Earth Babies Blog

Seth James Pearce’s Birth Story

This is the story of how Seth, our firstborn son, was born.

It was my first pregnancy and all went really well. We had tried to conceive for a while and even before I finally fell pregnant we had decided we wanted as natural a pregnancy and birth as possible, which led us to seek the services of a midwife rather than a gynae.

We finally found Xoli, our midwife, and decided to have our baby at Linkwood Clinic as we couldn’t find a midwife we were happy with to help us with a homebirth.

Everything with the pregnancy went very well, in fact Xoli told us it was a text book pregnancy, with all the measurements etc, being spot on week for week. We finally reached the last few weeks of our 9 month wait and began looking forward to our baby’s arrival into the world, which I had estimated to be the 16th December, and not the 12th as the gynae had advised us.

The 16th came and went without any indication of labour, and I was not too surprised as my mother’s pregnancies all went full term plus a few days. A few days extended to a week and my midwife left on holiday, sad that she was going to miss the birth as I was only allowed to go 10 days overdue. I had really wanted her to deliver my baby so tried various natural induction methods, including castor oil, but all to no avail. At the next appointment with the stand-in midwife I discussed the induction and told her I was reluctant to induce as I felt the baby was happy and I thought my due date could in fact be out by up to 5 days. She agreed to let us wait another week, as baby’s heartbeat was still so strong and healthy, I was very comfortable, and my bump still seemed relatively small.

Over the next week I continued to try all the natural induction techniques and I started getting regular contractions some evenings, only for them to completely fade away the next day again. During this time, Christmas came and went and Xoli returned from holiday. She contacted me very anxious that I hadn’t given birth yet and asked us to do a non-stress test every second day to make sure baby was still coping fine. Every time we went baby showed no sign of distress at all, and no sign of arriving anytime soon either.

I finally agreed to a stretch and sweep to try induce labour, failing that we were to return on the 1st or 2nd of January for a gel induction as we couldn’t wait any longer than that. I was convinced the stretch and sweep would work as my cervix had been nice and soft for some time now. The evening after the stretch and sweep I had regular contractions again, which frustratingly disappeared the next morning. By this time we were starting to get very tired of waiting and just wanted to meet our baby!

And so New Year’s arrived and I prayed as hard as I could that my labour would start naturally…and my wish came true, on the evening of the 1st, after dinner at 8pm, my nightly contractions started again, but this time they were different because they were painful, where none of my previous contractions ever really were. We timed them and when they were 5 minutes apart and at least 40 seconds long we called Xoli, she asked us to go into the clinic as it sounded like I was in labour.

We reached Linkwood at 2:30, my contractions were monitored and it was confirmed that I was in labour. We were so excited, until Xoli did an internal and said I was unfortunately only 1cm dilated (as I had been previously) and it could still be a very long time until I gave birth. She did another stretch and sweep, and advised us to go home and call her when the contractions were closer together, she would give us until Friday to let labour progress naturally, but if baby hadn’t arrived by then she would have to intervene.

We got home at 3:30 and went to bed, but after the internal my contractions seemed stronger and more painful than before and I was unable to sleep through them, so I got up and sat on my birthing ball to try open up my pelvis and speed up my labour. My contractions became more and more painful but weren’t getting any closer together, and finally I woke Daryn as I didn’t feel like I was coping very well on my own any more.

Daryn called Xoli and she advised us to take an hour long walk, and then make our way to Linkwood. As my contractions were painful enough to stop me in my tracks, we decided to walk around our garden and in front of our house, without going to far. We walked and walked, with me holding onto Daryn through the contractions. I began feeling nauseous and suddenly threw up. Worried, Daryn called Xoli, even though I told him it was normal, and they decided we would go to the clinic immediately and rather walk around the grounds there.

We arrived at 10:30am on the 2nd January and started walking, and walking, and walking, with me throwing up several times during this time. Xoli finally arrived and monitored my contractions again, and checked my cervix. Although my contractions were stronger, I had only dilated to 2cms, which was very disappointing. Xoli said she would check again at 2pm, and until then I should take a bath to relax, and continue walking etc. We walked and walked some more, and I got in the bath a bit to try relax. My contractions were becoming steadily more and more painful and I was moaning through all of them, and no positions or swiveling I did seemed to help ease them at all, the only thing that did help was the bath.

