Nathan’s Birth Story

Birth Story of Nathan Ezekiel Toby White.

I was due April 24th according to the dates set out by the ultrasound,
but my dates indicated at least a week earlier.  My mum had flown in
from Brisbane for his birth which was really great.  We’d gotten
everything together, Mum had been here for two days, and we just felt
ready.  So Tim had a little chat to my belly at about 11pm on Monday
night and told the baby it could come now.  We went to bed, and I woke
up at about 1am with a little trickle of liquid on the bed.  I didn’t
think it was my waters breaking, more bad bladder control, but when I
went to the toilet it was red tinged.  The contractions started
straight away, about ten minutes apart.  I went back to bed and dozed
a little in between contractions until about 4am, when I woke Tim up.

I had this idea in my head that it’d be cool to see the sun rise on
the day our baby would be born, so we woke my mum up and all headed up
to King’s Park.  The aim was just to distract myself and it worked
really well.  I had a contraction timer on my ipod to keep an eye on
things.  So we went for a walk around King’s Park and took photos of
the sun rising over the city.  Then we headed to the Bell Tower, and
over to Heirisson Island to see the kangaroos.  McDonalds was next
because Tim and Mum wanted breakfast.  I couldn’t stomach anything by
this stage.  I didn’t eat a thing through my entire labour, I just
couldn’t.  We went shopping at Carousel to try and buy a present for
my sisters birthday.  At this point it was about 9.30, I’d done more
touristy things than ever before in Perth, and my contractions were
about a minute long and two and a half minutes apart.  I finally said
I wanted to go home.

Once home, things started moving pretty quickly.  I went for a shower,
which was really nice, and the midwife turned up at about 10.  She did
an internal to try and establish how far along I was, because she
couldn’t read my body language or anything.  I was still talking,
though rather strained through contractions, and was moving around as
well.  I was 6cm at about 10.30am.  I was pretty much in control and
had a handle on everything until transition hit.  I think because I
distracted myself so much, labour in my mind didn’t actually start
until I hit transition, and then it was really intense.  It was like
hitting my head against this mental wall.
I kind of freaked out at this point, thinking I don’t want another 4
hours of this (going by the 1cm dilation an hour theory, which I
didn’t realise until afterwards).  I was vomiting small amounts of
fluids as well.  I had been holding out on using the birth pool until
I really needed it, because it was the only relief I knew that I’d
get, and I didn’t want to have nothing left to look forward to.  By
the time I eventually got in though, it was pretty much useless.  I
was REALLY restless, getting in and out of the pool, going to the
toilet, lying on the couch, every few minutes.  This happened right up
until I was actually pushing.

I think next time around, I will use the pool earlier than I did, so
that it will actually have the opportunity to provide some pain
relief.

The moment I started pushing, through to his appearance was about
twenty five minutes.  I was kneeling, leaning on the side of the birth
pool.  Tim was up near my head helping me through it.  He did ask if
he could go and see, but I wouldn’t let him leave.  The water
temperature was really hot, and I kept asking them to cool it down.
They added a certain amount of cold water, but wouldn’t go any further
on advice of the midwife, because it would be bad for the baby.  It
was very difficult to slow the pushing down, but the midwife coached
me through it really well.  I had no grazes or tears.

Mum took a few photos, but I had said earlier that I didn’t want them.
I regret that now.  Nobody’s going to see them, but it would be good
to have that recollection.

His head and body came out in the same contraction, which I was
thankful for.  I didn’t want to have to go through another one to get
his body out after I’d done his head.  I pulled him up in front of me
and put him straight on my chest.  The blanket was put over him.  We
hadn’t checked the sex yet, and so we sat there for about ten minutes
before we found out.  I birthed the placenta in seven minutes, and
then Tim cut the cord and we found out he was a boy.

I was in severe pain afterwards, so Tim took the baby, and I worked
through the after contractions.  My midwife said it’s strange to have
after contractions as severe as I did for your first baby.  They were
far worse than first stage labour contractions.  My bleeding was
minimal though, so she wasn’t worried.  I felt kind of cheated by that
because it was like, here you go, here’s your baby, now lets put you
through extreme pain anyway.  The quick birth and then severe
afterpains put me into a state of shock, and I went and had a shower
to ease the pain.  Tim held him the whole time, and it took an hour
and a half for things to settle down enough for me to hold him and
breastfeed him.  Then we slept for about three hours before we told
anybody.

My midwives were fantastic.  My primary midwife was an incredible
help, and the back up was there for only half an hour in the
background and disappeared.  Turns out she had a student midwife in
the car waiting outside.  I also had a first year student midwife who
arrived five minutes late.  She was really disappointed that she
missed it.  So at one point I had four midwives/trainees at my place.
Can’t ask for much more help than that.

Looking back on it, everything was a textbook homebirth.  Everything
went really smoothly, although it didn’t feel like it at the time.
The biggest help was that I was so prepared, and I’m more than ready
to do it again with our next bubba.