The story of Evelyn’s birth

My water broke at 3.50pm on Friday the 27th of July. I’d been expecting it for a while, the prelabour and increased pressure told me I was ready to have a baby, even if the dates didn’t entirely agree. According to the original ultrasound dates, I was 34 weeks pregnant. According to my dates and the dates of a later ultrasound, I was closer to 36 weeks.

Either way, it was early and I was expecting it.

I expected to go into hard labour immediately, which is the pattern my previous two pregnancies had set. However 20 minutes later when Mum arrived to watch my children, I wasn’t contracting at all, just leaking everywhere.

We hopped into the car and headed to the hospital, but not before Nathan reversed into my mothers car. He was a little jittery.

About half way to the hospital my contractions started. Not hard labour, just mild contractions that I could still talk through. Heading into the pregnancy assessment centre the contractions intensified a bit, but didn’t get any closer together than every 4-5 minutes.

In the hospital, I was hooked up to the monitors while they tested for a UTI, and checked to make sure that my waters had definitely broken. Contractions were getting more painful, but still every four minutes apart. Because when I was lying down my stomach was so small, the monitors weren’t catching the contractions effectively.

Nevertheless, I was deemed “in labour” and after a cannula was placed and a metric tonne of antibiotics given, moved to a delivery suite, while everyone had a panic about the fact that I was only 34+3 weeks by the early ultrasound. I argued my case for being closer to 36 weeks.

Contractions ramped up for a bit, until one of the midwives spent 20 minutes telling me all the ways it was likely for my baby to have troubles at birth. I understand what she was doing (education is a good thing), but I got a little panicky and sick and my contractions stopped 30 minutes later. Dead. NOTHING. I’d been contracting for about 3 hours by this point, nothing too major, but now there was nothing and I was seriously pissed at my body.

I was also pissed at the registrar who was on duty that night who was insisting on continuous monitoring, despite the other OB saying 30 on/30 off would be fine. Luckily my room had wireless monitors, so I was able to walk around.

Unluckily, Evelyn was so low down that the monitors didn’t pick up a good heart rate or ANY of my contractions while I was standing.

In any case, my labour had stopped and when it became clear that it wasn’t going to start again immediately, they removed the monitors, brought me warmed blankets and left me to sleep. I sent Nathan to his parents house for a rest and a coffee and told him I’d ring if anything changed.

Around 1.30am, after I’d slept for a couple of hours I was woken by contractions. Strong and regular, they hurt and I rang Nathan. He arrived back at the hospital 15 minutes later and we gave it another 20 minutes before I let the midwives know that labour had restarted.

Thus began the most miserable two hours of my labour. It felt like transition, without the OMG I don’t want to do this part. My contractions were strong (oh so strong), regular and triple peaking. Contractions are not easy to deal with when you’ve got three peaks to get over and they’re lasting 3 minutes each, with only a 1 minute break between them.

I expected to have a baby pretty shortly after my contractions got that bad, but it didn’t happen. Evelyn was spending her time rearranging herself during contractions, which was not at all pleasant.

Around 4am the midwife came back with more antibiotics, oral ones this time. Within 20 minutes of taking it, I was so so nauseous. I took two maxalon and tried not to vomit, before demanding more anti-nausea medication and lying down to die.

Of course, my contractions stopped. At that point I was merely grateful for the break – triple peaking contractions are not fun.

In the morning, they brought me breakfast and I managed to force down a piece of toast and jam. This settled my stomach enough for me to stop wanting to die and by 9am, I was discussing options with the OB team that were on that day.

Because my water had been broken for over 12 hours by that point, they were keen to get my labour started. I didn’t believe that I’d ever agree to an induction prior to going into (and out of) labour with Evelyn, but frankly by this point, I was ready to be done with the on again/off again nature of things. I agreed to the induction. After a quick check, I was declared 4-5cm dilated, very stretchy and Evelyn’s position was favourable.

By this point, my nerves were shattered and I could feel that my headspace wasn’t great enough to deal with labour pains without at least the possibility of pain medication. My midwife was lovely (she was my third so far) and discussed pain relief options with me. She got the anaesthesiologist down to go through everything with me, so that in the event I needed an epidural or extra pain relief, we’d have covered all the boring legal stuff and I wouldn’t need to wait the extra hour for it.

