birthing marlow
I write this today, precisely one month since our beautiful baby girl Marlow Autumn joined the world. It has been the most incredible month and I already can’t imagine life without her in it. She came into this world on a calm rainy evening at the end of September, a couple of days before her due date. This is her birth story.
Preparing to meet our baby
The weekend of the 20th September I was beginning to feel impatient to meet my baby - as much as I LOVED being pregnant I was so excited to see who they would be and what they might look like. I had a gut feeling the whole way through the pregnancy that I would deliver before the due date and as it crept closer I was starting to doubt my intuition. Our very last weekend before she arrived, we did everything we could to soak up those last days as a family of two. We took a stroll around Sefton Park, bought mint choc chip ice cream and sat on the grass by the lake to enjoy it. I dressed up (heels included) and we went to Cucina Di Vicenzo for a final special meal out together. At the restaurant I began to have my first real contractions which were intense enough that I had to pay attention whilst they were happening, and came and went intermittently (unlike the Braxton Hicks I’d experienced throughout the pregnancy). Every time I got one Ryan and I got a little bit more excited (he offered to take me home before dessert… but I had my eye on MORE mint choc chip ice cream). When he paid the bill, the waitress asked us when we were due, and Ryan calmly told her, “any day now, in fact she is getting contractions right now.” The look on her face was priceless, she clearly thought I might push out a baby right there and then!! I remember Ryan letting me lean against him as we made our way across the road in the dark to where the car was parked, and thinking tonight might be the night. When we got home my surges stopped and although we didn’t realise it then we had our last complete nights sleep to date!
That final Sunday evening (after a very relaxed day with family) I got a little upset that Ryan would be going back to work for a whole week. I was dreading Monday at home without him and was honestly disappointed that my surges hadn’t returned. Ryan made a delicious chilli (as spicy as I could tolerate), and we spent a long time in bed singing Disney songs and reading a story book to the bump. We laughed, cuddled and talked about our baby and the boys names we had finally decided on that weekend. That night was the very first time in the whole pregnancy that Ryan asked the baby to come out because (as he told the bump) - we were ready to meet them now. What a good girl she was.
labour at home
At 2:30am I woke up and felt a gush in bed - I said: “Ryan my waters have just broken!” and he was like, “really? Are you sure?” I think I said “either that or I’ve wet myself… no I’m sure”. I got out of bed, with a giant grin on my face and stripped off in the bathroom. We decided that the most logical thing to do would be to try and sleep to ensure we were as well rested as possible for what was to come. I popped a towel down on the bed and put on a maternity pad and we lay back down in bed and shut off the light. About two minutes later I whispered, “I can’t sleep can you?” and got the response, “me neither, I’m too excited.” We switched back on the light and I released another gush of waters all over the towel and bed. My waters broke in three big gushes, saturating our bed, floor, two maternity pads, and all the clean underwear I had to hand. Twenty minutes afterwards, (in a pair of Ryan's Calvin Klein's) my surges started with force, and gone was the plan for Ryan to nip into work and finish off some emails.
The whole of my labour has become a blur in terms of timing and the order of events. Time seems to become irrelevant and I really just existed in each moment. I remember the surges at the beginning were strong but manageable - I took some paracetamol and tried the TENS machine. Ryan set it up for me and then went downstairs to get things organised, but while he was downstairs I remember them getting much stronger. I shouted him back up the stairs and had to pull off the TENS because I found I couldn’t concentrate on the surges with the strange sensations on my back. I remember struggling to relax for a while and I got Ryan to phone our midwife. In all my preparatory reading I'd been led to believe that each tightening would build in strength and be relatively brief giving me a break in between each one, but in between I felt a constant uncomfortable tightening in my lower abdomen (like a strong menstrual cramp) right up until I dilated fully. We were devastated to hear that although our midwife had never missed a birth she was already with another lady and wouldn't be able to attend. She made a wonderful suggestion to help me manage my surges and Ryan told me, “Shardae wants you to get in the bath”. Curled up in the fetal position on our bed, I replied - “I don’t want to get in the bath.” Needless to say, Ryan won, I ended up in the tub and I remember the utter relief as I got into the water. It’s INCREDIBLE how relaxing and soothing the hot water is in labour, I’d heard good things but this was unbelievable.
