This goes on forever but you can skim. Precis: emergency c-section due to undiagnosed breech and meconium, but not that much of an "emergency" - no panic, lovely and calm, easy recovery, wonderful medical people, very positive. I'm down for a VBAC this time round with the proviso that *anything* goes odd they whip me into theatre straight away, and that's only because I'd like to be able to drive afterwards.
My birth plan had started something like this: "I would like an active labour with the minimum of medical intervention..." Sometimes you just have to look back and laugh.After a totally straightforward pregnancy (every one of my antenatal notes just stated baldl"patient well") I was fully expecting a straightforward enough labour. After all, I'd been attending my Active Birth yoga for 20 weeks, had completed my NCT classes and was bouncing around on my gym ball every night to ensure optimal foetal positioning. I did everything that it said on the tin, although at the back of my mind there was the nagging reminder that I had been a breech baby, and so had my brother. Oh, and my father. And my nephew for that matter, but who's counting? But at every antenatal since 28 weeks I'd been told that baby was nicely head down, so I really wasn't too worried.
After a fairly slatternly last trimester my nesting instinct did finally kick in on the afternoon of Sunday 24 September when I found myself, to my great surprise, on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor as if my life depended on it. In retrospect this was so out of character that it should have been obvious what was about to kick off, but it wasn't until that evening when the dull ache of what felt like period pain (oh, how I hadn't missed that over the previous 9 months) started to make itself felt across my lower abdomen that I thought something might be up. Something or nothing, I said to myself. Could be Braxton Hicks. Could be latent labour. Could be...hang on, what's that pink thing at the bottom of the toilet bowl? Oh. A show.
Something or nothing. Despite my rising excitement (and a whiff of fear, this was a week early and I'd been assuming that I'd be at least a week over as this was a first baby) I went to bed.
I woke up at 3am with the distinct sensation that something was a bit...leaky. No big gush, just a steady leak of fluid, so I strapped a maternity pad on and wandered around the flat until 5am when I phoned the hospital and spoke to a very disinterested midwife who told me to come in "for a swab" but not to hurry. So I figured I might as well stay put for a little while and tidied up some cupboards (I know it sounds insane now but it made complete sense at the time, I promise you). When the other half woke up we decided that he would finish off some work he had to do and then we would go to the hospital.
During the morning the contractions were coming at pretty regular intervals, around 5-6 minutes apart and lasting about 45 seconds a time but I wouldn't have said they were painful, just very uncomfortable and I was able to use the yoga training and breathe my way through them. H and I decided to go out for a walk around the block to see if that made any difference and it seemed to make them more painful if nothing else! Back home for the bag and into a cab to the birthing centre at UCLH.
On arrival at the Bloomsbury Birthing Centre I was shown to a room and the midwife came to have a look at me. She felt my stomach whilst I had a contraction and said that it was nice but that I wasn't anywhere near ready yet and that we should go and get some lunch and have another walk around. This was at 2pm. Never one to do things by half I interpreted this as "walk around Russell Square about 5 times, leaning against trees and scaring the wildlife during each contraction". We got back to the birth centre just before 4pm and I went to change my pad, as I'd felt a lot of fluid leaking out during the walk.
And I looked down. And the pad was green. And, I swear, my heart stopped.
I somehow found use of my legs again and made it back down the corridor to our room and very calmly asked Kieron to go and get a midwife, now. Which he did. And she took one look and very calmly instructed Kieron to take my bag and walked us around the corner to the Labour Ward and was just lovely as she hooked me up to the monitors and explained to Kieron what meconium was and what it meant. So, that was the end of my natural, active birth. Bye bye birthing pool, sayonara gas and air.
A midwife came in and gave me a vaginal exam (the only one I had to have thankfully, my God, I never knew they were so brutal!) and told me I was a whopping 1cm dilated. She was followed by three consultants who explained that they thought the best course of action would be a syntocin drip to accelerate the labour and get baby out as quickly as possible (is there a worse phrase than "your baby is in distress"?). I was happily nodding away and agreeing to everything they said, all I wanted was for my baby to be born as safely as possible, sod the birth plan.
