The Best Week of My Life - Part I

Just a warning, there will probably be quite a bit of stuff in this post that might be too much information for some, especially my pregnant friends... sorry I'll be back to my jovial self soon!! It has just been such a massive experience and I feel like we've already shared so much of it on the interwebs that I want to fill everyone in on what happened...

We're back home now getting into the swing of things, getting used to sleep in units of 3 hours and sterilising everything we touch. I have finally had a bit of time to reflect over the last week and everything that's happened. There were moments of intense pain, fear and despair, but these were all overshadowed by glimpses of pure bliss just staring at our little boy. We're feeling very happy and serene in our flat which has become a little bubble for the three of us as we learn how to start our lives again with a mass of responsibility and a tonne of excitement. We're venturing out very slowly, yesterday we walked to the chippy and back and felt like we'd been up a mountain!

I think that the way you choose to remember something is integral to the way you move on from it. With all the things that went 'wrong' at the hospital, there were so many that went right. Looking back the whole experience was a bit like a 'Choose your own adventure' story, but saying 'what if' or looking for someone to blame doesn't do anyone any good. There are points in the story where I wish we'd chosen 'Turn to page 20 to get an epidural now' instead of 'Turn to page 25 to spend 10 hours in the birthing pool' but it won't make me feel any better about it. Ultimately two healthy people came home from St Tommie's and that's the main thing.

We went into hospital at about midnight on Wednesday the 25th. I had been having contractions for about 48 hours already but they make you wait until the frequency of the contractions is 4 every 10 minutes before you go to the hospital so you're not in there during 'pre-labour' and you spend less time in the birthing centre. I was getting 3 every 10 minutes and it wasn't really progressing so I wanted to go in and see what was happening.

There are two sections to the labour ward at St Thomas'. The hospital birth centre, which is completely medical and suitable for difficult births with doctors in charge and drugs at the ready, and the 'home from home' birth centre which is run by midwives and a more natural environment with birthing pools, a garden room and no drugs in sight except for some gas and air. We had always planned to use the home from home centre and hopefully the birthing pool but my blood pressure was quite high and my cervix was only 3cm dilated so they wanted to keep us on the hospital ward. We pleaded with them and they let us go to the home from home birth centre. We got an amazing room and settled in to wait for full labour to come along.

Nothing really progressed for a while so I had my waters broken by a friendly woman with what seemed to be a plastic crochet needle. Then the real fun started. Someone handed me my new best friend, a gas nozzle to breathe into which was awesome. Contractions came thick and fast and from here my memory of everything is a little blurred.

We had an amazing midwife called Stella. She was a very small Chinese woman who spoke a bit like Yoda. She was stern but caring and wasn't afraid to get down on the floor and crawl around with me while I made cow noises. I think midwives are amazing. They do the job of a nurse, a sports coach, a psychologist and a mum. Stella was all these things. We also had a student with us observing the birth, Caroline who was on exchange from Belgium. She was a great help but I can't help but feel like I may have frightened the poor dear. She was only about 20.

Stella, lives up to her name

Caroline

At some point Stella did an inspection and found that I was only 6cm dilated. You need to be 10cm dilated before you start pushing. The first 6cm are the hardest and the slowest, but after that everything should progress quite quickly. At this point I had a moment with Tom where I broke down and said I couldn't go on, it was too hard, please get me some drugs etc etc. He reminded me that I wanted to use the birthing pool and he thought I could probably keep going without the drugs and I actually raised my hand to hit him, he ducked ...I felt bad about it later. Stella also told me she thought I could do it and we should try the birthing pool. So we went 'straight to the pool room'.

We spent a long time in there, I have no idea how long. I vaguely remember singing Dolly Parton songs, eating a Ribena Calipo and squeezing someone's hand. Tom made the hilarious discovery that if you want to cool someone down you can soak a maxi pad in iced water and adhere it too their forehead. He has photo evidence that will never see the light of day.

The pain got more intense and I started to see patterns as I inhaled the gas. Amazingly detailed patterns. Each contraction brought on a new set of colours and images all in keleidascope vision with the same image repeated in swirling spirals. Images of buildings, carved stonework, furniture, patchwork. Particularly painful ones were in higher contrast with sharp black and white shapes, more mellow ones were warmer colours or broken up images of soft things like clouds, fabric and pillows. The more I concentrated on the patterns, the less it hurt.

