Ben's Birth Story

This is the information post.

Whilst its all fresh in my memory, here is Ben Arthur Storer's birth story.

As mentioned in previous posts, I'd been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for the previous two weeks, quite painful at night. Saturday (2nd April) morning I was having my shower and "lost my mucus plug" this is quite gross, THICK, sticky mucus.

So I was feeling that the birth was imminent. So stayed pretty mellow, except for going to the Becks for lunch and then down to the park for umpire training... maybe not so mellow after all. Just hung out and chatted with Margie, possibly watched telly at night (can't remember). Anyway overnight felt odd.... nothing was happening still some practice contractions but very uninteresting.

5am - I had a contraction, it was quite painful, but manageable. I went back to bed with Jamie and tried to cuddle him, I squeezed his hand through the next two contractions, I told him I thought my labour had started, he snored at me!

Went to the lounge room and called the hospital, telling them I thought my labour had started, having quite painful contractions about 5ish minutes apart lasting around a minute in length. The midwife said to come in, not to rush, have some breakfast.

Got Jamie up, he turned the coffee machine on, and grumbled at me that my timing was shitty. Sunday was the first round of the footy season, Jamie is the coach of the U10s and was umpiring the U14 match. I was freaking out, and really wanted to leave to go to the hospital. Margie got Ryan up, I couldn't hold him, gave him a kiss goodbye and kissed Mark. I got cross and told Jamie not to make a bloody coffee and lets get going.

Arrived at the hospital quite stressed and in a lot of pain. Made my way up to the delivery suite just before 7am (all the change over of staff were arriving at the same time) were led towards our room and I got diarrhoea (quite normal) and was extremely tense. By extremely tense I mean, completely tense, the midwife said it looked like I was in a full body cast and to relax my shoulders.

The new daytime midwife arrived about 7:30am and came with the night girl and a shot of morphine! She wanted to check how dilated I was before calling the anaesthetist (for my promised epidural). I was 3cm and therefore was a good time for an epidural. She then gave me the gas to breathe in. The contractions were not at all nice, they are fast and frequent. Where was the damned anaesthetist???

Jamie kept giving me looks of "you're not getting the epidural".

Fairly soon after the midwife checked my dilation, she got a doctor. She later said she "felt something" that could be a cyst on my cervix, or it could be the umbilical cord, she didn't want to freak me out, so didn't tell me until the doc had arrived. Doc checked, it wasn't the cord. If it was the cord, emergency C-section like straight away. But no, I continued on my painful journey. Each time the door of my room opened and it was a midwife (a person dressed in purple) I started to cry, not my epidural.

Finally the anaesthetist arrived - about 9am. Despite my HEAPS clinic appointment which went through all the pros and cons, this doc insisted on telling me, and it was to give Maggie the midwife time to check my dilation factor. As she popped her fingers in, my waters broke and she announced I was about 9cm dilated and it looked like the baby was crowning. Anaesthetist wished me luck and left the room.

I wailed for a bit about "this is not what I had planned".

Anyway, I somehow flipped myself onto my side, lifted my right leg into the air and pushed, out popped his little head! Shocked the bejesus out of me. Surely its harder to birth a head than that? I announced to Jamie "We're having a baby" gee I'm smart. Maggie asked if I wanted to feel his head, so I did, smooth and warm. Then I pushed out the rest of him and onto my chest he was placed. He stayed there for about two hours, just cuddling and kissing. He had a little feed about half an hour after he was born and then went to sleep - they called it a hibernation sleep.

Ben Arthur was very very red, not much vernix and nice and toasty warm. It was delightful lying there with him.

Eventually pushed out the placenta and then was stitched up again.

From whoa to go the whole thing took 4 hours. In hindsight it was great. I'm able to lift Ryan, able to drive, no big scars.... quite proud of myself actually :)