They then asked if there was a possibility the baby was breech. I smiled, and explained that I'd asked that at every antenatal and that everyone had said he was "nicely head down". They wanted to scan me just to be on the safe side, however, and there he was on the screen: head up, bottom down. Little bugger!
I could be next in theatre. Did I consent to a caesarian? Hell, yes. By this stage I had reached a point of Zen-like serenity, nothing could faze me. However, although I didn't realise, on digesting all that was going on my poor husband lost the plot a little and had to excuse himself on the pretence of calling his mum to let her know what was going on. He was gone for ages: what I didn't realise at the time and he didn't tell me until later was that he was bawling down the phone to his mum, terrified that he was going to lose us both. Whilst I'd been reading up on every eventuality for months, he had very little idea what was happening and all the medical terms being thrown around the room just confused him even further. It wasn't until he came back and the anaesthetist came in to discuss our options that he realised I wouldn't be having a general anaesthetic - I could have had one if I'd wanted, but I opted for a spinal block instead, I didn't want to be under when my baby was born and I wanted Kieron to be right beside me. For what it's worth, I did have a section on "emergency caesarian" in my birth plan, I just never thought for a moment we'd need it.
We then had to wait for what seemed like an age before going into theatre, compounded by a further hours wait because one of my blood samples had the wrong number written on it and so the lab wouldn't process it! I was still having contractions at this point and the sum total of my pain relief had been two paracetamol at 2pm. Being stuck on a bed strapped to a machine was as confining and painful as all the active birth literature had promised it would be, and by the time they came to get us at 9pm I was desperate for things to get underway. I'd already been prepped by the midwifes: canula in for my IV, gown and surgical socks on, downstairs shaved, jewellery off. Kieron was sent to get changed into blue hospital scrubs (in which I found him strangely attractive, shame we couldn't have kept them).
In theatre my anaesthetist took great pleasure in rinsing my back down with the *really cold* stuff (how do they get it so bloody cold?) before putting in the spinal block. It wasn't that bad: I couldn't see what was going on anyway and I don't remember it hurting. It was certainly effective: within a few minutes I couldn't feel my legs at all.
Then the surgeons came in along with the midwifes and the atmosphere felt like a very clean and bright mechanics workshop: radio on, everyone bustling around doing their thing and chatting happily. The curtain went up across my chest leaving just me, my gulping husband and the anaesthetist. I can't remember what we talked about but I know he kept me distracted until the point where he told me to listen for a gurgling sound, which would immediately precede the arrival of my baby.
Thomas George emerged at 9.36pm, arse first and (ahum) still defecating - a portent of things to come! He weighed 8lb 10oz (or 3900g in new money) and was 56cm long with a head circumference of 37cm.
Because of the meconium they had to take him straight the to the resuscitation table to suction his lungs before we could see him but thankfully I could hear him protesting right from the minute they took him out and so I wasn't too anxious. And then he was brought round to us, wrapped in a blue and white hospital towel, with his eyes screwed tight shut. I can't even begin to explain how I felt at that point, but it was some kind of alchemic combination of relief, pride, curiosity and elation. I don't really remember them stitching me back up, I was too entranced by this little hairy creature on my chest.
Into the recovery room and Thomas made a good fist of his first breastfeed, he certainly seemed much more confident and capable than his mother. And then we were taken up to the ward - Kieron was allowed to accompany us and stay for a few minutes but then had to go home, whilst I spent most of the night gazing at this boy (and enjoying the tingling sensation of the feeling returning to my legs). I finally fell asleep at around 6am and awoke an hour or so later, looked over at my baby in the plastic crib next to me and thought to myself "oh, Thomas is ok" before closing my eyes again. And then waking immediately with a start and a double take - there was a BABY. Next to me. OUR BABY.
Whoa.
Dude.