Birth Story

“Write down your birth story” they said. I assume what they mean is “you don’t want to forget the details, so you can retell it one day". That makes sense. Yet some days I’m left wondering whether I want to remember or forget the details. I suppose each person who experiences a traumatic birth asks that question…“How much do I really want to remember?'“

I’m a verbal processor and yet retelling trauma can compound the emotional toll. I also know that trauma isn’t what happened to a person but what happens inside them when something painful goes unhealed, and I know the best healing happens when its done in the company of others. So I write this as a way of sharing what happened for friends, family and anyone else who seeks to understand.

Haha, yes I was big here. That’s because I carried this chonk just short of 44 weeks. Yuhp I was pregnant for 10 months. My own mum carried pretty far, all being around the 42 week mark so I was prepared for what the system calls a “we should have induced you ages week ago” baby.

When I was maybe 10 I knew I was going to have a home birth. Just like my mum. I don’t think I even thought about how I’d get married at that point, but I knew from a young age I’d birth like my mum did and that she was going to be there. So we went through months of appointments with private midwifery care and I was ready. I had done hundreds of hours of research and mental preparation. My birth affirmations read on our wall:

“This pain is perfectly designed to bring us both through safely".

“You’re body made this baby without thinking. It will birth this baby the same.”

“Your body is NOT out of control. It is TAKING control.”

I was ready for the most peaceful birthing experience. The low moans, the dims lights, the smells of home keeping my cortisol low, the deep connection with my husband, essentially a continuum of the space she was created in. I was ready for the oxytocin from a natural birth that binds mum to baby, that helps place such an intense experience in the non-traumatic box in the brain. I was ready to experience the power of my body. To feel and experience a pain that had immense purpose. To know the kind of ‘hard’ that only women are capable of. I was ready to gift all of things to my baby that you just can’t give them when you intervene with either methods.

Yet, there we were being told by our midwife that there’s a cut-off at 42 weeks and 6 days on having the birth we wanted. We grieved that hard as I went into labour one day before the cut-off thinking, “we’ve made it! We’re not going to have to go in, she’s coming!” The relief that was in our hearts that night. Unfortunately my labour didn’t progress and so it was, that we would have to go in to the hospital for birth. I was in latent (on and off) labour for over a week, and seeing the reality that she was going to need some help, had to grieve again our plans of a natural hospital birth.

Lost Control

I had carried her 43 weeks and 5 days. Anyone who’s carried a baby can imagine how taxing it was. I’d never felt so exhausted, so mentally and emotionally drained. It wasn’t just the grieving of dreams, the extra acupuncture, tonics, walking and other tricks to get her out, or the crazy increased hormonal drain which had me feeling all over the place, or even my chronic fatigue, but the fight we had to do every time we went in for monitoring.

Early on they claimed her placenta was failing because the blood flow to the cord looked low and that we should evacuate her immediately (42 weeks). We had to fight our way through to get another scan as my blood pressure was low during all of my ultrasounds because laying on your back while pregnant (hot tip ladies) can decrease blood flow, and that’s why I vomited every time. They said “we wouldn’t retest that” and when we did a second ultrasound where I DEMANDED I lay on my side, the blood flow was fine. Oh but then they wanted to retest the ultrasound every second day now to retest and check. There are so many instances like this where the evidence they give result in many people making decisions they might not have too.

In our case we did decide much later on that she needed help (but I encourage you that it’s more often rare than it is common). Birth isn’t an emergency waiting to happen in more cases than not. Bodies know how to grow and birth babies and in general we need a bit more trust in that than we currently have as a society. However, I am thankful it is there for the rare cases. And on my “good days” I try to believe that that’s what it was for us. Really freaking rare.

I try to remember that I waited as long as I could have. That I trusted her and my body with the most amount of faith. Every day I sung to her in my belly, “For you I’d wait, til kingdom comes”. And I did. At 43 weeks and 5 days there was likely no amount of time left we could have possibly waited. Some people say that “all babies WILL come eventually”. But my eventually looked like it was coming and going.

I think the hardest thing to grieve was the lost control over my body, over my choices, over what was going to happen to me. No amount of research that I did was saving me from having to give up my body in a way I didn’t want too, that didn’t feel safe to me, that wasn’t natural. But I pivoted once again, knowing what it would cost me, and we booked in an elective caesarean to make sure we would meet her.

We went in and they read out the majorly long list of all the complications that could happen presently and in the future from having this major surgery. They prepped me, I secretly took some vaginal swabs for vaginal seeding post birth, and I gave them my list of requests (don’t betadine wash my vagina, baby not to be taken away unless resuscitation is needed [which they didn’t follow], skin to skin with dad immediately if I can’t hold her etc etc).

