Labour: It doesn't always go to plan

Labour: It Doesn’t Always go to Plan.

I am excited to announce the safe arrival of our daughter Celena this week, hence my absence from writing the last week or so. I think I have a pretty good excuse between moving house and child birth.

Celena’s birth was fairly text book despite the complications I had to face during pregnancy. Seriously felt like every time I went to an antenatal appointment, it was not only a long 4 hour visit but it was always a doom and gloom appointment. Between gestational diabetes (insulin of over 200 units per day), liver and kidney issues, reduced movements, anterior placenta and even a placenta malfunction. It made staying positive very difficult – as it would for any mother to be, first time or otherwise.

Now she is here, and I can tell you, all the appointments, all the annoying midnight trips to the hospital, the insulin, the injections, everything was worth it. A beautiful little girl to cuddle and to share with her big brother and Daddy was worth every step.

So labour. We are here to talk labour. My labour was simple in comparison to a few other stories that I have seen, however nothing went according to plan. Which usually wouldn’t surprise mothers to be, the surprise is when the birthing team of midwives and doctors have a plan that falls apart on your behalf too.

The plan for my birth was to be induced Sunday and have my little girl arrive by Monday morning (according the antenatal team, that is how long it should take). Pain management was supposed to involve an epidural in case of an emergency c-section or other issues arise (like my son). Well things didn’t go to plan.

Let’s start from the beginning. For those of us who have text book pregnancies and do not know or worry about things like Gestational Diabetes (GD). For the rest of us, GD can cause some issues with your unborn child – you can generally (most often) end up with very large babies, like Kyran. Or less often, you can have exceptionally small babies. To avoid issues, around 38 weeks the antenatal clinic sends GD mums to be induced, this means they chemically try to force labour on so that baby can be delivered easily. I honestly cannot tell you the exact reason why mothers seldom are let to go to term (40 weeks plus) but after my son being born at 10.2lbs at 38 weeks. I don’t argue with the decision.

I was officially booked into for induction on Sunday the 11th of February at 12:30pm. Now if you find yourself booked in for an induction, don’t get too excited maternity wards are rarely on time and even less frequently get to inductions the actual day they are booked in. This time I got lucky, my induction started on the prescribed day, just 4 hours after the appointment time. Never mind.

This is the part where I go through the types of inductions. Well the first step in most cases, the midwives try to avoid chemical inductions because labour goes from 0 to 100 when chemically induced and I will explain why that sucks in a moment. Step one is to insert a balloon into your cervix, it is a surgical plastic filled with distilled water and inserted into your cervix to try and open it up/force it open and bring on labour that way.

This can result in 2 things, 1) it works, and you start dilating yippee labour, 2) it falls out and doesn’t work.

Given my history the plan from the delivery team was to skip step one and go through to step two. Chemical induction – gel. This is a gel that is applied by the midwife to your cervix and it is designed to soften the cervix and let it dilate. Great in theory. I had 4 rounds of the gel and progressed far too slowly if at all.

Onwards to step three then. Chemical induction – oxytocin drip. This is a drip that you receive only in your birthing suite and it is applied intravenously. Here is where we go from 0 labour to 100 times of “holy hell in a hand basket, the baby is coming”. Now because of the complications that I had during this pregnancy the team and I agreed that just in case of an emergency caesarean section it was best that we apply pain medication (epidural) before the oxytocin drip was put in. So off we went.

The epidural went in perfectly and has a great success rate. Only 1 in 50 women have issues with it working – as in just don’t get the numbing goodness that is supposed to come with an epidural. Time to start the oxytocin, oh boy! Well, surprise surprise I am the 1 in 50 of those women. 0-100 in pain and contraction.

Now, time to explain why the labour pains felt a lot worse than the natural (induced still by a balloon rather than oxytocin) labour and delivery I have had previously. When your body starts to get ready for baby’s arrival, your endocrine system starts preparing to release hormones to assist in pain management during labour. Endorphins and adrenalin are the main constituents of these pain management hormones and your body will release copious amounts of these hormones during labour and may even start releasing the hormones during your prelabour period days or weeks before your waters burst or your even aware that your beginning the early stages of labour.

This can still happen during step one or two of the induction options. Your body is given time to adjust into labour and ease into things. It takes about 12 hours for the balloon or the gel to begin working, so the theory is that those 12 hours are your pre- labour preparations and your body starts to do things on its own.

When induced with oxytocin, the effects are instantaneous, there is no easing into things, or pre-labour for that matter. It is literally get in and get out as fast as humanly possible. I recommend telling your delivery team to make sure your epidural is up and running prior to starting the oxytocin.

So 36 hours of labour and a failed epidural and a gas mask that did little more then make me want to vomit, I decided to just rely on the essential oils in the room and some quiet music.

I will be honest with you, essential oils and quiet music helped but they did not get rid of the pain or distract me from the fact that I was in labour. However, it did help me relax and not panic about the labour itself despite what was going on around me.

Labour started on Sunday evening, my medical team moved me into theatre and started to prepare for a caesarean section, which involved removing the epidural and putting in a spinal tap. Now theatre, whilst you’re in labour is extremely intimidating. You go from a small birthing suite where it is a couple of midwives, your birth partner and well you. When you get into theatre, there are several doctors, nurses, midwives, your birth partner is squeezed in there somewhere in amongst the chaos. Not to mention the bright lights that feel like they are burning holes into your pupils and everything is sterile white. It is a sudden and chaotic transition. Enough to scare any baby out of the birth canal.

Well safe to say that is just about what happened. A doctor walked in to assess what was happening with baby and decided that he could in fact deliver my baby without having to cut me open. Hooray! With a little bit of help from a vacuum and a final push and our little girl entered the world safe and sound.

Labour is different for every woman, in fact I am going to take that one step further. Labour is different for every woman, and every child. I have had 2 simple deliveries and one over complicated delivery. Every child is different even from the early moments of trying to come into the world. It is special every time.

The essential oils I used were amazing for relaxing my mind at the very least, so I could focus on my baby. It literally washed away the negativity and helped in ways that I cannot even imagine. The hospital I was at did not allow diffusers in the birthing suites, so we blended the oils into a bowl and kept them near the bed-head so I could smell them, I even used some as a rub on my chest. For those interested, the oils that helped me the most pre, during and post labour were the Rose Otto, Geranium, neroli and jasmine. 

Time to go and tend to the hungry girl and the rampant toddler.

I am going to write about our start to toilet training next time.

As usual, forever yours,

Anni