Ryan helped me regain control and relax, gave me confidence in myself and went back to filling up our birth pool downstairs. Each time I got a strong surge which I felt I couldn’t manage alone I shouted him as it started because I wanted him by my side. He would shout “COMING” and run upstairs to hold my hand and help me breathe through it, then he would dash back downstairs to keep filling the pool. I think one of the most incredible things about a home birth is how much a part of it your partner can be. I have heard that sometimes men who accompany their partners in hospital feel helpless, as though they are a spare part - but this was most certainly not the case for us. Ryan was as much a part of it as he could be, he held my hand for almost every single contraction, and he had a huge list of jobs to keep him busy.
We spent the whole morning like this, with Ryan running up and down the stairs. I heard him at one point from up in the tub (the only time he lost his calm) - his hose pipe had broken while he was filling the birth pool. It was at this early stage that I was sick four times which was a shame because it meant that later my contractions really slowed as I was lacking energy. At some point around 8 or 9am the bath had cooled and I wasn’t finding the water soothing anymore, I climbed out on my own and Ryan found me curled up on my side of the bed, starting to lose control a little again. The midwife on call arrived while I was having a particularly strong surge, and she set up the gas and air for me to try. I hated how dizzy it made me feel, so we abandoned that idea and she promptly moved us down to the birth pool which helped me relax and regain my focus. Ryan had somehow managed to fill it to just below the minimum line with the hose so the two of them spent the next few hours topping up the pool with boiled water from the kettle and stove.
When we found out that our midwife couldn’t make it to our birth we had a little discussion - we had always said if we couldn’t have Shardae who’d gained our trust over the course of the pregnancy that we would go into hospital. The moment our new midwife Georgie arrived though she completely put us at ease and we decided to carry on at home. I laboured in the pool for hours leaning over the edge and holding onto Ryan’s hands. Every time he tried to leave I called him back. He only left my side once the midwife arrived to nip to the bathroom or get refreshments. He did a great job of keeping me hydrated and encouraging me to take some of the isotonic gel sachets, which was impressive because I had no appetite whatsoever the whole way through.
Time really seemed to stand still, I remember being in my head, and thinking things but not being able to verbalise them. I noticed things like the rain starting to pour right outside the window, listening to the sound and seeing it just beneath the blinds - I wanted to tell Ryan that it sounded so pretty and I was happy but I just couldn’t say it out loud. I remember thinking about Ina May Gaskin and any time I thought it was getting tougher, I just kept thinking I needed to be positive, and the quicker I relaxed, I would breathe out my baby and meet them. I thought about the people who had done this before and it gave me strength. I thought ALOT inside my head.
We continued like this for most of the day. Our midwife spent lots of time in the kitchen, coming through every so often to hold my hand when Ryan had to nip away or to unobtrusively listen in to our babies heartbeat. I remember at some point the sensation changed, I didn’t have any more abdominal pain and with each surge I felt the urge to push. I told our midwife who advised me to trust my body. It felt great to push.
At some point a second midwife arrived and although I heard everyone greeting her and my name being spoken in introduction, I was so deep within my own head, I couldn't open my eyes or speak so I think I just kept my head down, waved in her general direction and heard everyone laugh. I hadn't requested any intimate examinations yet but I decided I wanted our midwife to see how I was getting on, so I lay on our couch and she examined me. She said, “well you're fully dilated”, and my response was that I was disappointed, I thought I'd be more. To which she laughed and replied, “more than fully dilated?”
After two hours of pushing though I was no further forward and my surges had really spaced out. Our midwife told us that she was obliged to phone the hospital and let them know it had been two hours and that we would likely be coming in. Luckily our baby was chilled as a bean and throughout my entire labour there weren’t any abnormal changes to the heart rate so we gave it one more hour. In that hour we tried a whole pile of different positions: on my back in the pool, on my back on the sofa, leaning over a birthing ball, standing up with my arms wrapped around Ryan's shoulders, on all fours… I think the only thing we didn't try was standing on my head. We tried walking up the stairs to empty my bladder, and when that didn't work I was catheterised. I was ketotic and our midwife felt my body was lacking fuel for my uterine muscles to efficiently contract so I tried eating a banana. This baby wasn't budging though and the surges were few and far between. We collectively made a decision at this point to go into hospital, so our midwife phoned for a non-emergency ambulance and wrote up notes in the kitchen. While we waited (around forty minutes or so), Ryan dashed around the house switching off lights, locking up and grabbing bits for both of us. I got back into the pool and kept going until the blue lights appeared. It was all quite surreal.
