| JJ's waterbirth |
 |
 |
 |
JJ's waterbirthHere is the story of the birth of my first child, JJ: JJ was already ten days overdue. We had tried everything: bumpy roads, curries, sex, walking, but nothing had worked. My midwife (Karen) had sent me for acupuncture 2 days prior which had not worked either so I went for a second treatment. At this consultation the acupuncturist inserted the needles in different places to the previous one and as I sat there it felt as if nothing else existed aside from my womb. My arms and legs felt totally lifeless, as if they were floating. Later that afternoon I met Karen at the clinic where she did a stretch and sweep and hooked me up to the baby monitor. She decided that I was in early labour – the acupuncture had worked! She sent me home with instructions to call her when the contractions were 5 minutes apart. We went home and I had a bath while my husband made us dinner. We sat on our bed playing backgammon and the contractions starting to come. They were ten minutes apart so we decided to go to sleep. I was waking up every ten minutes to contract and it must have been about 1 am when I woke my husband up and shouted, ‘How can you sleep through this!?!’ This after I had told him he better get some sleep as he would need his strength! Poor man. We timed the contractions and they were still fairly far apart. I walked around the house and we took photo’s of my belly. At about 4 am we called the midwife and told her the contractions were 5 minutes apart. She said she would meet us at the clinic. We drove through which took what must have been the longest 20 minutes of my life. Being confined to a seated position really was uncomfortable. At the clinic, Karen examined me and decided to break my waters. They gushed out and she remarked that there was a lot of fluid. I continued to labour through the early hours of the morning, taking walks around the clinic corridors and holding onto the wall and squatting for each contraction. I remember that the staff were baking the morning muffins and they smelt divine. Eventually we made a turn at the kitchen where we each had a muffin while the dawn broke outside. I continued to labour for many hours after that with my midwife asking me at intervals if I wanted something for the pain and me refusing each suggestion. At about 7am I got into the bath and labored a bit in there. It helped a lot with the pain. I also accepted the gas which became like my lifeline through the contractions. I took the gas bottle everywhere with me and I remember at one point the pipe came loose from the mask and I felt such terrible panic as I felt the contraction coming! Eventually at about midday Karen told me she recommends I have some pethadine as I was not dilating. I was stuck at 6cm and she felt the pethadine would relax my muscles and help me to dilate. Reluctantly I agreed as I was exhausted and didn’t know how much longer I could go on for. I was sleeping between contractions and I was pretty out of it. She administered the pethadine and I don’t remember much between then and when she gave me the antidote which was apparently about twenty minutes later. At this point I found myself in the bath and wanting to push. The assistant midwife was there and I was hanging onto my husband through each contraction. He was my rock throughout the labour process and never waivered for a second. Karen told me to feel between my legs and she told me that what I felt was my baby’s head. It took about three or four pushes and he was out. Karen brought him halfway out and untangled the chord from his neck before telling me to pull him the rest of the way out. It was a profound moment as I all but delivered my own baby and looked into his little face for the first time. We floated him in the water as Karen blocked the chord so he would start breathing and the little voice came out of him for the first time as he started to cry.  He was the most perfect thing I had ever seen and I could not and still cannot believe that he came out of me! My husband cut the chord and we stared at our little angel and shared a kiss. My husband floated our son in the bath for a bit and then they took him to get cleaned up and what not while I stayed in the bath and waited for the placenta to be delivered.All in all I am very pleased with the way things turned out. I still maintain, however, that its not really how you bring them into the world but what you do every moment from then on that matters. Choose what’s comfortable, what you think will work for you.
|