Earth Babies Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Labour’

Now that I think back, I wasn’t particularly prepared for Shae’s birth. I’d been to a couple of classes and watched the videos, but they all looked so very calm and idyllic with pan pipe music playing in the background, I didn’t really feel the need to panic and prepare much.
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One part of coping with labour is the use of affirmations – an affirmation is a wish stated as being true in the here and now.
What an affirmation does is it prepares your subconscious mind, which in turn influences your conscious thoughts, actions and reactions … mind over matter.

The basic principle is that you need to be in the right frame of mind to cope with any overwhelming situation – the better prepared you are and the more positive you feel mentally, the better you cope with the unpredictable and unknown (both of which are part of birth).

affirmation tree mind map

Birth Story – names changed.
Natasha Rieder, birthing Jade

19th January 2009
Sleep last night was poor due to overactive /negative mind getting angry, sad, frustrated, disappointed, and more, about the fact that nothing has happened – no birth – and that the time pressure factor was going to kick into play. I couldn’t see how I could possibly land back in the situation of having another c-section. Surely the Universe, you (Little Jade) and my body could give me the one thing I want to experience – natural childbirth – considering how much I invest in parenting consciously and with awareness?

23rd January
As you can see Monday the 19th was an emotional day – I was tired from lack of sleep, feeling pressure due to time and generally very ‘the hell in’ and not interested in doing anything to induce labour anymore as it clearly wasn’t doing much. I wasn’t yet ready to give in to a c-section and have one booked, but I was tired of trying too hard and pushing too much. I almost even cancelled my ante-natal visit with Gladys cos I felt even that was too much involvement. But I went – I’m still a responsible mother & wanted to check Little Jade was still good & fine.
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This is probably the biggest fear factor when it comes to birth – just how sore is it going to be??
Once that little baby is in there this thought consumes you – I think every mother has that moment of realisation and blind panic that now that baby is in – it has to come out – “turn back the clocks!”.
It is probably for this reason that pregnancy becomes so uncomfortable towards the end, so that you can reach that space where you no longer care whether birth is painful or not – you just want baby out.

Here is a clip from 60secDoulas discussing this topic – Read the rest of this entry »

Posted this the evening of 11 July, 2009, several hours after Nienke was born:

Nienke was born at 18:00,weighed 3.45kg,10 hours of labour. Wanted epidural at 10am,long story-Didn’t get one.Wont lie-it was HELL. I think l begged DH at one stage to kill me.She suckles like a champ, latched immediately! Sleeping now with me in bed, am just staring at her. Will post later!

The birth story, fresh from the press the following day:

I had cramps throughout Friday evening, but thought it was the lovely potjie we ate the evening.

The cramps were mild and about 15 minutes apart. After 7am, I felt something leaking and saw I had my show. About 15-20 minutes after that my water broke. It was STREAMING down my legs.

Didn’t know what to do-were walking around with a pad in one had, my doctor on the line in the other hand, asking my hubby if I can first have a shower.

Took a shower, went to hospital. The contractions were already about 4 minutes apart, but felt like period pains. At hospital they weighed me-I gained a whopping 21 kg’s! (Lost 7kg during birth.)
I was put on an antibiotic drip, because apparently if your water break then you can become infected, they also monitored baby and then I was free to “walk” and do everything the way I wanted. O yes, had an internal exam by nurse and was not dilated yet! But the contractions were becoming stronger and longer. Still about 3 min. apart but felt like SERIOUS period pains.

Was walking on the grass outside with my drip in the one hand, hubby timing my contractions, me saying “it’s not that bad” and sitting in the sun in-between.
Got REALLY bad, so at about 10am I considered an epidural. Told nurse and she said I must first dilate 4cm’s. They did internal and I was only 1cm dilated! Thought I was going to die. Went for walk again outside but couldn’t keep it up. Was taken to delivery room (o yes, somewhere in between I received a nice enema as well) and had a catheter inserted. Here it is all a bit fussy. Was VERY strong contractions, little did I know it was nothing compared to what was to come.
Another nice internal-only 3cm’s-had to wait one cm more. Then the dr who gave the epidurals first had to do a c-section. I had some pethadine, which did NOTHING to relieve the pain, only made me go into a trance during rest-periods between contractions.

By this stage I was screaming like a crazy person and breathing like crazy and nobody was allowed to touch me, only held hubby’s hand.

While telling the nurse I was dying (I really did lose all dignity and did not care about ANYTHING apart from getting relieve from the pain) she did another internal and I was 8cm’s! THEN the dr who did epidurals strolled in. I wasn’t myself by this stage. So the nurse asked me do I still want one and I remember yelling at her “hy het mos nou gesê dit is te LAAT!”

I then shouted some more and told her to let my dr. come because this baby is coming. It irritated me that she kept on asking me questions a normal person would be able to answer, but I was not a normal person at that stage.

She would ask me “hoe voel dit” or “ons moet dr bel as jy 10cm ontsluit is”. I mean, HELLO! The baby was coming!!!

I could feel her pressing down with her feet at the top of my abdomen. It was the most amazing feeling and so empowering to feel how my baby was working with me.

I shouted at nurse to GET MY DOCTOR.

