On birth experiences & trusting yourself first.

Can you remember every element of your birth experience? I can’t.

I don’t think it’s that it fades over time per se, or that it is something you actually forget, rather that it passes in a blur of activity, a haze of pain and excitement and fear. That’s how I felt about all three of my births really.

With Reuben, it was a pretty terrible experience. Not quite enough that I felt the need to get on to Your Legal Friend about medical negligence – though in fairness I think that could well have been a consideration with the after care. For a start, Reuben was stuck. Stuck as could be and my waters just wouldn’t burst. I vaguely remember the panic of being in the water and told that – after an hour of pushing because I was told by a student midwife I was fully dilated and should give it a go – I had a lip and that I had been pushing before I was ready, potentially causing an issue for myself and my unborn baby. At this point there was no discussing it, I was whipped out of the birth pool and taken to a room, to sit on a bed. I remember minutes blurring into hours, stress lines on my husband’s forehead creasing and being so very tired. I remember being told it was time to go to theatre for an emergency section and the panic, unadulterated panic that something was going wrong, that my baby wasn’t going to be ok. He was, it took a time for him to make that wail and at that point I felt like time was slowing down. Stopping almost. That part I remember as clear as a bell tolling in the dead of night. I don’t remember that we called him Reuben because I spent my entire labour referring to the baby I had decided to call Jasper as “Reuben” or anything after the birth until my in laws arrived to see my new bundle of joy and then being told to leave because I needed to rest (that’s how I remember it – it might actually have been them saying that they had to leave so I could rest? That bit is murky!).

When I think about Toby’s labour I remember a little bit more as it was significantly less stressful and I think that really contributes. The stress was still there – in fact as he was crowning the midwife came into the room – where I was hooked up to a world wind of machinery and told to stay on the bed so I didn’t dislodge anything after my horrendous previous labour – to tell me that they were prepping surgery for me again. I remember mostly that i was resentful that I couldn’t have a water birth, despite expressing that this was what I wanted. I mean, had I really pushed (which I did with Edith) I guess then I would have been given more leeway but at the time I really didn’t know what to do and, scarred by a bad first time, I was like a meek kitten who went along with everyone else’s wishes, Adam’s and the consultants. That being said, Toby arrived, a healthy, happy little boy and once I put my foot down and insisted that I needed to be up on my knees and wiggling my hips as much as possible, I got there!

Lastly, with Edith, I guess I remember a bit more – mostly likely because it was the most recent, but also because we were at home for a huge portion of the labour after being told to “stay at home” when someone made an oopsie and didn’t listen to me or read the consultant’s notes which said I was to come in when my contractions were every 10 minutes apart and not 5! We arrived, I was pushing and she was born 40 mins later after holding on to my rather bruised undercarriage and asking me to “please not have the baby on the floor!” Ha!

I think the message I would pass to people after my birth experiences is the following:

• Trust your instincts. Don’t neglect the medical advice for god’s sake, but do trust your own internal mama bear.
• You can put your foot down (and you should if you’ve got a valid reason and you’ve weighed everything up)
• You won’t remember much so take a camera or better yet, video the whole thing. Honestly, people cringe but I WISH I had.

What about you? Do you remember much?

H 🙂 x

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