The Birth of Kai
3rd January 2008
9lb 5oz I 4235g
I fell pregnant with my second son when my first son weaned from breastfeeding around 9 months old, hindsight has me feeling the two coincided.
I booked into the Birth Centre again and this time they had slightly changed their model of care to a continuity of care program where I was assigned a primary midwife rather than a team of midwives.
I was due on Sunday 30th of December and in the week leading up I began experiencing prodromal labour again. It was exhausting and I somewhat felt under pressure to go into labour as our midwife was going on holidays on the 5th of January. I had multiple stretch and sweeps (looking back, I wish I had been confident to let my baby arrive when he was ready, and potentially birth with another midwife), and consistently uncomfortable contractions as a result. I ended up walking around and doing life at 4-5cm dilated for around a week.
I was big, and uncomfortable and grumpy. My brother and his family were staying in Adelaide over the Christmas and New Year period, and we all went for a big walk along the esplanade near my parents’ house. I was charging ahead, a woman on a mission and just really wanted to be on my own, I was not in a good headspace. New Years Eve was a non-event, I was tired and frustrated, falling asleep before 9pm.
On Thursday 3rd January I woke to some mild but inconsistent contractions. They continued through the morning and our midwife called me around 11am to check in. At this point they had become somewhat regular, coming every 7 minutes or so but not really increasing in intensity. We chatted about my options, and she suggested that I could come in and have my waters broken that afternoon, that guaranteed she would be our midwife before she went on holidays. I decided at that point, given the up and down week previous, that I was ready, and we organised to meet at the birth centre at 3pm that afternoon.
We finished packing bags and organised for our 18-month-old to be dropped at my grandparents on the way and called my mum to meet us there. It was a bizarre feeling not being in full blown labour but knowing we would be going to the hospital to meet our baby. I had some fears about labour, given the intensity of my first labour and how quickly everything ramped up with little early labour.
We arrived at the birth centre at 3pm and met our midwife, student midwife and my mum there. Our midwife started filling the bath for me as we all suspected that once my waters were broken that my labour would kick off quickly. Our student asked if it was okay if she performed the internal examination to see what was happening and I was fine with that, and she then went ahead and broke my waters. It was a gross feeling and I remember looking down and seeing green tinged waters pooling on the bed and my heart sunk immediately knowing that that presence of meconium would mean that I wouldn’t be able to birth in the water and I would likely be moved to the labour and delivery ward rather than birthing in the birth centre. We also planned to discharge as soon as we could this time rather than stay, I was keen to get home in my own environment and back to my toddler.
I distinctly remember looking down and saying, “That’s meconium, isn’t it?” and simultaneously feeling defeated. My midwife confirmed it was and then went to turn the bath off and explained that it would mean we needed to move to the ward to have a paediatrician on hand in case baby needed any assistance at birth. In the meantime, my contractions kicked off with vengeance, and I was feeling the need to clear my bowels and really start moving to work through them. There was a flurry of activity as my mum and partner started packing up our things, and our midwives making the arrangements for us to move.
I remember sitting on the toilet while all this was going on around me, breathing through the contractions and just wanting to fall apart. My midwife came in and asked me if I needed to push because I just felt like I couldn’t get off the toilet, she said to me if you need to push, we aren’t going anywhere, otherwise, I had to get up and get dressed.
I managed to leave the toilet, put my shorts back on and we began the walk down the back stairs of the hospital to the labour ward on the floor below. Stopping a few times for contractions. They did offer me a wheelchair, but I wanted to walk.
We got into the labour ward room around 3:40 and my contractions were all consuming, I asked for the gas straight away so they set it up and I remember standing next to the bed, taking a huge inhale and then just about passing out, my mum and my partner were either side of me and luckily caught me. I got up onto the bed after that, with the head of the bed raised, on my knees leaning over the back of the bed.
I began involuntarily pushing around 4:15pm, and there was a flurry of activity to get the paediatrician there and they were asking me to stop pushing which is literally impossible when your body is doing it for you. It was a polar opposite experience to my first birth, I was roaring my baby down, the ring of fire was awful and intense, and I didn’t feel in control at all. I birthed my second son at 4:30pm, his cord was cut, and he was whisked away to be checked and then brought back to me soon after as he was fine.
I was still in another realm, and it took me a bit to come back into my body and process what had just happened. I think I was actually in shock; it was all incredibly quick and incredibly intense. Birthing out of water was rough and painful, I didn’t enjoy it at all.
Again, I wanted a physiological third stage and birthed our placenta around 20 minutes later. I regrettably wasn’t in a good space soon after his birth and we didn’t have much skin to skin before I had a shower and went to the ward for the night.
It was a rough first night, he wasn’t feeding very well and was extremely unsettled, and very mucousy from how fast his birth was and being able to expel the fluid on his way through.