I went in, they administered block and put my catheter in. They lay me down, and I vomit all over my hair and eventually after what feels like an hour they bring my husband in. They test me, “can you feel this, can you feel that?” I say I don’t think so, and eventually they begin. Just before they were about to pull her up I started to feel a lot. My block started to fail and I felt them ripping things. Already I was just barely taking it, my face scrunched and body tensed every movement they made, but I was under so much adrenaline of knowing I was about to see her I somehow coped until she was up and out. Having Josh near me distracted me just enough. But I remember telling him “talk to me” because I was trying to block out the pain, and I assumed this must be just how awful caesareans are.

We saw her, she cried and so did we. She was perfect.

But as soon as she was out my focus fell back to my body and I felt it. I felt it all. I felt like I was being assaulted, time and time again. I told them and it felt like it took forever for them to do something about it. She had already been checked on the table and brought to me to hold. But I was barely staying conscious through the pain and I couldn’t focus on anything else. I couldn’t hold her. I could barely move my arms.

Eventually they put a nitrous oxide mask on me which made me almost completely pass out, so I had to take that off, and then they tried to administered a shit ton of drugs which didn’t work. I was loosing so much blood, over half my body’s worth (2.5 L). People rushed in, and as my husband describes it, “it was like a scene from Grey’s Anatomy”. My husband got rushed out past everything, seeing my body completely open with organs and blood everywhere. Which if you ask me is pretty rough for a man who instinctively wants to protect his wife. And if you asked him he’d describe it as a “murder scene“. I’m still reconciling how responsible I feel for that being his first experience of birth ever, even though it’s not my fault.

He got whisked away with our baby, not knowing whether I was dying or not, and I was left alone to deal with it, awake by myself. They asked if I wanted to be put under because none of the drugs were stabilising the pain. I had already missed holding my baby that was crying FOR ME. I knew it would be even longer than my stitch up time to make it to her and I knew every millisecond away counted. So I said no. Looking back I don’t know how I did it, how I endured that. But I focused so hard on the words of the music playing in the background so I would stay conscious, because my brain and body wanted to leave that table like nothing else. I managed to stay awake but my brain has lost memory from the time I was finally stitched up to the time I was wheeled into recovery.

I remember being in the recovery ward as multiple people stood in front of my bed trying to get me to rate my pain when I could barely speak from how much my body had just been through. I ignored them all, trying to signal with my eyes to the midwife standing in the corner near Josh to bring my baby to me. She hadn’t stopped screaming since the time she was taken out. Eventually she caught on and said “I think she first wants to hold her baby”. So they brought her to me and I barely got out the words “just help me latch her”, still not quite able to hold her up with my arms.

We missed her slow entry into the world. You know, the one where you look at each other and think what a miracle this is. It felt far from a miracle. It felt like a horror movie to both of us. You don’t ever imagine the most joyful thing turning into something like that. Particularly in a planned (non-emergency) surgery. You don’t imagine going in for any surgery and them saying “look the anaesthetic might work it might not, but you’re okay with that risk yeah?”

For days after when the visitors were away I would just scream out in loud wailing when I had a flashback to the moment she was born. When my pain was severe and unmanaged it would send me right back there to that room and it was like I was feeling it all again.

There was so much more medical neglect in the way they discharged me after only 2 nights in hospital. 5 nights is the usual amount, 3 if you ask to go home early and everything looks good. They didn’t ask me, they told me I had to go home. I was on the max amount of opioids and my pain still wasn’t managed during that entire time. I was practically begging them at that time to let me stay because I couldn’t get out of bed without the support of the hospital bed. I was only lucky that someone didn’t get around to discharging my baby so we stayed a third night. Then had to leave at midnight from the hospital the day after. My pain wasn’t managed, my emotional health wasn’t managed, every time I told them I wasn’t doing well and they told me “well caesareans are hard, you just have to get on with it and keep moving”.

I was worried for my baby that whole time because I had to wake her every 3 hours to feed her or she wouldn’t wake. They tested to see if she had a UTI or something but no one looked at the amount of drugs I was having. It literally says in the manual they give you not to give Codeine to a breastfeeding mother. Oxycodone (after my dad researched it a week later) discovered it was pure Codeine. Something they should have known perhaps? That they could have said “hey maybe pump before you take your next dose” that might be making your baby seriously lethargic. They discharged her too even though that was a serious concern for us.

My healing was delayed not just because I was carrying and feeding a baby that was the max weight limit you should hold up until 6 weeks post surgery (because she was massive) but I was sent home early, where I thought I was going to have to stand and stay awake all night when we arrived home because I couldn’t physically make it into bed.

