a birth story - part fourteen

In my birth story so far;

I've some how endured 31 hours

from when my waters broke and contractions started.

It all fell apart at the birthing unit

so I've been transferred to the big maternity unit at the main hospital.

After an epidural

things seemed to be looking up,

but there were suddenly lots of worried looking midwives and doctors

and my baby was in distress.

I nodded along bravely but I wasn't really taking it in.

The room suddenly became a hive of activity.

Another doctor arrived and suggested that another internal exam be done,

even though the 4 hours wasn't quite up yet.

The doctor that performed it looked at me

and with a deadpan face told me I was 7cm,

before laughing and saying that actually I was 10

and that she hoped I was ready to push.

In my tired and emotional state,

I found all this a bit confusing

and my midwife had to explain it to me again.

She said that she would be telling me when to push

because I couldn't feel the contractions

and that I needed to push for a count of 10 as hard as I could.

While she was talking to me, the others were talking together,

and when the doctors left to 'get ready'

the senior midwife said that they needed to get the baby out as quickly as possible

so they would be attempting an assisted delivery with ventouse.

She explained that they would try it three times

but if it didn't work

that they would then be looking at transferring me to the operating room

for a forceps delivery or an emergency c-section.

It was all said in such a matter of fact way,

that I nodded along in complete agreement.

They were all so confident and professional

that I didn't bat an eyelid at the mention of potential emergency surgery.

With all this going on,

I still felt safe.

I still felt calm.

I knew that it was under control.

I wish I could say the same for my hubby,

but it was around this time that he started to look like a little boy lost.

More professionals poured into the room and he felt more and more helpless.

At the end, there were two doctors, two midwives and two paediatricians,

I was relying on Emma to tell me when to push,

relying on the two doctors doing the delivery to tell me if I was pushing hard enough.

He felt like a spare part,

a helpless spare part that was worried about getting in the way.

The ventouse resembled a plunger attached to a hoover,

and in effect that's what it was.

The plunger part was suctioned onto Dollop's head

and with a combination of suction from the machine,

the pulling of the doctor

and my pushing;

our little man was born at 1.52pm.

You can read the next, and final, part here.