Helen R's Story

I was Waiting and Waiting...

I was waiting....and waiting...and waiting, but my baby decided that no way was this going to be easy!

All the way through my pregnancy people kept telling me that the first baby is always late, wait two weeks before they start to induce and all that, but I was convinced my baby was coming within a couple days of my due date (April 8 1998).

It had been a very emotional pregnancy for me as my mother became ill when I was four months pregnant and died a couple of months later on my birthday. I wanted my child to be born so that I could have some kind of closure over the events of the past year. But as my due date passed and I came ever closer to my mothers birthday (April 25th) I was beginning to feel extremely panicky.

My health care provider for the entire pregnancy up to this point was a midwife, I was so very happy with her and I recommend a midwife or Doula very highly, they are your friend and partner in your adventure, more so than many doctors seem able to be.

I would see or phone Carol just about every day (or her me) many days she would drop by my house on her way home to check on me....have sex she said...we did, go swimming she said, I did. I was also taking Calophylum and long walks everyday. But no baby, my husband started answering the phone with the line, "Hello, house of no baby yet", as everyone was calling just about everyday!

Finally two weeks passed and the time came to book an induction, the OB who saw me the Monday prior to booking said I wasn't even effaced yet, I just started to cry on the table. He booked me in for induction on Wednesday. I really didn't want a medicated birth but at this point had no choice, my maternity leave clock was ticking and I desperately wanted my body back.

The next morning as I woke up feeling contractions. My husband had just left for work and I didn't want to call him until I was sure. They kept coming but only at about every 15 minutes, never going under that magic five minutes! I called Carol & she said, call when they get to ten minutes, I'm just around the corner.

All day this went on, strong contractions that rippled up and down my belly without really being painful.... piece o' cake I thought! Hubby came home for dinner and I told him what had been happening, no need for both of us losing a day I thought! I didn't quite sleep through the night, every hour a contraction came strong enough to shake me awake. Carol came at around 8 am and while she was examining me my water broke. Now we were cooking with gas, or shall I say really hard painful contractions, the previous day's contractions had fooled me into believing this was not going to be as bad as I thought! We all pilled into the Honda Civic to drive downtown to Toronto's Women's College Hospital, Avenue Road Traffic was pretty slow and I kept on bracing my feet on the dash board "Ho. Ho . Hoing" for every contraction, all the while back seat driving, "Are you going to change lanes or what?"

We arrived and I got the wheel-chair ride to admitting at around noon. Hubby & I had decided previously to opt for IV anti-biotics within 12 hours of the birth as I had tested positive for Strep-B bacteria. Usually this is only a problem with early babies and I certainly wasn't having a "preemie"!!!!! But since this was our first I thought this is the level of medical interference I could live with. Up to the maternity floor we went, and got a room with a bath and birthing bed, IV in, gown on yeah.... Lets go baby!

The contractions were really strong coming almost one on top of the other, I thought okay, 1 cm an hour...I can take this for another few hours alright baby on the way...my only complaint was that the showers must have been connected to some ancient plumbing network 'cause every time the water was a perfect temperature and my contraction was under control....it felt like someone flushed a toilet and the water either roasted or flash froze me!!!!! So much for water as a pain reliever!!!! By six o'clock boy was I getting tired, I'd been in labour for over a day and a half and hard labour for over ten hours, I'd already eaten most of the yogurt I brought!

I looked at Carol after she examined me for the umpteenth time she actually looked worried, and she said, "your only 5 cm, and your Uterus is getting tired, its time for some drugs" she gave me a shot of Nubain in the leg and I slept for a couple hours, when I woke up it was the same news, My cervix was turning into that old lawnmower with the pull chain, pull and pull but no action.

Carol said to me it was time to use the pictocin drip to get my cervix expanding again, I started to cry because this was the intervention I really did not want to have. Carol held my arms and said, This is when we need this kind of intervention, if I didn't do it now I may need a C-section, "Don't let them cut me" I whined/wailed/stated meaning don't let them give me an episiostomy more than the C-section. They had to give me an epidural to give me the induction drugs and that usually means that you can't push as well and that means some slice-happy intern may give you an episiostomy when your not aware.

In came the medical personnel!!!!!, Half a dozen people running around and me asking the "drug-guy" how many of these he'd done before letting him jab a needle in my back, Oh about a thousand he said. Anyway, I was pretty pissed off about it, you know that term "walking epidural"? That's a big farce, I could still feel every contraction after they gave me the juice but I couldn't move! And they hooked me up to a dozen monitors and I couldn't even go to the damn bathroom by myself! The entry point of the tube for the epidural hurt in a very annoying way, they put a blood pressure cuff on my arm that automatically went off every few minutes and I couldn't even roll over. Talk about your beached whales!

By this time it was around one in the morning, Hubby was trying to sleep on the chair, Carol went for a couple hours shut-eye and a very nice nurse was keeping me company. I managed to doze for a couple hours but that damn cuff kept on waking me up and I was still feeling every contraction! The drug man kept on coming in and giving me more but I could still feel everything! It just seemed to take the edge off the contractions.

So on it went all night.......around 8 o'clock AM the OB on call said that the baby's head was not in the right position, if your spine is twelve on the dial the baby is supposed to be facing that direction. Well my baby was facing 10! I was fully dilated by this point and ready to go, The OB reached up inside and turned the baby the rest of the way. Carol made some remark about lucky that OB has tiny hands and I shrieked cause the epidural was wearing off (not enough for me to move though! Welcome to the world of catheters to have a pee!) at nine o'clock, I was ready to go.

Pushing is a lot different then I thought it would be. Not hard exactly, but the better the control of the muscles in the area, the easier it is. Carol touched the area where I should be pushing and that made it easier to focus. She kept saying "relax your bum" because if you push too hard with the backside instead of the front-side you can get hemorrhoids ...yuck! Anyway, I pushed hard for around twenty minutes and out came the baby......the worst part was the actual crowning when the area is stretched to its limit, quite burny! Whosh out came the olive oil, the nurse doused the whole area with it and the baby literally flew out....that's where baby-catching comes from! No ripping and No tearing...that was my payoff after all that, no stitches, no hemorrhoids and no trouble sitting after!

But I'm not done yet, the big surprise for us was that the 18 week ultra-sound was wrong!!!! We had a baby girl not a boy! Lucky we didn't go gender-crazy and paint everything blue!

So on Thursday April 23rd at 9:30 am after 48 hours of labour we welcomed 9 lb. 1 oz Rowan Elizabeth Smith into our lives (Elizabeth after my mother). And what a great baby she's been, no colic, loveable and with a HUGE AMOUNT OF HAIR!!!!!