my birth story

I have been reminded recently on the power of storytelling. To not only connect with others and similar experiences, but to make visible parts of oneself that play such a huge role in who we are and how we show up in the world. Storytelling and witnessing others’ stories, is a profoundly cathartic experience, one I hope to pass on through my sharing here.

For 2 years now I have gone back and forth on how and if I want to share this story. There is a great deal about my experience that is tightly wound in historical events and personal experiences which I don’t feel called to share, so I have struggled with how to share a story when so much of the foundation of that story will be missing. There is a power that is given over, when you put out personal information into the world, where other people (strangers even) are able to interpret and make meaning of something that is so close to you. Nevertheless, I am here, wanting to not only share the immense joy and pride in labour and birth, but also to shed light on the reality of birth being an experience that is more complex and multilayered than the ‘positive mindset’ mainstream media influences us to believe. There are so many working parts that impact labour and birth, and wow, is my story a reflection of that.

A bit of background

6 years of birth doula work, and 2 years of intense preconception work with a background in Psychology, meant that I began my pregnancy well prepared and educated. I had knowledge about birth physiology, hormones, the hospital system, the brain in birth, and how my particular history would come out in amongst it all. I recently had a laparoscopy to diagnose and remove endometriosis, had an iron infusion, and worked closely with a naturopath, acupuncturist and pelvic floor physio for ongoing nutritional, body and energetic support.

It was a no-brainer for my partner and me to hire a private midwife for our care, and with a realistic lens on how birth can go, we knew we would have the best possible experience with this model of care. Working with my energetic body meant that, though I processed and moved through many past personal experiences, I had a physical body that had, over many years, learned to tense, tighten, and protect itself in the face of the unknown or potential danger. Chronic exposure to high levels of unpredictable pain (endometriosis) meant my body was almost always geared for a fight. We knew that being in my own home would be where I felt safest, with someone I had built rapport and a close relationship over the 10 months of pregnancy and therefore trusted (Jenny, you’re a rockstar). Whether it be endometriosis and the ongoing medical poking and prodding, or the way in which survival primed my anatomy and physiology, I was working with a chronically inflamed, tight and activated body and system, despite how hard I had worked on my health over the years. This was the single biggest consideration in my preconception, pregnancy and beyond.

Pregnancy was one of the best times in my life. I am fortunate not to experience much sickness… mostly constant fatigue. My placenta was anterior, so I didn’t feel any movements until around 21 weeks pregnant. We decided to have the 12-week combined screening ultrasound and blood test, as well as a 20-week morphology scan, where I was told I have a *very* low-lying placenta and would likely need to have a caesarean. My partner blanked out and barely remembered the remainder of the appointment. I wasn’t worried, either was our midwife, and once I shared the research with my partner, he too felt confident. I did, however, have another ultrasound closer to 32 weeks to ensure my placenta had moved, and of course, it had. I didn’t do any other screening tests during my pregnancy, but did do daily stretches (something I did already for endo), walked almost daily, daily pelvic floor relaxation meditations, and, of course, regular spinning babies routines with continual acupuncture and pelvic floor physio. One of my biggest concerns was having an OP baby, from supporting OP labours and births, and boy, did I do my best to avoid that in every moment of my pregnancy. I had a dissociative episode roughly half way through my pregnancy for about a week, where I witnessed something troubling and my past came roaring back to life, holding me in a stunned and scared state. I spoke to my partner, midwife and close friends about what was happening and how to move through and out of it. I feel this is important to note because it is the way our bodies respond and cope with unknown, unfamiliar and intensity that can come through in labour and birth. I also spoke to my partner, midwife and doula about my historical distrust in my body. I vividly remember saying “I’m not worried I can’t withstand the mental intensity of it, I’m worried that my body will yet again fail me” - this is a really common narrative for people who live with chronic illnesses like endometriosis and adenomyosis.