Knowing that I had that safety net there helped my headspace and thus, the induction began. My contractions started around 11.30am and slowly the pitocin was increased. The contractions weren’t hard to deal with, unlike the night before, they were a smooth uphill and downhill ride.

I was able to chat between contractions and we discussed Ehlers Danlos Syndrome for a while, with me educating the medical student who was sitting in on my birth. Every time a contraction hit, I stopped to breathe my way through it, before rejoining the conversation once it was ended.

I know some women don’t like anyone talking while they’re labouring, but honestly, I liked the distraction. Plus, my midwife was lovely and the med student was too.

As they turned the pitocin up, my labour intensified. The midwife had a good handle on things however, making sure that my contractions weren’t double peaking and that I was getting at least a minute to rest between them. I spent some time sitting on a stool and some time on the toilet, helping to move Evelyn down, but my hips and lower back were hurting too much for me to stand and walk around. Stupid joints.

At around 2pm, I could feel myself hitting transition. I’d been very quietly controlled until this point, not moaning or making any noise (being silent helped me during both Evelyn and Isaac’s birth – I screamed during Amy’s birth and it just made things worse). I mentioned that I’d hit transition and was asked how I knew.

“I have this burning desire to tell you all that I am done. I am ready to go home now and not be in labour anymore.”

My midwife laughed and I did too.

“Sounds like transition.”

And it felt like transition too. From talking between contractions, I went to dozing between them. I had to work harder to stay in my own head and I definitely, DEFINITELY wanted to be done with the whole giving birth bit.

As the contractions started to double peak around 3pm (ish? I’d stopped watching the clock by then) with my body helping the pitocin along, I very quietly told my midwife that I thought it was time for pain relief. Early, I’d decided that an epidural was not for me, but that the patient controlled analgesia would probably help get me through, should I need it.

10 minutes later the anaesthesiologist came in and hooked up the pain meds to my (now very complicated looking) cannula. The idea was at the beginning of a contraction, I’d press a button and get a small hit of painkiller, enough to last about 5 minutes.

20 minutes later, I was still feeling my contractions and having to breathe through them, but I was also very stoned, very chatty and my joints that had been aching for the past 24 hours had stopped. The bliss of not having my ribs/shoulders/hips hurt was so great.

My headspace was also much better and with everything else suddenly not hurting, I was free to concentrate on birthing my daughter. Somewhere in there, shift change had happened and I had a new midwife. She was great.

And then I started feeling pushy. I’d been anxiously waiting for the pushy feeling, knowing that once pushing started I was nearly done.

It didn’t take too long pushing before I could feel Evelyn’s head. By this stage, my room was full of people, as Evelyn was premature and no one knew how much help she would need once she was born. They were quiet however and didn’t distract me from the pushing.

The hardest bit was almost birthing her head, before having the contraction stop and feeling her slide back up. Knowing that I just had to do that work all over again was frustrating. But the next contraction her head was out and shortly thereafter, the rest of her too.

She cried immediately and pinked up nicely. They put her on my stomach straight away and there she stayed for the next two hours. Despite being a little early, her Apgars were 9 and 9 and she fed for nearly 40 minutes – making everyone who came into contact with her believe that she was a small 36 week baby, not a 34 week baby.

My placenta was delivered and declared healthy, before they checked to see if I had torn. Nope, nothing. Not even grazing. My vagina emerged completely unscathed.

After a couple of hours skin to skin (during which Evelyn weed on me twice), we wrapped her up and Nathan held her while I showered. It was at this point we had to take her down to Special Care for monitoring, as the ward wouldn’t take her and no one knew how she was going to go with feeding and body temperature regulation.

I cried. Lots. But that is in the other blog posts.

All in all, I was in proper labour for about 4 and a half hours, not counting the periods of contractions that stopped and started.

Unlike Amy’s birth that left me shell shocked with its violence and Isaac’s that shocked me with its speed, Evelyn’s birth was controlled and calm. Proof that an induction isn’t always the horrible experience that it’s made out to be.

I was also declared the calmest, most controlled labouring mother that two of my midwives had ever seen. Which was nice.

Evelyn Kathleen, born July 28th weighing 2285g (5lb2oz).