When my dr. arrived, I was 10cm and he was fantastic. By this stage I was completely out of control and he kept me grounded. He would tell me calmly what to do and to push when he says etc.

The one nurse held my one leg and helped me push by pushing my chin on my chest. The pushing was quite hard, dr. said it was a “tight squeeze” and that she came out sideways. She hadn’t even crowned yet when I told him they must “suck her out”. I just felt I wouldn’t be able to do it.

He then used the vacuum thingy.

I didn’t really feel that extreme urge to push everyone seems to have. I actually didn’t WANT to push, because I felt she was too big. So I did it sort of half-heartedly.

Anyway, she came out beautifully and I only got one stitch. Did not feel a thing when dr. cut me, though I heard it. She was very blue when she came out but then she starting crying and all was well. My hubby went with her to have her weighed etc but I told them to bring her right back, because I wanted to breastfeed straight away and do kangaroo care.
She was born at 18:00.

So I was cleaned up, taken to my room, they brought her to me, all naked and not yet bathed. She latched immediately and was happy doing just that. My DH and I both kangaroo cared and I dressed her at about 21:00 for first time. She slept with me, I did not sleep a wink, cant sleep in hospitals, the nurses kept waking us up and checking her blood pressure etc.

Anyway, I am glad in the end I did not get epidural, because I had the birth I wanted. I just did not know it would be that HARD and sore. The great thing is, the memory faded the next day and my cute baby was the only thing that mattered.

Would DEF. go prepared to be in the right state of mind to handle the pain better.

It was the night of the 15 February 2010, and in the midst of another perineal massage I was pondering the possibility of doing this forever and changing my profession to Gynaecology.
We were 10 days overdue and nothing seemed to be happening, so that evening we decided to watch a movie, and finish up with some “passion” (which sometimes started things) before hitting the sack. Now our first child (Seth) was 17 days overdue so we were not worried just waiting, and waiting some more.
I was woken up at around 11:30 to Seth crying and asking for Mumsie. My wife got up and settled him. She came back to the room and said she was getting a hot water bottle as she was having a few contractions and her back was sore. This was nothing really out of the ordinary as we had been through a few nights of strong Braxton Hicks before.

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We were pregnant with our second child and had decided on a home waterbirth.
According to my ovulation dates our baby was due on the 5th Feb 2010, but as with our previous pregnancy the date came and went, while our friends and family harassed us about whether we’d forgotten to tell them if the baby had arrived.
I’d been having painful Braxton hicks at night for weeks and we had one night where we were convinced labour was starting but after a bath and some time it all just petered off again. The BH were painful, but irregular and always disappeared in the early hours of the morning. I found they were most powerful after sex, so we tried often to kick start labour with “passion”, but I was getting frustrated and exhausted from the sleepless nights that passed with no result.
On the night of the 15th Feb we were discussing waiting another week for our baby, and I was contemplating asking my midwife if we could try the castor oil and orange juice route the following morning when I was due to see her. As time was getting on I was worrying more and more that as the pregnancy was so similar to Seth’s that this labour was going to be similar to his too. We decided to give the passion another go and finally turned out the lights sometime before 11pm.

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The story: At about 10 pm on the evening of th 15th January, I started getting a funny feeling in my tummy area. It didnt feel like contractions, neither did it feel like cramps. It was a slight, constant, pressure kind of feeling. A bit like someone was touching a bruise. I thought it was a bit of nerves as I knew I had to be induced in 2 days time.

One and a half hours later, the feeling was not funny anymore.

I could not sit or lie down and I’d want to scream. The only comfortable position was bending forward slightly with my legs apart. Persperation was dripping from every single pore of my body and now i was worried that I might have some kind of infection. The thought still hadnt crossed my mind that I was in labour. I decided to have a bath and see if it would ease the pain. It was a big mistake. Like I said, the only comfortable position was standing wide legs and half bent.

At 01:56(I know this because we argued about the time later and I went back to my phone to check) I SMS’ed my midwife aunt from the bath to ask what could be the matter. She phoned me back immediately and asked me to explain what I was feeling. I told her “it’s not contractions but it feels like my fanny and butt is going to fall off”.She said that I must leave for the hospital immediatly to get checked out.

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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.

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This is the story of the birth of my little miracle baby – Andrew Roy Cross, (older brother to Birth story of Michael Cross)
born on 24 June 2004.

I found out that I was pregnant on 2 December 2003. My due date was 10 August 2004. It was so exciting to tell everyone. My sister was the first to know and then I told my mom and my grandmother. My mom and sister were flying to visit my brother in Canada for the month that evening and I called my brother from the airport to tell him the news. Everyone was very excited, with it being the first grandchild on both my and my husband’s side of the family.

My pregnancy was great, except for the nausea, which lasted the whole way and was not only confined to morning sickness. I really felt like I was glowing. I love being pregnant.

I don’t know when exactly I began leaking amniotic fluid. I was feeling dampness downstairs for a week or so. I had been ill with bronchitis for a few days and had really been coughing a lot. I just assumed that the dampness was due to incontinence because of the pregnancy and that this was just worsened due to the coughing. I wore a pad and though nothing more of it.
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