Birth of Findlay Munro Brown

It was Saturday night and a full two weeks after my ‘due date’.  My midwife had said that I could wait until Monday before going to the hospital.  I really didn’t want to go to the hospital.  Now I had been drinking some special herbal tea and had a warm bath with lavender and Ylang Ylang oil.  Neither seemed to be working.

I decided to wear my heart rate monitor to bed since it was probably one of my last chances to look at my sleeping heart rate during pregnancy.  Actually I felt like something might happen because all day I had felt ‘different’ and had been bleeding a little bit.  In hindsight I realise that I had had some contractions starting on Saturday morning and throughout the day, but I didn’t know it at the time.  So, I lay down to sleep in bed about 11.30.  Fifteen minutes later I felt my first contraction.  I wasn’t sure it was a contraction – it just felt like a period cramp.  Not a big sharp cramp of the uterus at the front but a low, dull, wave-like cramp at the back.  It was enough to make me jump out of bed to move and sit on the toilet.  I went back to bed and another one came 15 minutes later and with it I felt a small gush of warm wetness.  Again it wasn’t that dramatic, just a little gush to go with my little back ache.   Were these contractions?  Was that my waters breaking?  I spent the next hour jumping up out of bed every 15 minutes and wondering everytime whether these were the real thing or not.  Eventually I gave up and took to wandering around the house and eventually ran another bath and got in.  I decided that these probably were contractions but they weren’t coming at regular intervals and it was hard to say exactly where they started and where they ended.  This was more difficult once I was in the bath as they seemed less defined.

After several hours of being in the bath I decided it was time to get Kevin out of bed.  I know the midwife told us explicitly to try to sleep through contractions if they started at night in order to minimise tiredness, but it was time for him to get up too.  About 4am I persuaded Kevin to fill up the birthing pool.  There seemed to be a bit of confusion with hoses and tap fittings so I was relieved when Kevin seemed to have sorted it out and the pool started filling with lovely pain-relieving hot water.  While it was filling I sat on my physio ball which was great as it gave me just the right combination of support and freedom to move my pelvis – which really helped during the contractions which had by now taken on a regular pattern and become more defined.  It was about now that I was able to determine the start and finish of each contraction enough to start timing properly and started using the lap timing function on my heart rate monitor.

Being in the pool was wonderful.  It was the best €60 I’ve spent for a long time.  The water was deep enough to cover up to my chest when I sat right down in the water and the inflated sides and bottom of the pool were comfortable to sit on and lean against.  Kevin also got me a pillow for my head so I could lean my head against the wardrobe.  Meanwhile he went back to sleep on the bed.

As the contractions got stronger and stronger I got Kevin to fetch the hot packs to lay on my lower back.  Flannels soaked in very hot water also worked wonders.  My midwife, Gabriele, had said I could call her at 6am if something happened during the night and so I decided to make it until then to call her.  At 6am Kevin called but Gabriele was attending another birth.  It seemed we were all at it this weekend.  My friend Tara, also with Gabriele, had given birth on Saturday afternoon to a little boy Isaac.  It seemed the other birth had stalled but Gabriele was still at the house waiting for things to start again.  She decided to send Jule instead, for the time being.

Jule arrived, I think, some time after 7am. By this stage the contractions were coming about every two minutes and lasting for about a minute.  Good, so far everything was progressing nicely, irregular contractions progressing to regular, and getting closer together and stronger.  I was focussing on being focussed, breathing, moving in whatever way made it more comfortable and keeping something hot on my back – well that was Kevin’s job.  I think we continued like this for about another hour to an hour and a half. 

From here on in my memory is rather sketchy.  I think about now somehow was decided it was time to see if the baby could be born.  I remember Jule asking me if I would like to deliver the baby in the water and if so I was remember to make sure it was totally under the water until it was entirely out – to make sure it didn’t take a breath of air and then water.  For this Kevin had to fill the pool up a little more and I felt like this delay threw me off a little.  I had a examination and the cervix was open and I was allowed to put.  I was encouraged to have a different position in the pool and everybody seemed to think the baby was on it’s way.  Even I thought ‘At last, on the home straight now’, but as it turned out we were far from it – it just wasn’t going to be that easy.

