whole bloods were found in the urine, my stained underpants testified to a reasonable loss of blood, (which had now stopped) and the GP was phoned at the surgery. After a wait of 30 minutes for the GP to phone back during patients, Di explained the situation, and unbelievably to all present, advised Di to tell me that it was probably only a show, and that I was possibly exaggerating the amount of blood lost, (as a primip, of course I was prone to hysteria!!!) and told her to send me home. Di was not terribly comfortable with that decision however, and asked me to return to the hospital 2 hourly for dopplers and urine screening for the remainder of the day, and of course to return immediately if I started bleeding again. I went home, not overly worried and phoned my 3 sisters, who had all had babies, (2 of them had had caesareans after induced labours) and even though they urged me to get a second opinion (a bit hard with only one GP in town), or to confront the GP at her surgery (not an option, as I was no longer bleeding and didn't feel like providing her with any further evidence of my irrational and hysterical nature (you must remember, I worked with, and in conjunction with all the medical staff in town - I didn't want to cause a fuss)), I settled down for the day, returning to the hospital as instructed with no further bleeds and a good strong heartbeat picked up at every visit. My last visit was at 8pm that night. We stayed up watching television until 11pm, then went to bed, Todd sneaking out a few minutes after I fell asleep to seek refuge in the spare bedroom. My snoring during pregnancy apparently sounded something like a Mack Truck on an open highway (according to the only witness!) Around midnight I woke up, rolled over to make a toilet trek, and once again felt fluid running out between my legs. Another bolt for the toilet, trailing drops of blood down the hallway behind me, yelling at Todd to phone Di at home - another mad dash to A&E, met by Di and followed by the GP. A repeat of antenatal screening, still good heart sounds through the Doppler, and the decision was made to call the RFDS to fly me to Port Hedland. Nobody was sure what was going on, but they couldn't keep me in town. Anyway, after a long night which included a 60 minute ambulance ride to the closest landing strip at Paraburdoo, a plane ride (the RFDS are the most wonderful, caring and calm people in the world), then ambulance transport to Port Hedland Hospital, I was admitted, examined, and explained to that my placenta had calcified quite badly and was peeling away. There was little placental attachment left, but they were aiming for a vaginal birth before considering surgical options. At midday on Thursday, when no spontaneous labour had occurred, my membranes were ruptured. An hour later with no contractions, they started me on Syntocinin. I started using the TENS for pain relief, and the hours passed by in a blur. At 7pm they gave me an epidural to bring down my rising blood pressure. An hour later, they returned again, to re-site the epidural needle (it had been inserted in the wrong space, providing no anaesthetic). At 11pm I was fully dilated and effaced, but the baby's head was still not engaged, and he wasn't recovering well from the contractions, so I was given an episiotomy and they attempted a vacuum extraction (failed). Then a second episiotomy was given and they attempted a high forceps extraction (failed). I was aware of a vague feeling of pressure 'down there' but had no idea of when or where or how to push with the epidural anaesthetic covering up all sensation. At 11.30pm they decided surgical birth was necessary and at 12.38am on Friday the 15th of November 1996, Reilly Morgan Belcher was born. I saw him briefly, and then they started stitching me up and I could focus on nothing else. What an awful experience that was. I could feel all the tugging and pulling as they worked, I started having severe chest pains, the oxygen mask made me feel like I was suffocating and the nausea was overwhelming. After a 3 day stay in Port Hedland, we managed to get on a empty forward flight from Port Hedland to Paraburdoo (where they were picking up another Mum and already born twins who were in some difficulty) arriving at Tom Price Hospital on Monday evening. I was elated to be at home, but tired, sore, my milk had come in, my baby was unsettled, (not surprising with a large cephala haematoma on the back of his head from the vacuum, bruising across the left side of his face from the forceps, and being administered antibiotics for meconium aspiration. I checked out of hospital with Reilly on Tuesday morning and went home again, 6 days after my first bleed. I found mothering Reilly very difficult. I was able to take care of his needs, and I was fiercely protective of him, but it was months before I was able to