My Birth Story
12 hours into early labour I found myself walking around Bunnings, well not so much walking as bent over a pile of potting mix breathing my way through another contraction. Matt found me after buying an umbrella (and a sneaky sausage sizzle because you know, Dads need to be fuelled and nourished too!). “Maybe we should step away from the potting mix honey” he says. I half laughed at how funny this would have looked to an outsider, and how this was the last place I expected to be while in labour. It was just under three hours for later that our beautiful baby girl was born.
Rewind 12 hours, I was watching the Roland Garros semi final when I felt something was a little different than usual, I got up to go to the bathroom and on my way let out a cough, at the same time I felt my waters break. I waddled to the toilet to confirm and make sure there was no meconium (thankfully it was all okay). I was filled with adrenaline and excitement that today was going to be the day we meet our daughter, but the logical side of my brain also knew this was just the beginning of a marathon and I needed to stay as rested as I could, while I could.
I went back to bed and shortly after I started getting mild contractions (kind of like period pain), I could talk through them, but unfortunately couldn’t sleep through them. I put on my birth playlist (highly recommend making one if you are pregnant!), snuggled in with our pup (she was so good letting me cuddle her through contractions) and Matt stayed up with me as the night slowly turned into dawn. I had also been in touch with the midwives during the night and they were happy for us to stay at home at this point.
As the sun rose, my contractions were getting harder to breathe through, I got up and walked around the garden, using a TENS machine to help through each one (I found it was helpful to distract me from the pain, but wouldn’t say it really reduced the pain).
At around 9am, the midwives wanted me to come in just to check and confirm my waters had broken (important in terms of risk of infection). So we packed our hospital bag, Dad picked up our pup, and we set off. At this point my contractions were about 5-6 minutes apart, but as we arrived at hospital, they spread out even further (amazing how our bodies respond to stress/change in environment). The doctor confirmed my waters had broken and said to come back that night if labour hadn’t progressed (I’d need antibiotics if 18 hours had passed since my waters breaking without Bub arriving).
Matt and I didn’t really want to drive all the way home so thought we would just cruise around Busselton while we waited for labour to progress enough to go back into hospital. We went and got snacks from Woolworths, went out for lunch (while still breathing through contractions and using my TENS machine to help - I would have been a sight, but I was also completely oblivious to everything going on around me and was eager to stay active to keep labour progressing. After lunch, we were running out of things to do, so thought we would finally go and buy that Bunnings umbrella we’d been wanting. So that’s how I found myself bent over the potting mix in Bunnings 12 hours into my 15 hour labour.
We decided to go home after that, it was getting increasingly difficult to be on my feet, and in public! Once we were home, my contractions started getting more intense, I felt myself going more inwards in my thoughts, and the pain was beginning to consume me. Matt somehow got me back into the car and back to hospital. Again, the contractions spaced out on arrival so the midwife led us to a room and said she’d be back soon to check on us. It didn’t take long for the contractions to amp back up and now it was a whole new sensation of pressure, I was on all fours, swaying back and forth and I’d like to say breathing calmly, but I think it was a little more vocal than that! When the midwife came back in she couldn’t believe how quickly I had progressed and said “I think we need to get to the delivery suite asap!”. I agreed, it was feeling like I needed to start pushing.
Once in the delivery suite, I got into the shower as Matt held the hot water against my back, this was honestly so soothing against a mountain of pressure. It was in the shower that our baby girl Ruby arrived promptly on her due date and has completely changed our lives in the best possible way since.
Postpartum has been a rollercoaster, recovering and healing from birth, learning to breastfeed, and dealing with some heavy sleep deprivation and hormonal fluctuations have given us some of the highest highs (there is no love like it) and some pretty low lows but overall we are doing so well and loving our journey as parents. Honestly, post partum and the fourth trimester could have its own blog/post but that’s for another day!
Thank you for reading. Thank you to the amazing midwives at Busselton Hospital for giving me the birth I dreamed off, and thank you to my rainbow baby Ruby, for choosing me to be your Mumma, you’ve already taught me a love I never knew existed.