Leading up to our baby’s due date, I was experiencing mild aches when expressing colostrum, so I put a halt to that while I scrambled to get my last university report done and dusted. I recall seeing our acupuncturist and saying, “I know I’m close to our EDD, but please don’t do any cervical ripening points, I need to finish my degree first.” We laughed it off, and she focused on relaxation instead. I handed my report in at 39 weeks pregnant and shortly after, started to feel this stretching sensation of my pelvic floor, like something was pushing it down and out. At my next midwife appointment, baby was well engaged with their spine alongside the left side of my body, I was stoked.

The start of labour

I woke on Saturday morning, bright and early (5am), after a no-doubt interrupted night of sleep consisting of 25 toilet wakes. I spent the whole day getting everything ready for my partner’s birthday…. running around town, buying bits and pieces, organising the cake, decorating the house. I finally got into bed at around 8:30 pm, exhausted from the day, when 20 minutes into lying down, I felt a distinct pop and a small gush of fluid leave my body. My initial thought was ‘noooooooo’. Alongside the desperate desire not to have an OP labour, I was hoping my waters would stay intact to help a possible OP labour. I got up, put a pad on, messaged my midwife and returned to bed. Within 10 minutes, I was cramping hard. These were not little, mild aches. These were day 1 period aches in a woman with endometriosis and adenomyosis. I was rolling around my bed, breathing through each one, as they came every 10 minutes. Looking at my notes app on my phone as I write this post, I see I wrote “8:30 slight blood, 8:50 waters broke, 1050 coming every 6-7 minutes and 1 minute long”. The advice I gave every doula client to rest while you can went out the window, and by 12:08 am (also written in the notes), I had to get up. Lying down in bed made everything so much more intense and almost unbearable. I also really wanted my partner to sleep, as he too had only been in bed for a few hours. But, as we were so close to our baby’s due date, once I walked around the bed to leave the room, he woke up and asked if I was okay. I replied, “It’s 12:08, happy birthday! Do you feel like having a baby today?”

Of course, he couldn’t go back to sleep. I continued to labour upstairs, with low music on, on the exercise ball leaning on the back of the couch. Within an hour or two I put the tens machine on as the contractions were seriously intense. I spent most of my time on the exercise ball, head on the back of the couch, and as each wave came on, I would stand up and sway. We had prepared the downstairs areas for my labour, as they were tiled and had space for the pool, and we made our way down there in the early hours of that morning. As time went on, things hadn’t really gotten into a distinct pattern, but the contractions were taking my breath away (sounding quite OP-ish, isn’t it?). It was early morning, from my hazy memory around 6am, when I had 2 or 3 contractions in a row that seriously amped up the dial. I asked my partner to contact our midwife around 7am, and she arrived at 8am. I heard their voices outside as she arrived, and recall her slowly and silently walking into the room, saying “hiiiii, how are you going?” with the sweetest, brightest smile on her face. It was like a bucket of cold water was splashed on me, and I was immediately brought all the way out of labour land. I distinctly remember having the thought “wow, I could have a full-blown conversation right now” - something I had not felt in hours. This was one of many moments I felt validated in my decision to hire a private midwife, because if my body halted things with her entrance to my home, I can’t imagine how it would have dealt with the hospital environment and staffing situation. She seemed to notice this halt, and retreated upstairs so I could find my rhythm again. I sat on the downstairs toilet, because if you know, you know… I thought, there is absolutely no way I can lay down and sleep, so we need to get this up and going because the longer it takes the more exhausted I will be.

Things eventually picked back up, and I went back and forth between land with the tens machine and the shower on all fours. I was instinctively doing figure-8s with my hips and leaning forward for a lot of my labour; it felt right. At no point did these sensations feel painful, but an overwhelming pressure that felt like every cell and fibre of my body was in on. When I eventually made it into the birth pool, I wanted counter pressure but on my hands, so as a contraction would come, I would push into my partners arms and hands. Being in the water definitely relieved much of the pressure, but I felt ungrounded by its buoyancy. I think this counterpressure grounded me throughout the intensity of the contractions. The whole labour I was fed grapes, watermelon, coconut water and labour aid. As my water had broken immediately before my contractions started, I was losing a lot of amniotic fluid, plus being in the shower/bath and beginning to vocalize, I needed to stay hydrated.

