Excuse the bad photos - we totally forgot the camera with all the rush but here is our new, bigger family.
So after what felt like a really long pregnancy, but was actually not very long at all, we got to meet that very active person who was living inside me at 11.34pm on Friday night.
In the days preceding labour I had two accidents.
Wednesday was the only day I had home alone with Etta. That morning she had been quite tantrummy, so despite being sore decided it best for us both to venture out on the bus to Henderson. This went very well until just before home time where I tripped backward over one of those electric cable pole things that was inconveniently sticking out of the footpath in a bus stop. Thankfully I fell onto the cushion of my butt, and besides being embarrassed, shaken and glad the pram didn't roll into the busy thoroughfare, pretty much unscathed.*
On Thursday after hanging out some washing Etta (unsurprisingly) decided she wanted some more outside play time. Me, not being someone who likes to waste time, decided I could maybe pull some of the overgrown grass off the footpath so Etta would stop injuring herself attempting to wade through that jungle. I got a few pavers uncovered when I experienced some of the sharpest pain I ever randomly had.
The whole of the left side of my abdomen was on fire - it hurt to walk and breathe. I called my Midwife to check it out and it was just muscular, but still ridiculously sore. I had a fun time coercing Etta into the safety of inside the house without picking her up (as couldn't) and then she pooed at exactly the least convenient moment ever - the most painful nappy change of my life. I couldn't rest or get myself better so had Etta's Nana come and get her early (she was gonna hang with her later anyway as it was Murray and my 4th Civil Union Anniversary) so I could rest. After 15 minutes of being able to actually sit down with a wheat pack on my side I felt like a fully functional human again.** Which was great as meant we could go out and celebrate our anniversary with some amazingly good curry (and still be home for bed by 9pm).
Phew! Then on Friday I just felt crampy and generally crappy. But having felt like that many days over the last few weeks I didn't think anything of it. Mum was over to help out with Etta and we had a pretty relaxed day. We got another grocery shop done and had a little tidy. I had home-made pizza premade in the freezer so we had that for dinner. All was pretty normal really apart from having smashed my body in the two days before and being much more uncoordinated than usual.
Now before I share the nitty gritty of labour I want to preface it by saying:
1) I bitch and moan but I actually had a complications free pregnancy
2) I am generally (besides my guts and brain) a very healthy person
3) My last emergency C Section was due to baby's positioning
4) I have an extremely supportive Midwife that I have a great relationship with
What I'm trying to say is, I was really very low risk for anything going badly wrong with a VBAC.
Now I can continue.
Straight after large pizza dinner while sitting on the couch I felt and heard a 'pop'. I was pretty sure my waters had broken, but after mad dash to the bathroom there was only a little discharge. After a second little 'flow' thingee I put my incontinence pants on as knew something was up but wasn't really sure as it was completely different from the dam bust that was my waters with Etta. Then the contractions started.
That was a shock.
With Etta I had a 17 hour labour which started with fairly mild contractions following my waters breaking (very obviously) - so I didn't experience strong contractions until after almost 7 hours of smaller ones building up. This time it was just strong contractions lasting 1 - 2 minutes 3 - 5 minutes apart straight off the bat. I got Murray to call our Midwife to let her know, and my Mum to come to our place. This was for sure labour, and despite wanting to labour at home as long as possible, I felt we were pretty much there - this was more consistent than my contractions ever were when I was in labour with Etta. Despite being advised to re-examine things when Mum arrived after half an hour I was like nope, hospital now.***
I was right. We were 5cm dilated when we arrived at Waitakere and I was not happy. I was begging for drugs but needed a little fetal monitoring before we could do anything. The bath had been running before we got there and my fab Midwife did the monitoring and internal exam ASAP when we arrived and for as little time as possible - I think probably less than 20 minutes. I didn't have an IV inserted - I didn't even think about it as was going into transition. As soon as possible I hopped into the birthing pool (it wasn't full enough yet) and continued labouring there.