After some pushing it started to become apparent that we weren’t getting very far.  Pushing made me feel like somebody was cleaving my body in two with a big knife from inside.  Far from pushing into this feeling I think really I could tell it wasn’t time, yet I had a good go.  After some time this effort really tired me – it hurt a lot and was really got me was that nothing seemed to be happening – were we really making any progress?  I started to lose faith a little bit and lose power.  By this time Gabriele had arrived.  I can’t remember when.  I tried to block everybody out to some degree and just focus on what was happening inside me.  I really noticed that any time something was going on in the room – not that there was much, but if there was anybody moving about in the background, or talk, it put my off my rhythm.  It was like trying to meditate or do yoga with distractions going on.  I don’t know how women can labour in hospital with all that goes on there.  I was really glad we were in the privacy of own home and bedroom.

I think it was about 9 or 10am that I started to lose power and energy.  By this stage I had stopped timing the contractions.  I was just too absorbed in the whole process and anyway they were close enough, what mattered now was whether the baby was going to move with them.  I started to relax into contractions rather than try to work with them and really recoil with them rather than rise to them.  Gabriele tried some acupuncture for a while, which seemed to help to get things going again and then Kevin got into the pool as well to hold me in a good position.  I pushed for all I could even though it made it more painful but try as I might no baby come out, only some pooh, which Kevin had to scoop up in our kitchen sieve!

After some time I really started to wonder what was happening.  Why wasn’t it working?  What was I doing wrong?  The midwives were there and they weren’t telling me to do anything differently so why wasn’t our baby here?  It was now over 10 hours of contractions, at least 5 or 6 of them with really closely spaced contractions.  I didn’t know what to do.  For some reason the midwives left the room and I suddenly decided to take a break and visit the bathroom and get the rest of this pooh out – it really was unpleasant with it floating around in the pool and Kevin trying to catch it.  When I came back to the bedroom Gabriele suggested that I lay on the bed instead of getting back into the water.  I think it was something to do with trying to make the contractions come stronger.  I didn’t like that I idea because just the thought of laying down felt more painful but once in position on my side with Kevin lying behind me keeping my back warm was at least bearable.  By this stage I was reduced from my focussed breathing to groaning my way through each contraction whilst wishing I was somewhere else.  This was a really low point.  I felt I had nothing left to give, no energy, no part of me that could stretch or open up any further yet my baby was still firmly inside. Ten hours of work seemed to have got us no where in particular except sore and exhausted.

I was on the bed for some time, my heart rate monitor reveals probably about 45 minutes.  In between each contraction I sank back into the bed and wished myself unconscious.  This probably was a critical phase.  I was no longer in control.  I no longer had any control over anything.  I wanted it to stop, the pain to go away, and the baby to come, but I didn’t know what to do.  I just lay there and crawled through each contraction whilst Gabriele held my uppermost leg in the air and kind of slept / lay semi-conscious between contractions.  You can see this low point on my heart rate plot.

At some point, but I really don’t recall how it happened, what was said or who did what, but it seemed like things had changed and now the baby really could be made to come out.  They got me up, standing and it really was time to push this time.  I can’t say I was conscious of a need to push now, I was just too far-gone to feel anything.  Somehow my instincts had abandoned me, or I had abandoned them.  But anyway Gabriele and Jule decided for me, I think, that it was time and got me standing and told me it was time and suddenly I woke up a bit and found some energy for this whole game. 