Not too late in the afternoon did my body start involuntarily pushing. It was such a strange sensation, as a contraction began to rise and the ‘bearing down’ of my body, completely out of my control, came on. I remember thinking ‘oh my god, I am pushing, the hospital only lets women push for 2 hours so it can’t be any longer than that and my baby will be here!’.

Spoiler alert: it was much longer than 2 hours.

An hour or so into involuntarily pushing, I got out of the bath, and our midwife supported us in trying new labour positions. One was squatting in a doorway, holding the doorframe, whilst a contraction came on. My partner would stand behind me and support my body as I contracted. I started to visit the bathroom a lot from here, because the sensation of involuntarily pushing is definitely one you only feel in one other circumstance. I remember, within this time frame, turning to my midwife and saying, ‘It doesn’t feel like I’m ready to be pushing’. I didn’t feel anything low in my pelvis, nothing was moving or changing, everything felt high. It was around this time that we did our first vaginal examination. I was at 8cm, and encouraged to trust my body and how it was labouring with baby back and forth to LOP. This went on for a few more hours, and once it was dark (possibly around 8 pm), my second midwife arrived. This is a telltale sign for a homebirthing woman that their primary midwife must think things are about to happen, so I was really happy. It had been hours of involuntary pushing and vocalizing, and I was ready for things to start moving along. My partner recalls her telling him upstairs “eat something now, things will be happening soon”.

When nothing had changed some time after (maybe an hour or two), I asked for another examination. I remember saying to my midwife, ‘It doesn’t feel like the baby is moving down’. During my examination, I was told that I had gone back to 5cm and had a swollen cervix. I can’t properly explain the despair I felt in this moment. The three things I distinctly wanted to avoid were happening: initial waters breaking, OP/LOP baby positioning, and a swollen cervix. Though these 3 things aren’t mutually exclusive, they do have a higher chance of occurring together. Despite all my preconception and prenatal work, we went to work on reducing the swelling and making room for baby.

I’m talking hours of inversions, shaking the apples, different labouring positions (alternating feet or knees on a chair, sitting on the back of the toilet, forward leaning, etc), homeopathy (arnica), and exaggerated sims. Now, when I say this position was the most challenging part of my labour, that carries some weight considering my story. Exaggerated sims is not for the faint of heart, and WOW, it was the most uncomfortable position that made each contraction tip from pressure to pain. I was doing alot of ‘horse breath’ to get me through each contraction without adding to the push my body was naturally doing each contraction. This continued for some time, I was up constantly, walking back and forth, leg up on a stair or the chair. I remember saying out loud “come on baby, what do you need?” “come on baby come down it’s time” “come on baby I’m right here let’s do this” “what do you need from me?”. It was in this period I also started having visualisations. Through each contraction I would see two adult figures standing in front of a house, with a little boy a few metres ahead of them. Each contraction would come, and this visual would come through. It was comforting in a way, because whoever these people were I wasn’t alone in the in-between of worlds.

I jumped into the shower, and remember looking towards my husband who was standing at the shower door. He looked WRECKED. I felt terrible, and as the world began to spin, almost like I had vertigo, I demanded he go and sleep. We were both so exhausted. He pushed against this for some time, but when I said that he needs to be rested when the baby comes so I can rest, he went and slept. I continued on my own for a little while, but got to a point where our hot water ran out and I could not endure the pushing but not pushing for much longer. I walked upstairs to the midwives and said “Jenny I can’t do this much longer. What can we do?” She discussed a manual rotation as the last option. At some point in this conversation, every ounce of energy and grit left me, and I said “Let’s go to hospital, I can’t keep this up”. Jenny was amazing in this moment and said “I believe you can do this”. She talked me through what could be done in hospital versus home. As I started packing a bag, my husband came upstairs. When he noticed what I had decided, he pushed me to stay home a little longer. On reflection, it was a mix of guilt for leaving me alone and knowing how much I would react in the hospital setting that had him insisting I keep trying.