After an incredibly long time in there the contractions slowed right down and almost stopped. We tried a few different things, walking around the garden room, having some tea, stopping for something to eat... in my delirious state I asked for trifle!!? (who asks for trifle?). Stella did another examination and found that I'd only progressed 1 cm to 7cm dilated. This was a real low. All that work and only one centimetre. It was also a really hard point because it was the end of Stella's shift. A few friends have told me they went through the same thing when the midwives change their shifts, you get so attached to the person looking after you and I really wanted her to deliver Elliot but it was time to say goodbye.

It was 24 hours in, so it was also time to move back over to the hospital birth centre and get on with things using artificial methods. We were moved into another room and I was seen by an obstetrician. He figured out why things had been taking so long. Elliot was coming out face first in a position called 'face presentation' which happens to about 1 in 600 births. This meant his weight wasn't bearing down to open up the cervix, so it was taking a long time to dilate and his neck was stretched back into and akward and dangerous position. We decided the best thing was to use a Syntocinon drip to speed things up. Syntocinon is a synthetic version of the natural hormone Oxytocin, which is responsible for fun things like sexual arousal, orgasms and feeling in love and less fun things like anxiety and contractions. The synthetic version brings on mega contractions so it is usually taken with an epidural to numb the pain.

Syntocinon drip

Baz the anaesthetist

I had the spinal injection for the epidural but Baz the anaesthetist thought it might have been in the wrong spot, so he did it again. Within a few minutes I couldn't feel a thing below my waist and I managed to get some rest before the pushing. This was when I realised just how long it was going on for and started to lose hope. All of a sudden it was the middle of the night again and I was still in labour. We had brought along some baby pictures of Tom and I and at this point Tom got them out and laid them in front of me to remind me what I was there for. It's a good trick to keep you going and visualise the end result.

Baby photos

Then it was time to push. The weird thing about the pushing was that I couldn't feel anything at all. The midwife was telling me I wasn't doing it correctly but I had no way of figuring out how to change what I was doing. I was going on the memory of pushing without knowing what I was actually doing. I'm not sure if the midwife was using some sort of reverse psychology but she told me it wasn't good enough and I'd have to have a C-Section. This really spurred me on to push and I kept trying. The obstetrician came in and told everyone to prepare for a C-Section and the anaesthetist upped the epidural to full strength ready for surgery.

Before I knew it we were in the operating theatre. Everyone was telling me important information but I was finding it really hard to stay awake. They thought they'd try one more set of pushing with forceps before they did a C-section. Suddenly there were 5 or 6 people screaming at me to push, Tom up one end holding my hand and a doctor, a midwife, a surgeon, some nurses up the other end ...I have no idea who they were but they were all yelling 'PUSH!'

So I pushed. And then he was there, lying on my chest, purple and slimey. He opened his eyes, then closed them. Then he opened them and coughed and closed them again. All I could think was 'Is he ok? Is he ok? Is he ok?' I thought I was saying it out loud but apparently I wasn't. Tom said "It's a boy!" and I thought I said "I know, but is he ok?"... but I was just staring in amazement and crying.

They took him away to be weighed and Tom watched as they checked all his bits and pieces. He turned around to me and said "He's got massive balls!" which made me laugh. Anyone who has spoken to  Tom recently knows his fascination with the placenta. For months he's been threatening to take it home and turn it into meatloaf to feed to unsuspecting dinner guests. When the time came to inspect it though he wasn't the slightest bit interested he was just staring at our little boy.

The stats

They handed Elliot back to me and stitched me up then wheeled us into a private recovery room and left us alone. I couldn't quite believe it was over and I couldn't stop staring at our boy. I looked out the window at the view of the London Eye and thought, 'What a nice sunset'... but it was 7 in the morning I was watching the sun rise.

Sunrise from our window

More to follow in Part II..
Why did we have to spend five more days in hospital? What happened to Elliot's face? Where did the headaches come from?  ...and what did the NHS serve for lunch?
All these questions AND MORE will be answered in the next installment of The Best Week of My Life. (it's late and I need to sleep)

To be continued...