“I can honestly say my experience was pleasant and my birthing midwife was amazing…”

I gave birth to my daughter on 15 March 2016

My waters broke on Sunday 13 March 2016 at around 3am. After phoning the maternity unit, I was told to go into hospital so they could assess the situation. As my contractions hadn’t started, I was sent home and told to return at 3pm on Monday 14 March (48 hours later) to be induced; presuming labour did not come on itself earlier.

I however returned to hospital at around 3am on Monday 14 March as I was bleeding. I was checked and told that this was still ‘my show’ and sent home.

At 3pm that day, I went into the hospital to be induced. The midwife however checked to see how dilated I was and as I was somehow 7cm dilated, a decision was taken not to induce me. After a while, I was taken to the delivery suite to give birth! As I had got to 7cm without proper contractions, I really thought getting from 7cm to 10cm would be a walk in the park! However that was not the case at all!

My labour was long, 11 hours 27 minutes to be precise. I had decided against epidural as I wanted the labour and birth to be as natural as possible.  Early on into the labour, I was told the baby was ‘back to back’. I had heard this phrase before but didn’t really know what it meant as a health professional hadn’t discussed this with me during my pregnancy. Although I could have still had an epidural, I decided to persevere with the horrific pain.

A few hours later, I decided to have diamorphine. This did nothing for my contractions/the pain but allowed me to doze off for a few minutes in between contractions. Unfortunately by the time I was ready to push, the diamorphine had completely worn off. I therefore had gas and air for a while, although I found this to be a nuisance and in the end also gave up with this.

After being in labour for over 10 hours, one can imagine I was exhausted, in agony and fed up! I asked the midwife if she could use a ventouse. My first few requests were refused as the baby was too happy relaxing in my womb. However, once the midwife realised that the labour was not progressing, she agreed to my request. 

All of a sudden, the delivery suite went from having 1 midwife and 1 student midwife to having an army of midwives, nurses and doctors. I’m not really sure what was going on at the time but I just remember seeing a room full! A senior midwife tried the ventouse twice, with no luck. An obstetrician then stepped in and performed an episiotomy using the wrong scissors (yes I heard her say that!) and pulled my baby out!

After all that pain and drama, my beautiful baby girl was finally born at 3.04am on Tuesday 15 March 2016.

After the birth, I had the injection to loosen my placenta and tried to push it out, however it was stuck! I was therefore given a spinal block and taken to theatre to have the placenta surgically removed.

Minus the long painful labour and a retained placenta, I can honestly say my experience was pleasant and my birthing midwife was amazing. I felt at ease and comforted throughout my labour. My husband was with me during the entire process and I honestly could not have done it without him.