So… we laid down together on a mattress upstairs, while the midwives sat on the couch. My partner cuddled me from behind, and every contraction I would roll around trying to get through it. At some point, possibly here, we did one more vaginal examination. The swelling had gone down and I was back to 8-9cm. I said “can I push then?!”, from a hazy memory I think Jenny said “try not to if you can avoid it”. After 2 hours of trying trying trying (and a few sneaky self examinations where I could feel something but nothing was changing), I said “no, that’s it, we’re transferring”.

At this point it had been around 10 hours of involuntary pushing. I was exhausted, nothing had changed or shifted in that time besides cervical swelling and going down. I couldn’t feel any movement or descent from my baby (though he was cool as a cucumber on every doppler reading). It felt like the right call because everything we were trying wasn’t changing anything. The car ride was maybe the closest thing to Hell on earth in my lived experience. Exaggerated sims are burnt into my mind, but this car ride was a whole new level. I have a new appreciation for all the people who have a longer ride than the 40 minutes I had. We got there and the walk in was slow and painful. When I walked into my room, the midwife on duty immediately turned to Jenny and asked “how long has she been like this?”. The involuntary pushing was animalistic, to say the least.

I laboured for a little longer before the anesthetist made his way into our room. In my mind over the past 6 hours, my pelvic floor was again causing me problems. It was my pelvic floor that was too tight, holding on, couldn’t drop and let go (things I have heard repeatedly by care providers over the years). I thought the epidural might be the answer to get it to release and the baby can move down past the tight muscles. Epidural administered, I finally rested. My husband stood protector at the door, and my midwife in the corner, quite literally in my corner. He turned back the OB on shift (who recognized me as a doula she had previously worked with) when she would continually try to come in and encourage me into making decisions. We eventually did an external ultrasound, and found the baby was looking sky high. Meaning his chin was not at all tucked, and possibly he has been stuck in this position pushing down against bone (yep, even despite how regularly I had my ass up in the air in an inverted inversion). When the OB asked for permission to do a vaginal examination, I explained to her that I have a history that makes this a not very nice experience. She clocked what I was saying, and enquired about my history and medical history. From this point onwards, she went incredibly slow and sensitively. She said I was 9.5cm and have a cervical lip. We started discussing our options. She explained that with my history, it is not advised to do an episiotomy and forceps as it will cause more trauma for my pelvic region. She explained that she could do a manual rotation, but again would need to do an episiotomy. We discussed a caesarean also. I asked for time to talk to my team before I make a decision and she respected this. At some point, our sons heart rate was dropping and not recovering after contractions, so we started to chat about what we should do.

My husband shared that he and my midwife thought I should choose a caesarean. They, too, expressed concern on adding more trauma to my pelvis. With a history like mine and the medical conditions I have, it was important to protect this area as much as possible for this birth to still be enjoyable and positive. I looked into my partners eyes and said “yep, okay. let’s do it”. I said “I’m excited to see who it is. I don’t know if this means anything but the whole labour I’ve been visualising a little boy with two adult figures”. I had a suspicion these two adults were my grandparents who had recently passed, who I was really close with and who I journaled to on our TTC journey. Within 45 minutes, I had signed the waiver, we were dressed and being wheeled into theatre. The OB said she would also check for any more endometriosis lesions while in there as she regularly does laparoscopies. In theatre, she got me settled and spoke loudly to the team “no one is to touch her but me and she is to be covered at all times”. I was shocked that these two things wouldn’t be a given (let’s protect privacy and dignity no?), but I was nevertheless appreciative of how serious she took my needs. We put on Coffee by Sylvan Esso, our song, and things happened very quickly. Soon after, our boy was held up and wailing loudly. They took him over to get wrapped and the immediate sense of ‘give me my baby, don’t touch my baby’ was overwhelming to say the least. It was primal and I said to my husband “get him to me, give me him”. He was quickly placed on my chest. We were both crying looking at each other, “what the heck! We have a son!”.