feel like I had bonded with him. He was also a 'hard to care for" baby; he fed very badly, cried a lot (because he was hungry but he found it painful to feed - the result of a silent reflux which went undiagnosed until he was over 5 months old). This resulted in terminal sleep deprivation (he woke at least every 2-3 hours all night until he was several months old), and slept not at all during the day until nearly 3 months of age, all while I was recovering from my caesarean and other wounds. My husband is also a shift worker, so I had to cope with night shifts - which required me to try and keep the baby quiet during the day, and cope solo at nights. Not an easy act. We all had some difficult times emotionally, but, just as physical wounds heal, so do emotional ones. When the reflux was diagnosed, and treatment began, the feeding became normal, the sleeping became settled, and I guiltily discovered that there was a beautiful, happy, smiling little baby living in my house, who forgave me for all my sins, both real and imagined, during those first confusing, horrifying, never to be repeated first months. We finally came to understand each other, fall in love with each other and I was able to leave the past behind me. During these early months I wondered often if I 'could have done it' (birth naturally). We had gone all the way physically in labouring but I still ended up with a caesarean. There was disappointment and regret, but I felt that I (and the hospital staff) could have done no more in my particular situation, and in fact, I was very grateful to have been given the opportunity to go as far as I did (yes, even the 2 episiotomies). My first birth experience didn't leave much untried, which at the very least left me feeling 'knowledgeable'. There was nothing I could feel unprepared for the next time around. Some of the cruelest things can be said though, without thinking. A 21 year old girl, having had her 1st baby, a labour that started exactly on her due date, no complications, a labour that was voluntarily relieved by Pethidine and an epidural with a second top up, and a baby girl eased gently into the world, had the nerve to tell me that labour was really painful, and that I was lucky to have had a caesarean. From my husband, that maybe I was too small, and couldn't have birthed the baby vaginally, that maybe it wasn't possible for me, and from a handful of women who had chosen ceasarean birth, that it was sort of selfish of me to be disappointed when I had a healthy baby. The closest analogy I could get to describing my disappointment and sadness, was that it was like my house catching on fire, and managing to get all my loved ones out of the house before it burned down. I was grateful that we were all alive, but so sad that all the precious things we owned were taken away from us and could never be replaced. Myself, my husband (naturally, totally horrified by 'natural' birth and very reluctant to ever go through it again), and my firstborn Reilly (who was loved and wanted and cared for, but not well nurtured for so many months) all suffered deeply. We had a very tainted picture of birthing and parenting, and worried that we could not cope if we had to go through it all again. Birth of Tyler RianWhen I got pregnant again I was sort of shocked. We had been trying for many months, but when it happened, I felt quite unprepared. 2 of my sisters had already had successful VBACs with their second babies, so I was well informed of the path I had yet to tread. My husband was non-communicative about the VBAC, offering little support, but no real opposition. Just a lot of 'what ifs?'. I didn't bombard him with information, threw out a handful of comforting statistics, pointed to my sisters as proof of the possibilities, and went ahead on my own. I went Dr Churchward, as had my 2 sisters, and he was so positive about VBACS that my husband felt he must not have understood that I had previously had a caesarean. I chose a private midwife (as did my 2 sisters) who had not previously handled a VBAC but was happy to take me on 'as if I had not previously had a caesarean'. I had hoped for a home birth, but rental accommodation in Perth during the summer school holidays left few options available, so I decided I would labour at our rental unit as long as I could, and then move onto Woodside Hospital to birth (as common walls in a small block of units did not seem to be terribly inducive to an uninhibited labour). I asked my husband to choose one of my 3 sisters to be HIS support person (he was terribly fearful, and I wanted him to have someone around who had been through labour to be able to say to him, don't worry, that's normal, it's okay, she's fine). And I read lots of books, spoke to lots of people, heard lots of negative comments, and a handful of positive ones, opened myself up to new ideas, and finally, believed that it was possible FOR ME. I arrived in Perth on the 4th of January 1999, 37 weeks pregnant. The flight from Tom Price started up quite uncomfortable Braxton Hicks, and at 4am the following morning I had a few light contractions about 45 minutes apart. The Braxton Hicks appeared with regularity on a daily basis right up until labour commenced, but after 3 nights of light contractions, my body settled back down and we began to wait.