This change shows up dramatically on my heart rate plot.  Suddenly from a period of about 45 minutes of my lowest heart rates since the first 3 hours of contractions my heart rate shot up from between 70-90 to between 100 and 130.  Now I was standing and pushing on the contractions.  They felt different, the cutting splitting pain was different now.  I really really wanted this baby out now.  After experimenting with different standing positions we settled on Kevin sitting on the bed supporting me in a squatting position during the contraction and standing up between them.  I still really couldn’t tell whether anything was happening for all the effort, whether the baby was actually moving through the cervix now or not.  I had no choice but to keep trying.  The pain got worse and I felt on a cliff-edge, a make-or-break point.  It was like hanging on the edge of a cliff, trying to life myself over an overhang with no rope – only this time now only my life was in the balance but the baby’s too. Thinking back it is almost as if it wasn’t real, I wasn’t really there.  It was a bit like an out-of-body experience, only I was there because it really hurt.  As the baby started to come down the midwives had me put my hands inside to feel the baby and to feel the progress made by each contraction.  At first I could touch the soft rumpled head with the tips of my fingers, then feel the first part of his head bulging out of me.  Now it really started to hurt and I just concentrated on pushing and relaxing at the same time.  I had imagined that with our preparations, the right movements and positions for birth, that now I would feel strong at this moment, that I would feel that I was using my power and abilities to give birth to our baby.  I also wanted it to be gentle and powerful.  Instead I felt that I getting through by the skin of my teeth, that I was using every last ounce of energy, calling upon every fibre of my being to struggle this little being into the world.  I don’t why it was so, whether I wore myself out with pushing before I was ready.  I don’t know if this happened because the midwives seemed to be directing me to do so, and whether left to my own instincts I would have known it was the wrong time, or whether I just had to go through it all in order to get through.  The thing about having birth attendants is that you tend to look to them for direction and thus are less inclined to listen to what your body is telling you.  I felt this when Jule arrived and later when Gabriele arrived.  As the birth went on and on and I lost energy and power I looked more and more to the faces of Gabriele and Jule for direction and encouragement.  I really wanted to do it entirely by myself.

No matter the baby was on it’s way now.  With each push we made a little progress.  The pain was really intense but now it was getting us somewhere and there was we were committed to finishing this job as I’d intended.  More standing and squatting and pushing with all my might.  Kevin was holding me with all his might.  I was screaming out on the contractions.  The midwives instructed me to hold my breath during the contractions.  It just seemed so violent, so hard, so much effort.  This went on for about 45 minutes.  Each contraction was progress though.  It was hard to believe but the midwives made me put my hands down and feel the baby – so I didn’t get discouraged I think.  A few more pushes and apparently the head was born.  I can’t remember it.  I can remember intense pain – it certainly was a ‘ring of fire’.  His head was born and suddenly the rest of his plopped out too.  I was semi-squatting on our inflatable camping mats and it seemed like he just shot out and landing on the mats.  I’m told Jule had hold of him though.  In the next moment a bit splurge of blood came out too and I kind of sat down on the mat, my back to the bed and my baby between my legs.  Jule had to suck some mucus out of his mouth and then he started howling and squirming.  I tried to pick him up but he just seemed like a slippery slimy fish, hard to get hold of.  He just seemed HUGE, I just hadn’t expected him to be SO big.  No wonder it was such an effort.  It was suddenly all worth it.  The pain of the last 12 hours suddenly was gone and we had our prize, we were there.  I took our baby up in my arms and tried to calm him by talking to him.  Somehow Kevin got to cut the cord and I was lifted up onto the bed with our little squirming baby kicking and writhing on my chest. 

There seemed to be a flurry of activity, to clean up the big pool of blood I suppose, and then Jule had to distract me from our baby in order to deliver the placenta, which was apparently very big.  Then all three of us lay in the bed together for a while, Kevin and I just looking at Findlay.  After that Gabriele and Jule came back in.  I needed some stitches.  Findlay needed weighing and measuring – a whopping 4kg and 54cm, and then Jule helped me to the bathroom for a shower while Kevin put some clothes on Findlay and changed the bed. I stayed in the bed cuddling Findlay and after the midwives left Kevin got into bed again too and we spent some more time just taking in our new son.