I couldn’t even make it into the extra hard bed my parents had transported over to my house I was in that much pain. My whole body seizured every time I got in and out of bed, it physically and uncontrollably shook. I screamed from the pain even on the max amount of opioids. I had to force myself through the pain many times a night to get up and feed her as well. If you ask me, that was just as traumatic as the event itself. It not only took me back to the event that happened, but it didn’t help my wound heal when I cried that hard, and when I pushed through getting up and down that much after having a really complicated surgery. The hilarious thing is that written on my OP notes is that there was no complication at all. Only that I lost blood. Nothing about the anaesthetic not working.

So even at home the shaking was terrifying, and the pain was horrific and at that point I just wanted to die all over again.

The Sacred and the Profane

My very wise counsellor has said to me, “We will find the profane if we look for it, and we will find the sacred if we look for it.” So here goes. My attempt to see the sacred amongst the profanity.

Firstly, I look at my conviction early on that sex was way more than just pleasure, and that (for us) choosing to not “protect ourselves” from life was choosing to accept the risk, and the handing over of control that comes with such a beautiful gift. We chose to not separate it and it was the right thing for us.

I look at the bravery it took to say yes to that, knowing how sick I had been the the last few years. For how many times I was told my gene mutation, my chronic illness would produce miscarriages and potentially deformed babies. I look at the big f”* off bravery it took to say yes to that, and the bravery it took from the people around me to believe in me and support me in more tangible ways when we fell support when we fell pregnant way sooner than we imagined my body would. My supposedly broken body said yes to life the month after quitting the pill. And it built a whole and perfect baby.

I look at the hours upon hours I spent almost everyday of our whole pregnancy researching and paying attention to my intuition. I look at my strong decline when they wanted her out for weak reasonings in their lack of commitment to put me first as well. I look at how I honoured my body and hers for as long as I could, for just shy of 44 weeks. For the good foods we put into my body that whole 10 months, and the twice weekly physio appointments and exercises I did every day to make sure I could carry her, after having years of pain just trying to carry myself. I could barely wear bras y’all my ribs were that weak at expanding.

I look at the counselling I did to prepare to work through other trauma so that I wouldn’t pass that on.

I look at every time I grieved my own birth plans to put her first, even though I had been through a really tough few years where I didn’t feel I had say over my body, making it even tougher.

I look at way I toughed out a spinal block fail just so I could get to my baby quicker. That even though I didn’t have the natural oxytocin of birth that might have brought in extra mothering instincts… that I chose to take such a shit event upon myself so that she wouldn’t have lose out on anymore than was already happening.

For how I put off managing my pain in recovery until she was latched to me, because I know how important that first hour is.

For how I got up every time she needed to feed during the night, not quitting on breastfeeding even though my pain would make me shake let alone the pain of breastfeeding itself adding to a compounding overwhelm on my body.

For how Josh showed up in so many ways he shouldn’t have had too. From trusting my body and never pushing me to use an intervention out of his own fear, to walking me to the shower as blood ran all over the floor in the hours after surgery. For holding me through the tears even though he was crying inside himself as well. For how he defended me in so many situations. For holding our screaming baby for me even though he was helpless to soothe her until I joined them. For so many things his heroic-ness is where I find sacredness.

Even for the scar that will forever be there, in a society that celebrates body perfection, I try to see it as my tattoo of victory, not failure. Not failure to believe, to wait, to try, to exhaust my options and then to sacrifice. No. My sacred scar, where I tell the story that although it cost me in ways i’ll never be able to explain with words, that you (my girl) were worth it to the very end. You were worth protecting at all costs. Even though I lost a form of protection over my own body. You were worth it. And also, we both deserved to be protected.

I’m so thankful for all the support I’ve received, particularly from my parents. But also others who came and visited, who sent a present or card not even knowing the full story of what happened. Having a friend reach out who had also experienced a caesarean and without the surgical complications affirming how hard it was for bonding, for those precious moments you don’t imagine will be tainted. I could cry… because I have hope that something excruciatingly painful won’t be like that forever. Not because time fades it, but because love heals it, and that’s what I’ve felt every time my mum randomly stops over with food, or my dad looks at me and says “you don’t have to go into it, but I’m here to listen when you’re ready”.

We’re still out here working through the flashbacks, the sadness, the anger, the reality of it. And we’re far from over it but we’re showing up for everyday with her and I’m starting to be able to look at her and have those events separate from her. To look at her as one of my greatest freaking achievements. I’ve done a lot of crazy things that I’m proud of but none as great as creating her.