Our unit was in Scarborough, so my Todd and our then 24 month old son Reilly, spent a lot of time walking around, going to the beach, visiting friends (and waiting impatiently ...). By my calculations, my due date was the 15th January (which came and went), the Dr's due date was the 21st (which came and went) and we were getting rather antsy. I had a fear of getting too overdue and become less and less suitable to labour in Dr Churchwards' opinion. On Friday the 22nd, I suffered from blurred vision, and my midwife visited and found my blood pressure on the rise. She suggested a massage to relax me, so we phoned a friend who was trained in therapeutic / sports massage and she came over on Saturday the 23rd to give me the benefit of her skills ... Bliss ... I felt so light and supple I almost didn't feel pregnant anymore. I lay down for a rest about 1pm that afternoon (we were going out at 4pm for a barbecue at a friends house, a 40 minute drive away). During the next three hours I felt twingy cramps with some regularity (30 - 45 minutes apart). With all the pre-labour I had already been through, I was reluctant to start believing I could be in labour. I told my husband how I felt and asked him to go without me, but taking Reilly along. I was scared of getting in a car and the sensation stopping, and I was concerned about getting to the barbecue, and the twinges continuing as well. I just wanted to stay put, relax, and wait it out. I started to drink cup after cup of raspberry leaf tea, read my book, and sit in the late afternoon sun. By about 5pm I started recording the times of these little twinges, which still didn't hurt, but were now about 15 - 20 minutes apart. By 8pm, I knew that labour had started, but it was very early labour and only a little uncomfortable. I phoned my mother (who was to come and stay with Reilly when we left for the hospital) and my older sister Belinda, Todd's support person and official video recorder for the event and put them on a tentative standby. I then phoned Todd, and said "I think this is the night" and ask him to swing by Hungry Jacks on the way home. Todd got back about 9.30pm, still a little disbelieving (how could I possible think about junk food at a time like this?), we put Reilly to bed, and sat and watched a video. At 11.30pm I told Todd to go to bed (I was using a hot water bottle on my lower stomach and over my groin now), and said that I would try and nap on the couch - I was still only 'uncomfortable' at this stage, with contractions every 7-8 minutes, but I wanted some time alone to savour this gentle preparation of my baby's birth. I also wanted to get as far along as I could, alone, so that Todd had less time to stress - even though he was quite comfortable and supportive of my VBAC at this point, I knew he was going to worry like crazy until the baby was actually born. Around 1am I started using the TENS (I'd hired one on a weekly basis from a local chemist), and was now kneeling on the couch with my upper body resting on the armrest. Contractions still about 7-8 minutes apart. At 2am I decided to get up and make more raspberry leaf tea, but before the kettle had boiled I realised that the contractions were now about 2-3 minutes apart and a little more vigorous. I hopped into the shower, and after 15 minutes I realised that the contractions were still close together. I got out, dried myself, got dressed, plaited my hair, (put on some makeup !!! - Well, a girl's got to look her best doesn't she?) and then went and woke Todd. He was still a bit groggy and I asked him to start timing my contractions, but once I told him they were 2-3 minutes apart, he went into overdrive. He dressed, packed a bag, phoned my sister, my mother and the midwife, and after 25 minutes, turned around and said, 'do you want me to start timing the contractions now?'