It's been 8 weeks since the delivery of my little angel, Alexander Raphael Satriadi, I finally have the time to write the journey of his birth process in this blog. I believe every mother would have their own expectation for the labor. For me, I wished to have a natural birth, water birth if possible, but most important is having a normal delivery instead of C-section.
Monday, July 23
In the evening, I felt the first contraction which is longer and harder than the usual Braxton Hicks contraction. If you haven't been pregnant, a contraction pain is like a menstrual pain in the lower part of stomach and in your lower back, it's like they've been squeezed, but the pain was gone as the contraction stops.
Tuesday, July 24
Struggled to sleep during the night, I woke up early morning at 2 AM and went to the toilet to have a pee, then I found myself bled a little, which is a sign that the dilation was going to started and I entered the early stage of labor. It was called a bloody show, which is one of the sign of labor. I told my husband and we decided to call the midwife to inform that I was going into labor soon. According to the midwife, I should wait until the contraction interval was less than 5 minutes and each contraction lasted about 1 minute before calling them again. She suggested me to try to have a sleep and drink pain killer if the contraction distracted my sleep.
During the day I managed to deal with the contraction pain by practicing the breathing and relaxation techniques that I learned from the hypno-birthing lesson. I also used a warm pillow to be put in my lower back to help ease the pain. My husband helped me to count the contraction period using a stopwatch during that day. I couldn't cook or do anything during that day, thankfully my mom came to visit from Indonesia, so she covered all the domestic things at home, including cooking.
Since the contractions were not every 5 minutes, the midwife was not suggested us to come to the hospital yet on Tuesday night so I went to another sleepless night because the contractions were getting harder that I couldn't sleep.
Wednesday, July 25
In the morning, I decided to call the midwife again since the pain was unbearable and the interval between each contraction was varied from 4 to 7 minutes. The midwife allowed us to come to the hospital so we went there with taxi. After a very painful checking (she put her fingers in my vagina to check how long was the dilation), she told me that it was only 2 cm of dilation, so she sent me home again. Ouch! That was a really bad news, because it wasn't comfortable to sit on a taxi while you're having regular contractions, plus the taxi fare in Copenhagen is extremely expensive. It took us around 500 kroner (equal to Rp750,000) to take a return trip from home to hospital and vice versa with a taxi :(
The midwife gave me pain killer and a sleeping pill in order to help me sleep during the day as I told her that I hadn't slept for two nights because of the contraction pain. After drinking the medicine, I managed to have some sleep and forgot about the pain for a while. However in the evening around 7 PM, the contractions was quite harder that I couldn't bear it anymore. I decided to call the midwife again and she asked me to come to the hospital again. I went to the hospital with taxi again while hoping that she wouldn't send me home again.
The midwife in-charged at that time was nicer, that she informed me that my dilation is about 3 cm long (I've never known what a long hours it took to dilate just another 1 cm). I was so worried that she would send me home again since the rule is they would keep a patient at the hospital when they're about 4 cm dilated. Luckily she told me that I could stay at the hospital right away. Phew!
She transferred me to another midwife, whom gonna helped me with the labor. The midwife is a really kind and supportive midwife and her attitudes really comforted me going through the night. She brought us to the delivery room, which is quite spacey, clean and have complete facilities, such as own shower room, bath tub, and other labor related equipments. She told me to have a hot shower first and changed my clothes and also tried to have a pee and poo. She actually injected something in the anus area which makes me wants to poo.
After that, she told me that she was going to break my amniotic fluid to fasten the dilation. She took a long needle and pop the amniotic fluid when I had contraction. The contractions were getting really hard after the amniotic fluid was broken. The midwife offered me to use Entonox (Gas and Air) as a pain relief. I breathed in it using a mask. The gas made up of oxygen and nitrogen which has calming effect so it took a little bit of the labor pain. However after the dilation is about 5 cm long, I got so tired dealing with the pain, that I'm afraid I wouldn't have the energy to push when the time is come, therefore I asked for epidural for pain relief. The epidural injection wasn't hurt as bad as people said, or perhaps after experienced the labor pain, there's nothing else can compare to such pain :-D
With the epidural, the contraction pain was really minimum that I could sleep and relax for a while. I spent most of the time during Wednesday night sleeping, collecting energy for the last stage of labor. During the night, the baby's heart beat was quite high. Hence, the second shift midwife should call the doctor to take a blood sample from the baby's head. Fortunately, there's nothing wrong with the baby's blood test. However, I had a fever during the night, even after the midwife gave me Paracetamol, my temperature was still increasing. The midwife decided to give me antibiotic to reduce the fever.
Thursday, July 26
Very early morning, I dilated 9 cm but the progress to a complete dilation seemed like forever that the midwife need to inject stimulation to fasten the contraction. After a while, I felt the urge to push and entered the second stage of labor: pushing. My cervix was fully dilated and the midwife instructed me to push whenever I felt the contraction. The pushing technique was actually taking a deep breath and pushing while holding your breath. I tried to push as hard as possible however the baby's head apparently wrongly positioned around my pelvis so each time I pushed, the baby moved 1 step out but then when I took breath the baby moved 1 step backwards. The midwife asked me to try different position, by kneeling over a cushion and hold my body with my elbow. The position was quite hard and after a while, my elbow started to numb and reduce my power to push. Hence, I asked whether I could change to normal position.
After a while trying to push, the midwife told me that she needed to call her supervisor and all of a sudden there are 6 other people rushed into the room. One of them introduced herself as a obgyn and she informed me that she needed to use a vacuum to help the baby out and if the effort was not succeeded they need to do a C-section. My heart broke hearing the news as I have struggled so far and not ready to give up for a C-section. I told my husband to say a pray and we whispered silently to the baby to help the process.
With the combination of pushing and painful vacuum process finally the doctor managed to take the baby out and it was such a magical feeling when I could finally hold him on my chest. He was so little and so fragile. His body was really warm and wet with blood but his innocent eyes starred at me. I gave him kiss and said a pray for him, thanking God for giving us this little angel. My husband then cut the baby's umbilical cord.
The labor stage wasn't over, I still needed to push one more time to deliver the placenta. There was big relief after the placenta was out from my uterus.
And that was surely a very long labor :)
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| Welcome to the world, little boy :) |
My advice to the pregnant mothers out there, everything in labor is so unpredictable and beyond control, so don't put so much stress on yourself in preparing one, it's better to prepare yourself with the parenting stuff. If I could do it all over again, I would prefer to read more parenting books than pregnancy books during pregnancy :-D
xoxo,
Indispensable Lady
