BIRTH STORY PART 5

Hey Dolls, forgive me for ending on yet another cliff hanger, believe me I tried!

Back to what I was saying about the pain reaching its ultimate peak! I begged and pleaded for the epidural, I kept screaming “EPIDURALLL NOWWW”! Looking back I get so emotional because it was so overwhelming to endure so much pain yet feel so much love because I was going to meet my baby for the first time.

It felt like an eternity waiting for the midwives to call the doctor in to give me the epidural, I remember telling the doctor to “hurry the f**k uuup” as soon as he walked in and tried to introduce himself, let’s be honest, I did not care to know his name or shake his hand. Once he was ready to give me the epidural, he kept saying “you have to stay still because it’s going in your spine and if you move it could be very dangerous”, he repeated it so much I was like “I’m stillll maaan”, pulled a face and rolled my eyes, the kind of face and eye role you do when your mums chatting breeze. Once the epidural was done, I was expecting it to kick in straight away so got really agitated that I was still in agony. All I could do was cry until the pain was gone, I was also crying because my body and mind was just exhausted! It was now Saturday evening, officially two days of this and no sleep; I had nothing left in me!

OH my goodness, you do not know the relief I felt when the epidural kicked in. After two days, Scott and I were finally able to get some sleep and it was bloody amazing! However, I was up quite early on the Sunday morning as the epidural wore off because I hadn’t pressed the button to top up during the night, so the pains wasted no time in shooting straight back. I hysterically pressed the button non stop waiting for it to kick in again because there was no way I was repeating Saturday evening!

Due to the epidural numbing all the pain, they attached me to a machine so the midwifes could still monitor my contractions. They could see I was still getting contractions but not as regularly as I was expected to, so they put me on a drip which is meant to help speed up labour. Unfortunately for me, my labour continued at an extremely slow pace and because of that a midwife needed to check how dilated I was, for the 100th million time!

This time round, I was 5cm dilated, some of you might think that’s good but you need to be 7cm dilated to start pushing and it could take 5 minutes or 5 hours to get to 7cm. It took me three days to get to 5cm, so you can only imagine how much we potentially would have had to wait to continue to dilate. It’s a complete waiting game but once your waters have been broken for more than 24hours, mum and baby are now at risk of serious infection, so when this is the case, doctors and midwifes look at alternatives, like a caesarean.

My waters had been broken for a little over 24hours, so the doctor came in to see me and was concerned when he saw blood in my urine, which is a sign of infection. He then explained to Scott and I that I would need a caesarean as Myla needed to come out and if I chose not to, they would only give me two hours to give birth and if I hadn’t by then, I’d have no option but to have the caesarean. With that being said, they gave Scott and I a couple of minutes to discuss what we wanted to do.

Throughout my pregnancy, I dreamt of having a ‘natural’ birth and feared having a caesarean, so waiting two more hours is what I would of preferred. However, as much as I did not plan, want and was scared of having a caesarean, it was now mine and Myla’s health on the line and I could not risk her health just because I longed for a ‘natural’ birth.

With Scott standing at my side and holding my hand every step of the way, we decided to sign the caesarean form and wait no longer to greet our baby with open arms.

Love,

L.V.Q.