I started to feel nauseous, so our son went to his dad and I proceeded to vomit up grapes and water. I was stitched up and my son stayed on my chest the whole way to our room, where we were congratulated by many staff members. As we sat in our room eating food and saying “what the f**k just happened”, our second midwife walked into the room in hospital scrubs. We were so shocked to see her, she explained she took on an extra shift to be there for us. She called me a warrior, and said she couldn’t believe how long I persisted considering (also, I had requested her as my second as I had worked with her on two births before). She sourced a private room for me, and supported me those next few hours. I ended up staying for 2 nights, my baby never left me, our breastfeeding challenges were heard and tended to each time I asked. He stayed in the bed with me, despite the midwives’ constant suggestions he go in the cot. I was advised I had a 2cm extension as his shoulder was quick stuck, a minor PPH and a Bandls ring.

This is a kind of rare occurrence and something I have seen happen once as a doula (1 in 5000). After discussing with my midwife, we think the Bandls ring occurred just after I agreed to the caesarean, as the ultrasound right beforehand didn’t show anything. You can sometimes see a Bandls ring externally by looking side on at the belly. My midwife suggested it could have been the moment I surrendered and kind of ‘gave in’ to what needed to happen, so did my body, and after my uterus contracting for 40 hours and pushing for nearly 15 of those hours, the Bandls ring is at higher risk of happening.

Postpartum

The early weeks, I was really upset that my husband supported the caesarean vs the assisted vaginal, for multiple reasons. I took awhile to come to terms with how things happened, mostly because the narrative of a broken body that fails time and time again, felt as though it was confirmed. “We got there! We were pushing, I easily dilated to 8-9cm, why couldn’t it just have happened?! We tried for so long after that to make room, to move things, to make it better, why did my body have to fail? What did I miss?!” - a few of the frustrations I had. As time has gone on, I am so deeply grateful for a team that knew me personally, knew my history, risk factors and medical conditions. I am now so grateful I didn’t chose to add more trauma and complications to an already very complex pelvic region. I can confidently say I don’t hold any birth trauma, and I said this the day we went home also. I genuinely had a very positive experience, I loved labouring at home and the labour process. I was known to the hospital staff, and with the support of a private midwife (who had worked at this hospital) they treated me with a level of respect that seems to be missing in many stories. I learnt a lot about myself, my body, what she needs. I’ve grown so much since this experience, it cracked doors wide open for me to explore, in terms of who I am, what I want, what I need to feel safe and comfortable. I’ve gained compassion for a body and spirit that is quite simply trying to protect itself and survive, and been able to commend myself on the strength and grit I have despite the complexities I live with.

Birth really is unlike any other teacher in life (that I have experienced so far). I am so grateful or my son to have experienced this with me, and in effect taught me so much about myself and my life. As is common in birth, he really is a reflection of his birth story. He is stubborn in his pursuits, and unfazed by things most others are, and determined and loud. My god is he loud. The best son I could have ever asked to make me a mother.

If you’re reading this having had a similar experience, no two are the same but I see you in this time of processing and healing.

If you’re currently pregnant, please know that your decisions are the strongest predictor of a positive experience. Your approach to this experience matters, your care team matter, your knowledge and awareness matters. You’re about to experience one of the most euphoric out of body experiences, whilst being so firmly in your body. Be mindful about who and where you get your information from, birth is multi-facted. It is complex and unknown and achingly beautiful in all it has to offer you.

Thank you for reading my story,

Cara x