Oh dear lord I love birthing pools! It took me a little bit, but I managed to get into a far more zen state than I had with Etta. I just breathed through the contractions kneeling in the bath resting my chin on top of the bath and told myself this wouldn't take long - this wasn't forever and did the whole 'each contraction brings me closer to my baby' bollocks (secretly followed by the 'I just need to get through this and I won't be pregnant ever again' mantra). And it helped. I was seriously only in the pool about half an hour when I started feeling the urge to push and had the go ahead to go for it.
It would be lovely if I could tell you it was like all those labours where they're like 'and I did three big pushes and then we had a baby', but that wasn't the case. The pushing part of this labour was as long as the previous part, so it was hard slog. We pushed in the bath for about half an hour, then decided to move positions to see if we could get some more stuff going on. So moved to the bed and did like a rested squat pushing thing. This did get some movement happening, but again, it was slow, so then we moved into that awful position people are in in the movies. This was initially uncomfortable, but was obviously progressing things so I just focused on the job at hand.
There was a period of worry. With Etta we got to 'the corner' and she just kept slipping back. When we got to that point this time it seemed like it might happen again - only it didn't. While this baby slipped back a little both Murray and my Midwife reassured me pretty much every push was getting a little more traction which helped keep me on track. My Midwife said we were so progressed this baby was going to be a vaginal delivery no matter what so I did what I could to make that happen.
It still took time. It got to the point where I could see the baby's head too (via a mirror) and was so like 'it MUST be going to be some time in the next few pushes!' and it still wasn't. Eventually it got to the point where the baby was out to the eyebrows and then team Murray/Midwife were like 'just give it all the weetbix you've got!' so I figured something might happen.
In the birthing videos and movies I've seen this is the part where the Mum gives a really epic screamy push and the head slowly pops out, and then the body kinda slithers out like a worm - so that's kinda what I thought would happen. It didn't. The baby's head came out on a slight angle, and then her shoulders were around the wrong way and her cord was looped over one shoulder and was being compressed. So my Midwife did some serious crazy quick handwork (whilst also trying to keep a thumb on a vaginal tear that was just opening up and dealing with a woman with a head coming out of her vagina), which, while it took some time and was quite scary (and fucking sore) from where I was sitting was the magic that got us a healthy baby in the end.
So out she popped covered in vernix and slime and slopped onto my chest and promptly shat meconium everywhere. She was soooo ugly! She was quite battered from the birth with a fair few bruises and an actually black nose and very cold from the shoulder/cord issues. We waited for the cord to stop pulsing, but were on a bit of a timer as my Midwife wanted the placenta out quickly as I was bleeding quite a bit and she wasn't sure how bad the tear I'd had was. So we did have some delay on clamping, but then all systems go with an injection to bring out the placenta (like birthing a giant steak - simple compared to what came prior) so she could make sure I was ok.
I was. I didn't need any stitches. When I saw the bloodbath a while later I could understand the concern, and I could understand why Murray had moved to the head end of things. He has subsequently said the manipulations required down there to get our new one born was the goriest thing he'd ever seen, and basically I have props for life for going through that. I was fine though. I had my new baby and was no longer pregnant and it only took about four hours to get through that whole thing!
And then we had some chill time in the delivery suite. Because it was all so fast, none of the other hospital staff had any idea we'd even had a baby. At some point out in the corridor we heard a nurse ask our Midwife how progressed I was, and she was like 'we had a baby about an hour ago'. It was really nice. Whilst I was totally happy with Etta's birth, this was a very different experience. I guess it felt more personal - I don't really know how else to put it. It was just us three (and our baby) for all the things you don't really want other people to see. Nothing was medicalised. I had one needle prick. The only drugs I had had were Panadol, and within a couple of hours I was walking around and had a shower and peed and it was quite surreal.
I was home proper after about 13 hours after going in to hospital.
There is much more to say about this, but I will continue on another day. Our toddler is playing with Mum outside in the sun, Murray's gone out to have some well deserved time to himself and our new little girl, Abby, is just waking up after a deliciously long nap.
*It did make my bad hip a bit worse, so from then until post labour I had a bit of a limp and was a bit sore.
** The BIG difference between being pregnant with children, and being pregnant without. The big difference between life with and without children in general!
*** Again, our fantastic neighbour saved the day as our stop gap. Sooo lucky to have the neighbours we have.
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