When two became three
In the ambulance I got onto the trolley on all fours and only had about two surges on route. I remember thinking that even though I hadn’t managed to deliver at home, in this moment I was proud of my self - how calm I felt and how well I was managing. Ryan had bundled me into clothes before we left, despite my protestations (a long blue spotty dress I’d borrowed from my mum with one of his jumpers thrown over the top) - I must have looked a picture. Everything was surprisingly calm though, and our arrival at the Liverpool Women's Hospital coincided with the 8pm handover. We waited for an hour in a room on the labour ward for a doctor to come and examine me. Lying on the bed gave me a strong pain in my lower back so we heightened the bed and I stood up leaning against it, while the hospital midwife kindly held the CTG against my belly to keep tabs on our baby.
The most difficult part of my labour was re-adjusting to this new brightly lit, busy, hospital environment after being so comfortable at home. I had to re-establish my calm to cope with the surges, whilst answering questions and following instructions - I couldn’t really escape back into my quiet headspace. We waited about an hour for the doctors to come in and it felt intrusive as there were so many people in the room. The internal examination was uncomfortable and I felt the doctors seemed rather disconnected. I was told that our baby's head was OT ‘occiput transverse’ meaning it was in a difficult position for delivery and that the baby was so high up they didn't know if they would be able to assist delivery with forceps. I was told I'd be taken to theatre and they would try first with forceps to turn the baby, but that they would give me a spinal to numb my sensations from the waist down incase they needed to deliver the baby by caesarean.
It was disappointing because when I had been in the pool and put my hands down below I could feel a lot of hair (which is in keeping with the old wives’ tale because boy did I have a LOT of reflux in my pregnancy). It felt as though the baby was right there just within reach, ready to come out, but the baby's head had become caput (a little cone shaped) which was why it felt lower than it was. Ryan and I both knew at this point that we needed to get our baby out, and were happy to do as advised. With a medical background I knew what to expect and didn’t feel daunted but I could tell Ryan was worried. I insisted we stay together (as normally the father is separated from you to gown up for theatre). I also asked that they put the cannula into my left hand, and to walk myself to theatre rather than being wheeled around. These little requests were important to me - to maintain some control of what was going on around me, and to make sure we were doing it together (because after all we made the perfect team). I feel so grateful now that all my preparatory reading had empowered me for the occasion.
In theatre, Ryan continued to breathe with me through my contractions (four counts in and eight out). In between surges I chatted to the anaesthetist while I was administered the spinal and they popped up the screen. Ryan was to my right and I remember looking at him and he was so teary and nervous. He told me later that he was worried something bad was going to happen to me. With guided pushing, an episiotomy and Simpson’s forceps they managed to turn our baby with the first contraction and with one more contraction the baby was out. The cord was too short to lift the baby onto my chest so they rested her somewhere in my midriff and waited for the cord to stop pulsating before cutting it. At this point we still didn’t know the gender, and the obstetrician said, “well dad, do you want to take a look and let us know what you have?” … To which Ryan peered over, looked at me with a smile on his face and said - “It’s a boy.” I grinned back at him and went “It’s a boy?!” The doctor interjected our happy moment with… “uhhhh dad? Do you want to take another look?” Ryan looked back and said “oh - it’s a girl!” And much to his embarrassment the entire theatre burst out laughing.
Our little baby girl. We knew her name straight away because we had decided upon it in the very first trimester and she suited it just perfectly.
Marlow Autumn Jones.
MARLOW
Although we didn’t get the home birth I had envisaged, I am so proud of the way I brought you into this world. Your birth is a wonderful memory which I will happily reminisce about for years to come, and I am so grateful we had such a positive experience, when that is not the case for so many. Looking back - I wouldn’t describe my labour as painful but intense, and I felt like a true warrior bringing you earthside with just paracetamol, breathing techniques, hot water and your Daddy’s hands in mine.