. At around 3am my sister arrived, followed shortly by Susanjane, my midwife. She checked my blood pressure, felt for the baby's position, and timed some contractions and then hauled me outside to start walking around. Our unit was very close to the back of the White Sands Motel, and then were still some stragglers out and about, on their way home, on their way to somewhere, and I must have looked a real sight. I was wearing a sarong, tied under my belly, and a black bikini top. Every couple of minutes I would have to stop walking, wait for the contraction to end and then start waddling on again. After 20 minutes we were back outside the units, with my poor, worried husband, whispering about how dangerous it was to be walking around at that time of the morning, so I told Susanjane we should probably head for the hospital before he got too frantic. We arrived about 4am and wandered down to the labour ward. I was still quite happy, but the contractions were starting to take my breath away, and I unexpectedly found myself crying when they started. After filling out some paperwork, Todd and I went down the back steps and walked around the back of the hospital. Then back up to the waiting room were there was a bed and a television so we watched a little of Rage, I did a few little dances and then into the shower. I had to keep moving, and nothing felt terribly comfortable. The shower was nice, but I couldn't have my TENS in there, so I got out for a bit more wandering. The hospital midwife took Susanjane aside and asked her if she would do an internal (hospital policy - they need to have an idea of where I was at so they could keep a track of my progress, private midwife notwithstanding). This was about 6.30am, and I asked Susanjane not to tell me how far along I was (in hindsight, a huge mistake). As she was doing the internal, apparently I dilated from 5 to 7 centimetres. I was worried that if I was only a couple of centimetres dilated that I might feel disheartened; if I had known I was already 7 centimetres I may not have fought the contractions as much as I was about to do. Thinking I still had a long way to go, I did indeed find the going tough from that point on. I don't remember too much, apart from the usual; asking for drugs, then begging for drugs (and knowing damn well I wasn't going to get any). I fought my midwife and refused to be soothed by anything she was saying, and then fought my husband who was trying to pass on Susanjane's suggestions. I kept asking, when, when it would be over, because it hurt so much, much more than I would ever have believed, and when the best I was told was, 'by lunchtime', I didn't believe I could do it. I reached full dilation and effacement just after 9am and was told I could start pushing, but I felt absolutely no urge to push. I was on all fours at this stage, definitely NOT pushing, because my body still wasn't ready to show me how, or where. At around 10am, Susanjane, by now quite worried that I hadn't started pushing, was becoming less sympathetic and more forceful. When I turned to her and asked her to tell me when I was going to reach second stage, I think she finally realised that I just didn't have a clue about what point I was at. The hospital midwife (another Di !!!) then came in and knelt down behind my husband (who was kneeling in front of me). From that point on, that was the only face I saw and the only voice I heard. She told me to try and squat, supporting myself with my arms around my husband's neck (oh my God - that hurt - that opening up of myself at last), and on the next contraction told me to push - finally I gave my first push and I felt the head enter my vagina - my eyes just about popped out of my head and images of grapefruits appeared, but at last I knew what to do. The very next contraction I started pushing before I could be told, and the head moved down ...I actually felt it moving down! Susanjane behind me was saying, 'the baby's head is going to crown on the next contraction' so I could touch the head as it crowned. Next contraction I gave an almighty push and felt the head, body and legs slither out in less than 2 seconds; a wet, slippery gush as this whole entire baby left me. Di, unaware that it was over, was saying, "No, keep pushing, don't stop" while I was mumbling "he's out, he's out". Susanjane barely caught him, not expecting such a quick entry into the world. It was only later that we realised that on the last contraction, he was still in the bag of waters, and as the head and body were born, the waters broke and the baby just surfed on out. His caul was stuck to his body like a second skin as Susanjane passed him to Todd and me between my legs. I cannot describe what I felt - with the amount of words I have used so far, you probably think this impossible. It was relief, joy, tears and laughter, it was pride and satisfaction, and so, so right. It was tenderness, and surprise and love, and a tinge of sadness for my firstborn to no longer have me all to myself. It was 10.40am on Sunday the 24th January 1999, (at which time precisely, my mother told me the next day, that my son Reilly, woke from a sound sleep, crying and calling for me, Mummy, and needing to be cuddled back to sleep). And the most satisfying part of all ~ the tears and the laughter on Todd's face as he looked at our new son, and said "you did it - all by yourself. You're so clever, look what you did!" |