When Xoli checked again my contractions were really intense, but I hadn’t dilated any further at all. At this point she said we would have to decide on a course of action as she was worried about the baby going into foetal distress and me becoming too exhausted, as I hadn’t slept the previous night, I wasn’t able to eat and was throwing up, and with the baby being so overdue she felt my placenta could be taking too much strain. We agreed to let her break the waters to try speed things up, rather than use Syntocin to increase my contractions. She broke my waters and discovered Meconium in the water, which she was concerned about, but throughout all of this my baby showed no signs of distress at all when they monitored his heart rate. In fact he was unusually happy through every contraction. I went into the bathroom and burst into tears as I thought I was going to need a c-section. Xoli came in and told me to try calm down, and that her first concern was for my baby, but as they couldn’t find any other sign of distress she was happy for me to try to continue to labour naturally for a further 4 hours before checking us again. So I calmed down and we went for another walk, and the pain of my contractions increased a lot. When we got back to the room I had another bath and waited for our next checkup at 6pm, continuing to standing and rotate my hips, and doing everything in my power to help dilations etc.

When Xoli checked me again I had only progressed to 4cms, but baby still appeared as happy as ever. At this time Xoli said we would have to do something as I was so exhausted she was worried I wouldn’t be able to continue for much longer, and she wasn’t sure how much longer the baby could carry on for either. We agreed to a Syntocin drip, and the Pethidene which accompanied it, even though we had wanted a drug-free birth, as we felt it was our best option for still having a vaginal birth.

The Syntocin made my contractions incredibly painful but although the Pethidene didn’t stop the pain, it made my body relax sufficiently for me to sleep between contractions. I later found out my contractions at that point were every 2 minutes so I wasn’t sleeping much, but it did help.

At 8pm the contractions became so painful I told Daryn the Pethidene wasn’t working and he better get Xoli. Unknown to me, she told him I had to wait until 8:30 and he should try stall me, so he just kept telling me she was on her way.

When she finally arrived she checked me and I was 9 and a half centimeters dilated, it had worked! She told us to get ready because it was time to have a baby before the next hour was up…little did she know!

They ran me the bath and I got in and we started pushing, and pushing and pushing. It felt so good to push, somehow it changed the pain of the contractions so that it was bearable again. The baby’s head was just short of crowning and Xoli told me to feel my babies head, it was amazing and I told Daryn to feel it too!

I pushed and pushed and pushed but the baby just kept trying to crown and then slipping back again. I only found out afterwards that I spent 2 hours pushing in the bath, luckily for me it didn’t feel that long. Xoli eventually said to me I would have to get out the bath as baby clearly needed some help. So I climbed out and back onto the bed, and bracing myself against Daryn and Xoli, tried to push again. At this point baby’s heart rate started dipping with my contractions, and Xoli said it was time for him to be born as he was getting stressed, and he clearly needed some help. So she called in another lady to help and they got the Ventouse suction cup to help him. So with me pushing as hard as I could and the assistant pushing as hard as she could on my bump, Xoli gently pulled the baby’s head. Before I knew it he crowned and then his shoulders and body followed at 22:57. Baby was immediately placed on my chest and I was so happy I looked into my baby’s eyes and said “You made it my baby!”, that’s when Daryn said, “It’s a little boy!”

Daryn then cut the umbilical cord and they gave my little boy to him to hold while they were finishing with me, the afterbirth came straight out without any problems, and then they needed to give me some stitches because they had to give me a small cut to help my boy out. The entire time I just kept asking if I could feed him yet.

Apparently at this point they measured my little boy and he was a whopping 4.15kg and 54cm long, my midwife asked if I was an athlete because she said my bump was so small no one could believe the baby was that big, also she said my perineum was very tough and they usually only see that in horse riders or athletes etc. I don’t remember this but apparently I replied and told her it must be from lots of sex cause I’ve never done a day of exercise in my life – how embarrassing!

Then finally I was holding my little man again, and he latched right on and fed. They ran me a nice bath and I climbed in with my baby and we washed up, climbed back into bed and went to sleep for the rest of the night!

Throughout everything, Daryn was the greatest support I could have asked for, and I could never have done it without him.

The day afterwards Daryn told me that when my placenta came out they were expecting a lot of calcification etc because baby was 18 days overdue – but it was a 100% fine still, if I hadn’t gone into labour then or been induced, my baby would have just carried on growing and growing for who knows how long! Oh, and I have the dubious honour of breaking her record of 8 months with no episiotomies & being Linkwood’s first for the year, as well as being her most overdue patient

4 Responses to “Birthstory Friday: Seth – 18 days overdue and 4,15kg!”